CONCORD, N.H. – Concord Hospital, a 205-bed facility that serves people throughout New Hampshire, no longer has to worry about pushing its data center beyond its limits.The hospital just built a new, bigger and more powerful center just down the hall from its old one.

Some on the IT staff figure it's done in the nick of time, as more and more digital systems were being added to the hospital and doctors and nurses had come to rely more than ever on round-the-clock access to the increasing amount of patient data. Plus the demand on the network was likely to grow even more once a new patient wing and emergency department now in the works is completed.

"Even more important is our business continuity plan," said Gary Light, the hospital's chief technology officer. "The airflow wasn't optimal," he said. "The power wasn't optimal. We had some cooling issues."

The hospital's legacy UPS (uninterruptible power supply) system was 15 years old. It was showing wear and tear, and it was at capacity.

"We did have some scares, and it was mostly due to cooling," Light said. So when the hospital moved its data center from an 800 square-foot space to a 2,500 square-foot one, Light and his crew made sure the room was designed according to best practices. Concord Hospital turned to West Kingston, R.I.-based American Power Conversion's InfraStruXure to maintain uninterrupted availability of its most critical IT applications.

Light particularly commends APC for its modular approach, which meant Concord Hospital could plan for future growth without having to power up for more use than it needed today.

It is InfraStrucXure's scalability and modular features that appeal to other hospitals, too, said John Donovan, director of APC's global healthcare segment.

"The average data center uses 30 percent of its capacity," Donovan said.

Greenwich Hospital, a 174-bed hospital in Connecticut, like Concord Hospital, is among the top 100 most-wired hospitals in the country. It rolled out InfraStruXure in February to cool its blade servers in its new data center.

"InfraStruXure also allows us to scale our IT systems to meet future demands,' said James Weeks, chief information officer for Greenwich Hospital.

That translates into cost savings, said Light.

"When faced with the choice of drastically over-sizing one large legacy system to accommodate uncertain future IT growth curves, InfraStruXure enabled us to right-size and increase capacity on-the-fly as we continue to grow," he said. "We also lowered our total cost of ownership by right-sizing, and, because it is modular, we easily can perform self-service."

While APC was not less expensive than other systems Light and his team considered, its modular approach saves the hospital money on expensive service contracts and on batteries and hardware it would have purchased for a system that was not build-as-you-grow.

"What we looked at more than ROI (return on investment)," said Light, "was total cost of ownership."