Diegem, Aalst, Antwerp - October 24, 2017 - M-team, the IT partner of the independent and neutral health insurance funds, calls on LCL for the safe housing of its data. M-team and the Independent Health Insurance Funds were strategically merged at the beginning of October: M-team has since been called MLOZ IT. MLOZ IT opened LCL client rooms in both Diegem and Aalst. Now the data from MLOZ IT is no longer internal, but at two external locations. With this, MLOZ IT explicitly opted for a safer data center infrastructure.

MLOZ IT is a non-profit organization that provides highly specialized IT services for independent and neutral health insurance funds. The employees of MLOZ IT ensure, among other things, that the clients of the health insurance funds in question can consult their files online and download the necessary forms, and that the electronic processing of the reimbursement of care proceeds smoothly. "We manage 80 terabytes of data for the 370 offices of the independent and neutral health insurance funds in Belgium," says Etienne Ronsmans, Project Manager Lead at MLOZ IT.

Need for renewal
In order to offer their customers reliable and secure access to the data and applications of the mutual insurance companies, that data must be stored securely and be easily accessible via high-performance connections. Until recently, MLOZ IT had an internal data center in Anderlecht that managed it itself. That data center contained both the development environment and the production environment of MLOZ IT.

After an audit by the Health Insurance Agency (CDZ), it turned out that one data center was not sufficient: "The audit showed that there was a need for a second data center to secure our customers' data," says Ronsmans. "We were advised to physically separate our production environment and the development environment."

The company subsequently commissioned a feasibility study on the outsourcing of its data center. The original plan was to further manage part of the data internally and to outsource part of it. However, the study showed that the migration of all data to an external data center was the most efficient solution. “Our internal data center needed to be updated and that would have involved a lot of costs. The amount to update all systems was estimated at around 360,000 euros, and we still had no tier 3 environment. It was relatively cheaper to manage all data externally. Moreover, we now have a full blown tier 3+ environment and we are relieved of all infrastructure concerns, "says Ronsmans.

LCL as an external partner
"We published specifications and entered into discussions with a number of major players in the data center market to make a comparison," says Ronsmans. LCL came out as the winner. MLOZ IT has various reasons for choosing LCL. For example, LCL owns several data centers in Belgium. “It is very important for us that our data remain in Belgium. We moved our production data to a client room at one location, with a backup of this data at a second location. Our development environment was housed in a separate client room. The distance between the two data centers that we use is large enough, so that in the event of an emergency in one data center the other building is not affected, "explains Ronsmans. "In addition, the speed of data transfer between those two data centers is less than 10 milliseconds."

“LCL is also Tier 3 certified, which is a safety standard that indicates that wherever possible the systems have been duplicated so that there is no problem with continuity if one system encounters a problem. For comparison: the certification of our data center in Anderlecht was Tier 2. Security has top priority with MLOZ IT, just like with LCL. Another reason why MLOZ IT chose LCL is because the PUE (power usage effectiveness, the amount of energy used by the data center) of LCL is between 1.5 and 1.7. That means that LCL is very energy efficient. "

LCL is a carrier neutral data center, so the customer has complete freedom of choice in terms of operator. It is certain that all LCL data centers offer a wide range of powerful connections. That is also important for MLOZ IT, since the clients of the neutral and liberal health insurance funds must be able to quickly and easily access their file online and download all possible documents.

The move was thoroughly prepared over a period of eight months. The actual migration of the data was completed on two days. Etienne Ronsmans, Project Manager Lead at MLOZ IT, is very satisfied with the collaboration with LCL: “The migration of our data went smoothly. LCL handled everything within the agreed period and extensively assisted us in the preparation of the relocation. ”

About MLOZ IT / M team
MLOZ IT is a non-profit organization whose clients are the independent and neutral health insurance funds and their respective national unions. The company provides highly specialized IT services for health insurance. The team of analysts, developers, project leaders and network or system engineers ensures that the electronic processing of reimbursement of care proceeds optimally for the 2,700,000 Belgian beneficiaries of the services of the health insurance funds involved.
At the beginning of October, M-team and the Independent Health Insurance Funds became strategically sa