In medtech, the requirements for traceability are extremely strict. Losing information can be costly. For Etac, supplying healthcare products globally, operation and backup must be 100 percent reliable.

“We have sales and distribution all over the world and thousands of products, so our business system supports a pretty large part of our business,” says Mats Ericsson, the IT Manager at Etac.

Full control required

Etac’s business system runs on IBM Power Systems servers and handles, among other things, customer orders, deliveries, stock and, not least, manufacturing, which concerns everything from a product’s embryo and all the way to disposal. Etac must have full control over all products and where they go. If an incident occurs, it must be reported to the Medical Products Agency and may lead to them having to find out who is using the product in question for a corrective action.

“The requirements for documentation and follow-up are extremely high, and we must follow both the Swedish Medical Products Agency’s rules and their equivalents in the countries where we operate, for example the FDA in the US,” says Mats.

Transferred to service in 2016

Previously, Etac handled operations themselves with their own servers, but in 2016 they chose to buy operation and backup as a service from LOAD.

“We rent a machine that LOAD operates and which in turn is reflected in LOAD’s Power Cloud environment. We can run it if the production machine should go down,” Mats explains. “Every morning we get system logs that we only need to look over, because LOAD makes sure that everything is working as it should.”

100% reliability is business critical

For Etac, a 100% reliable operation and backup system is invaluable:

“For us, it is business-critical to completely avoid downtime. IT is not our core business; it just has to work. There is no advantage to owning these functions and operating a data center ourselves,” says Mats.

About Etac

Etac is a leading player in the assistive technology industry that develops and offers products for people with reduced mobility as well as products and services for hospitals, nursing homes and home use. In addition to having a presence in Sweden, the Etac Group operates in Norway, Denmark, England, the USA, Australia, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, and sells via distributors to large parts of the world. Etac is owned by the investment company Nordstjernan AB.