{"id":4700,"date":"2025-04-07T16:08:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T16:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rax-stg-wp-aws.com\/blogs\/seattle-childrens-hospital-and-rackspace-discuss-the-power-of-strategic-partnerships-at-vive-2025\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T19:26:57","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T19:26:57","slug":"seattle-childrens-hospital-and-rackspace-discuss-the-power-of-strategic-partnerships-at-vive-2025","status":"publish","type":"blogs","link":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/blogs\/seattle-childrens-hospital-and-rackspace-discuss-the-power-of-strategic-partnerships-at-vive-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Seattle Children&#8217;s Hospital and Rackspace Discuss the Power of Strategic Partnerships at ViVE 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph\">Healthcare providers are challenged more today than ever before. Healthcare teams are confronted with reduced budgets, a shrinking workforce, pressure to innovate and intensifying cybersecurity risks. At the same time, they are expected to continue to deliver on the needs of their organizations, caregivers and patients.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">To deliver on its IT goals, Seattle Children&#8217;s Hospital&nbsp;engaged Rackspace Technology in 2024 to host and manage its Epic Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. Rackspace provided a fully managed private cloud infrastructure solution for three Epic environments. The managed hosting infrastructure allowed the hospital system to focus on high-value strategic initiatives that helped improve patient care and optimize the business of serving its community.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">In 2025, Seattle Children&#8217;s expanded its relationship with Rackspace into a strategic partnership. Now, Rackspace operates the healthcare system\u2019s entire IT operation. This move is designed to help the organization focus on its core mission, delivering the highest quality patient care across its 47 locations in four Pacific Northwest states.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">The strategic partnership is designed to help Seattle Children\u2019s achieve three critical outcomes \u2014 the ability to do more with less, to drive innovation and to strengthen its security posture. In February 2025<strong>, <\/strong>the two entities gave a presentation at ViVE 2025 to share insights at the session, Optimizing Digital Strategies Through Strategic Partnerships.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/91i4vK3MvQk\">Watch the video -&gt;&nbsp;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<h3>Optimizing digital strategies through a strategic partnership<\/h3>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">At the ViVE session, Dr. Zafar Chaudry, Seattle Children&#8217;s SVP \u2013 Chief Digital Officer, Chief AI and CIO, and Rackspace Executive in Residence, Jason Jones, discussed the IT collaboration between the two entities. They highlighted Seattle Children\u2019s three primary goals in forging its new 10-year IT management partnership with Rackspace \u2014 IT modernization, strong security posture and cost savings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">Chaudry began the discussion by emphasizing his focus as an IT leader. \u201cOur focus is always on why we\u2019re in business,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re in the patient business, not the IT business. Our systems must run smoothly, but the focus must always be on our patients.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\">\u201cWe determined that we could not achieve our IT goals on our own,\u201d Chaudry continued. \u201cWe needed a strong partner who understood our environment and how to build and manage world-class infrastructures, support them, refresh them and work around the clock. Rackspace met all our criteria.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Goal 1: Attain a wholesale IT modernization transformation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Seattle Children\u2019s top IT transformation goals are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Achieve 99.999% uptime across its 1,600 applications.<\/li>\n<li>Establish real-time KPI tracking to demonstrate progress and accountability quarterly for the hospital\u2019s board of directors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Chaudry explained the process of moving from managing IT internally to partnering with an IT management services provider. \u201cWhen we began our internal conversations about our rapidly aging IT systems, our overriding challenge was how we were going to modernize from a stable but largely manual system,\u201d Chaudry said. \u201cWe needed a way to get from where we were to a modern, transformed digital state that is fully automated with defined service levels that our physicians can depend on, and that doesn\u2019t cost hundreds of millions of dollars and require a staff of hundreds to make that happen.<\/p>\n<p>What we did is enter into a 10-year strategic partnership with Rackspace where they have taken over our infrastructure, our networking, our network operations center and our security,\u201d Chaudry continued. \u201cWe have agreed upon gates along the 10-year journey, with defined timelines to occur at various stages. This is vital to helping us move from our current mode of operations to the vision of a Rackspace Healthcare Cloud with full automation. Our long-term goal is to get from a stable operation in our current state to nirvana with a fully transformed digital state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Goal 2: Strengthen cybersecurity posture<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Seattle Children\u2019s top security goals are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Optimize its security posture without compromising patient care.<\/li>\n<li>Achieve ongoing world-class security and operational excellence in a high-risk healthcare environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThe thing that keeps me up at night is the whole cybersecurity piece,\u201d said Chaudry. \u201cI ask myself, how can I continue to invest in security without taking away from patient care? The job of our partner Rackspace is to make us as secure as possible because there is no 100% guarantee in the high-risk healthcare industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Goal 3: Optimize IT spend to do more with less <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Seattle Children\u2019s top cost optimization goals are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Prioritize IT investments that directly support patient outcomes.<\/li>\n<li>Realize a 10% to 12% real cash savings over 10 years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Among the organization\u2019s financial changes was a transition from high capital investment to a consumption-based model. Chaudry said, \u201cFrom a financial perspective, people ask: Will you actually save any money in this new partnership? We projected a 10-year model with both Seattle Children\u2019s continuing to manage IT versus Rackspace managing our IT for us. Over the course of our 10-year partnership, we\u2019re looking at about 10% to 12% real cash savings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is funds we can use to invest in patient care,\u201d he added. \u201cPlus, we gain the soft benefits of having around-the-clock IT support, better uptime and stronger security. Those benefits will also positively impact patient care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chaudry wrapped up the discussion with this thought: \u201cStrategic partnerships can be beneficial,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you have to do a lot of legwork to make sure they fit for your organization, and you have to find the right partner with aligned values and expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Interested in learning more about Rackspace Healthcare Cloud? Go <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/industry\/healthcare\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The strategic partnership between Seattle Children&#8217;s Hospital and Rackspace Technology\u00ae was forged to help the pediatric healthcare organization optimize IT costs, drive innovation and strengthen security. Read highlights from a session at ViVE 2025 about the partnership, then watch the 25-minute replay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6594,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","nid":"27478","content_type":"blog","created_by":"10891","authored_on":"2025-04-07T16:08:25+00:00","field_article_industries":"Healthcare","tag_category":"Cloud Insights","field_blog_author_text":"by Jason Jones, Global Customer Manager, Healthcare Rackspace Technology","seo_description":"A Rackspace and Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital strategic partnership redefines IT operations, fosters innovation and strengthens security posture.","field_featured_image":"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/27478-field_featured_image-Seattle-Childrens-Hospital-Vive-Article-Image_0.jpg","insights_image":"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/27478-insights_image-Seattle-Childrens-Hospital-Vive-Article-Image.jpg","field_partners":"","rxt_platforms":"","product":"","publisheddate":"2025-04-07T16:08:25","rxt_solutions":"","opengraph_tag":"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/27478-opengraph_tag-Seattle-Childrens-Hospital-Vive-OpenGraph.jpg","x_tag":"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/27478-x_tag-Seattle-Childrens-Hospital-Vive-X_Card.jpg","teaser_flag":"Blog","seo_titile":"Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital Partnership | Rackspace Technology","field_topics":"Private Cloud","field_slug":"Seattle-Childrens-Hospital-Strategic-Partnerships-ViVE-2025","footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[186,194,180],"class_list":["post-4700","blogs","type-blogs","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-cloud-insights","tag-healthcare","tag-private-cloud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs\/4700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blogs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs\/4700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4701,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs\/4700\/revisions\/4701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}