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I didn't really understand what this meant until the very end of the actual MSNBC article. At least I think I get it now. “We’ve historically seen hospital sys

I didn't really understand what this meant until the very end of the actual MSNBC article. At least I think I get it now. “We’ve historically seen hospital systems make these decisions independently of their medical record provider,” said Aneesh Chopra, the president of health-technology company CareJourney and the former chief technology officer of the United States. “It will be interesting to see if Epic’s thumb on the scale moves cloud market share.” So apparently if I'm a hospital I can run the Epic systems anywhere, or at least store my records anywhere, well, at least at AWS or Azure, and apparently not Google now.

bcrosby95 7y ago
Sure, but: > That report notes that "insufficient interest" from Epic customers in Google is behind the decision to focus efforts instead with those cloud competitors. It seems like if you run Epic Systems at Google, you were in a minority that is apparently not worth supporting. This seems less like Epic putting their thumb on the scale, and more like their customers putting their thumb on the scale.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I have only limited experience in the healthcare space when it comes to cloud selection, but I can tell you that every single healthcare company I work with uses Azure. They don't do it because it may or may not be right for their needs. They pick Azure because somewhere along the line the mid- and upper-level managers, including director-level IT people, have been made to believe that anything other than Windows is insecure and not suitable for HIPAA. If I even mention the word "Linux" or "AWS" to them they immediately curl up in a little ball mentally and treat me like I'm some kind of evil script kiddie, or magical wizard. It's truly baffling the responses I get from people who are supposed to be in charge of these things. I don't know these people outside of boardroom presentations, so I don't know how they got this way. My best guess is that it's either Microsoft salesmen, industry conferences, or simply what they're comfortable with and anything else is not worth risking their jobs.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Azure does appear to be quite wide-spread, I think microsoft has always been a very glom-y company with a very high network effect from using multiple of their products in tandem. The healthcare market isn't nearly as startup friendly as others and a lot of the movers and shakers directing company direction are likely to be more familiar with the business sides of things than pure dev folks - I think that naturally slides into an MSFT preference since those folks will be using all flavours of office and at least some portion of dev talent will need to be MSFT folks who can work Access/TSQL/VB magic and make the spreadsheets work. Lastly, all three of AWS, Azure and GCS do try and make a big deal of their HIPAA compatible instances, but whatever the compliance officer at a company is used to is what will get by the easiest - honestly anyone who has a compliance officer that is happy to accept a non-on-premises solution should count themselves as lucky. All that said - I'd be amazed if MSFT hasn't invested heavily into advertising to cement this decision, but I'd also be surprised if AWS hasn't been trying to dump even more money in there - google just seems a bit clueless when it comes to the convention game and these sort of closed circles where everyone plays golf on tuesdays.
  - plerpin 7y ago
    Windows and Office are Trojan horses for Azure. Microsoft does all sorts of SKU trickery at the time of Windows and Office license renewal to make it seem like you can't afford to NOT buy Azure from them.
    - cosmodisk 7y ago
      The problem is, especially with Office, that it has no alternatives.Google Suite is a toy and any open source solution feels like someone chopped your hands off and sent you back to 90's..
      - wizzwizz4 7y ago
        Have you tried SoftMaker FreeOffice? It's not libre, but I've heard good things about it.
      - ta999999171 7y ago
- munk-a 7y ago
  That's a correct read of the article, but since that fact was self-reported by Epic it may not be the true cause of their withdrawal from GCS. All that said, cross-cloud data links are relatively easy to establish - just like linking in data from someone else when everyone had on-premises servers.
organsnyder 7y ago
Well, yeah, you can run Epic anywhere that provides Windows VMs. I can't imagine any hospital choosing Google right now—many systems are just coming around to the idea of cloud-hosting being viable (they've had to justify that sunk datacenter cost somehow), and Google's track record and uncertainty with the longevity of GCP would make most CIOs nervous (rightly so, IMHO).

bcrosby95 7y ago

Sure, but: > That report notes that "insufficient interest" from Epic customers in Google is behind the decision to focus efforts instead with those cloud competitors. It seems like if you run Epic Systems at Google, you were in a minority that is apparently not worth supporting. This seems less like Epic putting their thumb on the scale, and more like their customers putting their thumb on the scale.

reaperducer 7y ago
I have only limited experience in the healthcare space when it comes to cloud selection, but I can tell you that every single healthcare company I work with uses Azure. They don't do it because it may or may not be right for their needs. They pick Azure because somewhere along the line the mid- and upper-level managers, including director-level IT people, have been made to believe that anything other than Windows is insecure and not suitable for HIPAA. If I even mention the word "Linux" or "AWS" to them they immediately curl up in a little ball mentally and treat me like I'm some kind of evil script kiddie, or magical wizard. It's truly baffling the responses I get from people who are supposed to be in charge of these things. I don't know these people outside of boardroom presentations, so I don't know how they got this way. My best guess is that it's either Microsoft salesmen, industry conferences, or simply what they're comfortable with and anything else is not worth risking their jobs.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Azure does appear to be quite wide-spread, I think microsoft has always been a very glom-y company with a very high network effect from using multiple of their products in tandem. The healthcare market isn't nearly as startup friendly as others and a lot of the movers and shakers directing company direction are likely to be more familiar with the business sides of things than pure dev folks - I think that naturally slides into an MSFT preference since those folks will be using all flavours of office and at least some portion of dev talent will need to be MSFT folks who can work Access/TSQL/VB magic and make the spreadsheets work. Lastly, all three of AWS, Azure and GCS do try and make a big deal of their HIPAA compatible instances, but whatever the compliance officer at a company is used to is what will get by the easiest - honestly anyone who has a compliance officer that is happy to accept a non-on-premises solution should count themselves as lucky. All that said - I'd be amazed if MSFT hasn't invested heavily into advertising to cement this decision, but I'd also be surprised if AWS hasn't been trying to dump even more money in there - google just seems a bit clueless when it comes to the convention game and these sort of closed circles where everyone plays golf on tuesdays.
- plerpin 7y ago
  Windows and Office are Trojan horses for Azure. Microsoft does all sorts of SKU trickery at the time of Windows and Office license renewal to make it seem like you can't afford to NOT buy Azure from them.
  - cosmodisk 7y ago
    The problem is, especially with Office, that it has no alternatives.Google Suite is a toy and any open source solution feels like someone chopped your hands off and sent you back to 90's..
    - wizzwizz4 7y ago
      Have you tried SoftMaker FreeOffice? It's not libre, but I've heard good things about it.
    - ta999999171 7y ago
munk-a 7y ago
That's a correct read of the article, but since that fact was self-reported by Epic it may not be the true cause of their withdrawal from GCS. All that said, cross-cloud data links are relatively easy to establish - just like linking in data from someone else when everyone had on-premises servers.

organsnyder 7y ago

Well, yeah, you can run Epic anywhere that provides Windows VMs. I can't imagine any hospital choosing Google right now—many systems are just coming around to the idea of cloud-hosting being viable (they've had to justify that sunk datacenter cost somehow), and Google's track record and uncertainty with the longevity of GCP would make most CIOs nervous (rightly so, IMHO).