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Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

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Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#41

Post by o-__-o »

foobarian wrote: post #28
reaperducer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The company I work for does not deal with health-related data so I don't have direct exposure to the issues. But, I think there is something analogous happening with SOX compliance. It is a very expensive and slow bureaucracy that reacts very poorly to change. For example, once I was mortified to find out that due to me randomly logging in to some SOX-covered server, afterward there were multiple meetings between SOX…

If you work for a company that must follow regulations, then you should be aware of your impact. You will learn this as you advance further in your career.. however this post was written as though the regulations are there to cause you grief, but that can't be further from the truth. Think of it like this, the Boeing team is finding out the hard way what happens when you skirt steps in a highly regulated field.

SOX is the standard for change management for financial companies to prevent shadow changes that could enable another Enron, Worldcom, or Adelphia style cooking-of-books financial scandal. The idea is that all changes should be fully analyzed for their impact. If a change is found to have been made without going through the controls process then a review and an emergency after-the-fact change record must be created. This leads me to believe you did not just login to a server, unless you weren't supposed to have access in the first place (separation of duties requirement), but actually made a modification to that server without an approved change.

All this means that the system is very resilient and will not suffer random outages but most importantly, in the SOX world, there is no avenue for malicious changes to be introduced to critical financial systems and their data.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#42

Post by kbenson »

Narkov wrote: post #20

> “We could never pin down Google on what their true business model was,” says a Cerner executive involved in the discussions. Imagine being that insecure in what you do. What were they looking for? A non-compete from Google? Innovate or die.

Not understanding the incentives of those you tie yourself to is a quick way to endanger any endeavor you attempt.

It's not insecurity to paranoia to worry about today's partner being tomorrow's competitor when it's so common. In fact, this is exactly one of the things China has used to jump start many industries. In their fervor to enter the Chinese market, many companies have given over intellectual property in exchange for access (an excahnge only really on the table because the Chinese government could and did constrain that access otherwise), and found that after some time they had local competitors with similar advantages (and possibly government consrtaints again to boot).

That a company might recognize that a deal may have long-term consequences that vastly outweigh the short term gains is not something to deride, it's exactly what they should be on the lookout for if they intend to survive and grow.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#43

Post by throw_14JAS »

commandar wrote: post #35
reaperducer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. I'd argue it's less because of a belief that a non-Windows environment is inherently insecure and more that Microsoft very aggressively promotes their products as being compliant with regulations like…

It'x a brilliant piece of marketing from MS, if you think about it. Many decision makers, even in spaces with HIPAA data, have no real idea what it entails. They are frightened of screwing it up.

What Microsoft sells is a "good enough" solution that speaks the right language for the decision makers. In turn, this makes their decision less risky while still satisficing the requirements.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#44

Post by solo1preneur »

1290cc wrote: post #22

Google is doing the right thing. EPIC is a perfect example of the walled garden ecosystem that extracts every last drop from its clients and keeps anyone trying to innovate out. Healthcare tech could use the competition to drive down costs related to medical record management and exchange.

> EPIC is a perfect example of the walled garden ecosystem that extracts every last drop from its clients and keeps anyone trying to innovate out.

Google doesn't do this?

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#45

Post by karpodiem »

manigandham wrote: post #40
karpodiem wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of the two has a trillion dollar market cap with monopoly like market share in multiple business to consumer product sectors? There’s nothing novel about what Epic or any other B2B enterprise software company does (for the most part), other than total addressable market (and profits) being far smaller than the B2C FAANG giants - the market caps reflect this as well.

Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are all trillion dollar companies operating in multiple sectors. Why is Google special in this regard?

Right. And while Epic does the heavy lifting of crafting software to support healthcare provider workflows, integrating dissimilar systems (PACS, etc.), and storing all that data, the companies you mentioned feel they can create value by attempting to automate diagnosis and potentially offer some integration point for genetic counseling.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#46

Post by neuro_image3 »

1290cc wrote: post #22

Google is doing the right thing. EPIC is a perfect example of the walled garden ecosystem that extracts every last drop from its clients and keeps anyone trying to innovate out. Healthcare tech could use the competition to drive down costs related to medical record management and exchange.

Absolutely. | Also EPIC is spectacularly unfit for purpose.

Total garbage software that essentially functions as a billing tool.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#47

Post by wstrange »

ehsankia wrote: post #38
organsnyder wrote: post #13

Epic being concerned about a giant gaining too much power? That's cute.

Also, if that was true, why would they only complain about the 3rd biggest cloud provider?

Azure is unlikely to ever be a competitor.

AWS - because they really don't have a choice.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#49

Post by commandar »

throw_14JAS wrote: post #43
commandar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I'd argue it's less because of a belief that a non-Windows environment is inherently insecure and more that Microsoft very aggressively promotes their products as being compliant with regulations like…

It'x a brilliant piece of marketing from MS, if you think about it. Many decision makers, even in spaces with HIPAA data, have no real idea what it entails. They are frightened of screwing it up. What Microsoft sells is a "good enough" solution that speaks the right language for the decision makers. In turn, this makes their decision less risky while still satisficing the requirements.

Exactly. From the perspective of high level decision makers, PaaS is heading toward being a commodity good, so differentiating your platform can be what makes a deal and making regulatory compliance "easy" in heavily regulated industries can be a pretty strong differentiator.

If you have an existing business relationship with a company and already trust them to help you navigate regulatory hoops, there's going to be strong inclination to continue to trust them as you expand your infrastructure to the cloud.

Like you said, it's the kind of very smart, long-term marketing I tend to associate with "New"/Nadella Microsoft.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#50

Post by neandrake »

twodave wrote: post #36

I really don’t think this has anything to do with competition (if anything Google is competing with Amazon and Microsoft here, not Epic). The article muddies the waters somewhat, but all the quotes are telling a story that says (not untruthfully) they’re dropping it due to its outsized maintenance burden in relation to the proportion of their clients who use it.

There might be some fear of competition. Google is offering healthcare solutions some of which seem to be angled at "owning" the healthcare data. I'm only vaguely familiar with Epic's offerings but a lot of these solutions that Google offers seem to encroach in that territory:

https://cloud.google.com/solutions/healthcare-life-sciences/

https://cloud.google.com/solutions/modernize-legacy-apps/

https://cloud.google.com/healthcare/

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