TELUS Managed Hosting provides IRIS, The Visual Group with data confidentiality and security.

With some 165 stores, IRIS, The Visual Group is the largest specialized eye care company in Canada. It provides a variety of integrated services, including eye examinations, laser eye surgery, eyewear and contact lenses, all backed by a team of experienced optometrists, ophthalmologists and opticians.

The company has also developed an outstanding reputation, due to its philosophy of focusing on high quality client care and its reliance on a consistent and efficient business strategy built on leading edge IT. At the end of the 1990s, Éric Babin, VP, IT and Communications, identified a need to centralize the company’s databases in order to provide real-time access to information, simplify processes, deliver better services to the Group’s members and ensure data security. "We had to reassure the optometrists that when they send their patients’ confidential information to a hosted site, no one can access the data", he says. The company chose TELUS to meet its security and confidentiality requirements.

Today, all IRIS stores in Canada are connected to servers hosted and managed by TELUS, giving them secure access to their patients’ records and their appointment schedules. They also have access to IRIS inventory and sales information, allowing for better financial analysis and helping to build an improved marketing strategy.

The TELUS solution provides 99.7% guaranteed access to the operating system, data, power supply and network. The servers are hosted in a maximum security world-class Internet data centre in Montreal. Redundant systems ensure backup power, while a monitoring console enables the system administrator to act immediately if a problem occurs. Thanks to the redundant TELUS IP network and power supply, data availability is assured at all times. Babin adds: "The most important thing for us was to limit access and intrusions, but we were also focused on the need for backups."

All IRIS Group data is backed up daily, to another TELUS building in Montreal. "This is really reassuring for us," says Babin. "And we no longer have to convince our optometrists. Today, they wouldn’t go back to our old ways of doing things for all the money in the world." Managed hosted servers allow the company to save time and to concentrate on its own growth, rather than on technical details.

Babin has also learned to place exceptional trust in the relationship he has with his contacts on the TELUS team: "When you can deal with others, you can resolve problems. Technology is important, but not as important as human beings and there is a human side to TELUS."