News Details

PMMC Moves Critical Applications to Windstream Hosted Solutions' Cloud Infrastructure

November 17, 2011

Company Release - 11/17/2011 15:53

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 17, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PMMC, a leading provider of revenue cycle management tools to integrated healthcare delivery systems, announced that it has taken a major step in providing an increased level of service and reliability to its customers by migrating its PMMC Estimator PRO application to a cloud-based infrastructure from WindstreamHosted Solutions, a premier provider of enterprise-class managed hosting solutions.

PMMC chose to move Estimator PRO's infrastructure requirements to the Windstream Hosted Solutions Cloud, providing it and its customers with the highest level of confidence. "We are receiving real-time information feeds from hospital systems around the country, with as many as 4,000 concurrent users," said Kelly Coleman, PMMC's senior vice president of operations. "Our customer base has expanded dramatically in the last year, and we needed a trusted partner who could keep up with our growth. We required maximum uptime and availability; downtime wasn't something we could risk, since our client databases are constantly changing."

Windstream Hosted Solutions' cloud infrastructure is a robust, enterprise-class cloud computing solution, available in public, private or hybrid options.  Customers like PMMC can connect their existing back-end resources such as database environments  and other supporting applications utilizing hybrid cloud options, providing them with greater architectural flexibility. Windstream Hosted Solutions' hybrid cloud option allows customers to leverage the cloud for web front-end computing power and other resources like network, firewall, load balancing and storage.   In addition, customers can cross connect cloud computing resources directly into their environment to handle overflow situations that require excess computing capacity. 

Coleman said PMMC initially discussed the costs of handling needed network upgrades itself, and quickly realized the costs would be significant. "We would have needed to implement 24/7 monitoring, redundancy, and more initially, then have to worry about ongoing costs such as hardware and software upgrades, and increased IT staff. These were costs we chose not to accommodate in-house," she said. "We were conscious of keeping costs down for our customers, with an awareness of needing to be efficient and cost-sensitive for their needs."

Windstream's ability to seamlessly handle PMMC's explosive growth has also been welcomed. "Windstream's 'Hi-Touch' consultants helped us define our expanded requirements, and have helped us implement tools that meet our specific needs, complete with redundancy and SAS-70 compliance," Coleman said. "We talk and meet several times each month, to review how things are going and how they can help us as we continue to grow. Windstream has absolutely measured up to my expectations."

About Windstream

Windstream Corp. (Nasdaq:WIN), headquartered in Little Rock, Ark., is an S&P 500 communications and technology solutions provider with operations in 29 states and the District of Columbia and about $4 billion in annual revenues. Windstream provides IP-based voice and data services, MPLS networking, data center and managed hosting services and communication systems to businesses and government agencies. The company also delivers broadband, digital phone and high-definition TV services to residential customers primarily located in rural areas and operates a local and long-haul fiber network spanning approximately 60,000 route miles. For more information about Windstream, visit www.windstream.com.

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About Preferred Medical Marketing Corporation (PMMC)

Preferred Medical Marketing Corporation (www.pmmconline.com) was founded in 1986. Privately held and based in Charlotte, PMMC provides software and consulting services to help with reimbursement and pricing transparency. With more than 400 clients in 34 states, PMMC helps integrated healthcare delivery systems, acute care hospitals, critical access hospitals, academic physician organizations and multi-specialty physician groups find additional cash and create more efficient workflow processes, allowing its clients to improve their margins so they can continue to serve their communities. 

CONTACT: Media contact:
         Alice HartnettWindstream
         704-845-7381
         alice.hartnett@windstream.com