Siemens Healthineers enhances secure global collaboration partnering with Atos

Atos announced in late October 2022 the win of a seven-year contract with Siemens Healthineers, the medical devices leader to transform network services for its manufacturing sites and R&D labs and transition toward a zero trust architecture that incorporates eliminating implicit trust while continuously validating every stage of a digital interaction.

Atos and its parent Siemens have a long history of joint go-to-market initiatives, services contracts, and co-innovation efforts. This new contract demonstrates Atos’ ability and commitment to supporting Siemens Healthineers on its journey toward a modernized network, enabling global and secured collaboration across 60 customer locations in 15 countries. Embarking on a network modernization journey is becoming imperative for the healthcare industry, given the shift to digital health solutions and remote workers. Consequently, infrastructure and cybersecurity leaders must select the right service provider to provide the core network and network security expertise.

Siemens Healthineers is setting up the necessary foundation to deliver greater efficiencies at lower operating costs

Healthcare costs continue to escalate globally while health outcomes (such as life expectancy, disease prevalence, and complexity) worsen. Consequently, healthcare enterprises are under pressure to improve their solutions at a lower unit cost.

Despite Siemens being a global brand with a reputation for innovation and marquee solutions (including imaging, lab diagnostics, and cancer care), it is not immune from competitive forces. It needs to accelerate its speed to market, enhance innovation, and ensure it creates an environment for the best scientists to collaborate. To do so, it must enhance its global footprint to drive research and development (R&D) through a robust, stable, and secure network that supports scalable collaboration. The quality of support infrastructure is a key lever in Siemens Healthineers’ drive to competitive differentiation. By partnering with Atos to move to software-defined networking, Siemens Healthineers will enable real network agility and security while driving down the total cost of ownership through the extensive use of automated administration processes.

Putting cybersecurity at the center of network modernization is crucial, and Atos has demonstrated it can secure critical infrastructure

Enterprises looking toward a zero trust architecture are considering network security as a central and critical component of their overall zero trust strategy. According to our latest cybersecurity Pulse study, strengthening security measures at the network level will have the highest priority in 2023. Seventy percent (70%) of respondents in Exhibit 1 will increase their investments in network security.

Atos ranked third in our 2022 HFS Top 10 Cybersecurity Service Providers study; one of the key reasons was its deep expertise across most areas of the cybersecurity value chain, around OT/IoT security. Through its mission-critical systems (MCS) offering, Atos has demonstrated that it is a trusted partner in securing critical infrastructure with turnkey projects combining hardware, software, and services. Its deep and mature vertical security offering covering healthcare-industry-specific needs makes Atos a strong partner that combines core network and network security expertise.

Exhibit 1: Strengthening security measures at the network level will be given the highest priority in 2023

Sample: HFS Research Cybersecurity Pulse, H2 2021; 150 cybersecurity executives from Global 2000 enterprises
Source: HFS Research, 2022

The Bottom Line: A strategic outsourcing arrangement that leverages core competencies to address critical contemporary challenges, ensures both Atos and Siemens Healthineers can concentrate on the best that they bring to the market.

As disease proliferation increases, consumer expectations are changing rapidly. Consequently, healthcare enterprises must accelerate collaboration globally both efficiently and securely. The right technology enablement is critical, as are cybersecurity protocols. Atos brings those capabilities as Siemens Healthineers leverages its competencies globally to address healthcare needs.