published on Monday, December 12, 2005

RIVM selects SARA for the hosting of the portal kiesBeter.nl

On 6 December, Drs. J.F. (Hans) Hoogervorst, Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport (Ministry of VWS) has officially opened the site "zorgverzekeringen 2006" of kiesBeter.nl. This website gives among others information regarding the new health care system. On kiesBeter.nl everybody can compare health care insurances. SARA has acquired the assignment for the housing and system management of the portal kiesBeter.nl via a tender procedure.

Together with several health organizations, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment "Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM)", is responsible for kiesBeter.nl. By order of RIVM, SARA provides the hosting of the web servers and databases of kiesBeter.nl. SARA also supplies the required Internet bandwidth.

In the SARA data centers in Amsterdam and Almere a stable IT infrastructure with a failover system has been realized. If one of the servers of kiesBeter.nl fails, the tasks will be taken over by another redundant server in order to guarantee continuous uptime.

Due to the fact that SARA houses the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), customers have almost unlimited connectivity with the Internet. The price/quality comparison of SARA's state-of-the-art data centers, the available Internet bandwidth and know-how in the field of hardware and system management made RIVM decide to choose SARA for the hosting of the portal kiesBeter.nl.