Modernized Clinic IT With a Sovereign Container Platform and Target Operating Model
The Hirslanden Group is the largest medical network in Switzerland. The group includes 16 clinics, five outpatient surgery centers, and numerous radiology and radiotherapy institutes. With more than 3,000 employed and affiliated doctors and around 11,000 other colleagues, Hirslanden treats over 100,000 inpatients every year. To ensure high-quality care, the clinic group consistently relies on medical innovations and digitalization.
Hirslanden faced the challenge of modernizing a complex application landscape of around 800 clinical and administrative applications. As part of this transformation, classic legacy systems are increasingly being replaced by modern, cloud native, and containerized applications.
However, because the network manages highly sensitive data from more than 100,000 patients annually, a public cloud solution for patient-critical applications was completely out of the question due to strict regulatory requirements in the Swiss healthcare system. The core IT operations team faced a demanding reality: the number of applications to be operated was growing rapidly, yet the team size could not be increased without incurring substantial additional expenses.
Furthermore, many manual steps plagued the existing software development and deployment workflows. Hirslanden needed a partner to help design a highly available, easily scalable, and secure container management platform that could be operated entirely on premises in their own data centers – providing long-term stability, automated efficiency, and robust data protection.
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As the technological foundation, the SUSE Rancher Suite was implemented across three data center locations to establish a central, highly available container management platform. This architecture hosts production Kubernetes clusters for critical systems – such as their new patient information system – on physical HPE bare-metal servers, while the infrastructure and management clusters run in virtualized environments.
The environment scales dynamically across approximately 30 nodes across all clusters, leveraging the container-optimized, immutable SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro operating system. By replacing manual workflows with infrastructure as code (IaC) and GitOps practices, the platform ensures rapid, fully automated infrastructure provisioning and continuous configuration management.
Through our collaborative journey, Hirslanden unlocked a future-ready infrastructure that delivers long-term operational success:
For this demanding transformation, Hirslanden was looking for an independent, reliable partner who could support them in planning, designing, and setting up a new container infrastructure with Kubernetes. Adfinis convinced the customer through our specialized cloud discovery workshop, proven reference projects, and our structured journey concept. We acted as a strategic advisor and open source expert, developing a tailor-made solution strategy to help them navigate product choices, design scalable hardware, and plan deployment integrations.
Our approach was rooted in a holistic People, Process, and Technology (PPT) consulting model. We understood that technology alone does not ensure innovation; organization and structural governance must evolve alongside it. Together with Hirslanden, we developed a "Future Model Operations" to look at technology and organization as one integrated unit. This target operating model ensured that processes, team responsibilities, and clear governance were properly established right from the start, allowing the new platform to deliver immediate, seamless value to their engineering teams.
"An important part of the collaboration between Hirslanden and Adfinis was the integrated consideration of technology and organization. To identify potential hurdles early on and ensure right from the start that processes and responsibilities are properly established and fulfilled, we jointly developed a Future Model Operations. Our goal was that the platform not only functions excellently on a technical level, but can also be deployed immediately by the teams and deliver added value through clear governance."
Dario Terrafino | Head of ICT Infrastructure Services at Hirslanden
Adfinis and SUSE have been trusted partners for over 14 years, working together to advance open source adoption and deliver reliable, scalable infrastructure solutions. As a SUSE Diamond Partner—the highest partnership tier—we collaborate closely with SUSE to address complex technical and organizational challenges.
This long-standing relationship enables our customers to benefit from the full breadth of the SUSE ecosystem, from secure Linux environments to agile Kubernetes platforms, while preserving flexibility and avoiding vendor lock-in.
In recognition of our deep expertise and commitment to the ecosystem, Adfinis was named SUSE’s Solution Provider of the Year 2025.
"SUSE Rancher Prime enables us to modernize our application landscape step by step, without our users being affected in their daily work. "Doctors, nursing staff, and administrative team members can concentrate fully on working with the patients and trust that all systems run reliably."
Aurelio Amoroso | Senior Linux Engineer at Hirslanden AG
Technologies
This platform makes it easy for organizations to manage and secure Kubernetes clusters. Adfinis offers setup, guidance, and support, enabling efficient orchestration and scalability across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments.
This tool secures container environments with features like vulnerability management, compliance checks, and runtime protection. Adfinis assists with setup and ongoing support, ensuring your Kubernetes containers remain safe and efficient.
A secure, on-premises repository for container images and artifacts, allowing organizations to safely store, sign, and manage cloud-native assets and AI models locally.
A cloud-native, distributed block storage solution built for persistent Kubernetes workloads, providing a lightweight, highly available engine to easily provision and back up data.
An ultra-lightweight, immutable operating system purpose-built for edge, IoT, and embedded systems, featuring a hardened, tamper-proof footprint that maximizes reliability and minimizes attack surfaces.
