The Media Services Group (MSG) was experiencing rapid growth and needed a flexible and scalable IT infrastructure platform to support this expansion at minimal cost. They had unique networking requirements and needed a customized environment. They were looking for a vendor that would be a partner, understanding their needs and working with them to meet their unique requirements. MSG runs a non-standard database that does not include any standard Microsoft tools but consists of binary number databases created internally. It also has some very unique networking requirements: MSG must maintain control outside the network perimeter while the cloud vendor controls within that perimeter.

B&I Contractors, Inc., a company that provides commercial mechanical contracting services, was facing several challenges due to its growth. The company needed to build and formalize its IT department, adhere to strict compliance and regulation requirements, ensure reliable and easy-to-use disaster recovery, and ensure IT scalability. With shrinking IT budgets and less desire for capital expenditures, Bill Lamon, IT Manager for B&I Contractors, knew that it was time to look for cloud options for his growing business. His desire to not be locked in with a channel partner and eliminate hardware expenditures for a local solution was one of the many reasons that cloud object storage was considered.

Brickstream’s infrastructure included physical hardware that was managed out of a colocation facility in Atlanta. The company was responsible for procuring hardware from a variety of vendors, applying critical maintenance updates, and performing hardware upgrades and repairs. This led to recurring warranties and maintenance fees which began to burden Brickstream. The company started considering moving to a virtual environment to alleviate the burden of managing a physical infrastructure. However, migrating from a traditional colocation facility to a VMware-leveraged virtual environment was a daunting task, especially for a relatively small company with limited IT resources. Another concern was cost. Brickstream had experienced firsthand the long-term pitfalls associated with buying and maintaining physical hardware. To utilize its IT dollars more effectively, the company realized that migrating to the cloud was the obvious choice.

The Orlando Economic Partnership, a public-private, not-for-profit economic and community development organization, was facing challenges with data security and redundancy. The organization was experiencing data growth, which is common for most companies. However, with data growing, the need for the elimination of data redundancy became critical. IT budgets are traditionally not growing; therefore, cloud has become an important option to help control spiraling infrastructure costs due to increased amounts of data needed for everyday usage and long-term compliance needs. The data includes file data, onsite CRM, applications, and Office 365 backups. The organization also had to consider the unpredictable weather in Florida that can affect businesses, residents, and visitors. As climate change worsens, it’s fueling more frequent natural disasters that will only add to the problem. Orlando Economic Partnership had to consider this when deciding on how best to backup all of their data and applications.

IDBS needed to upgrade its Microsoft Exchange email server and increase availability by deploying a load balancer that would not be affected should its onsite datacenter go down. The company needed a cloud partner it could trust with a hybrid cloud solution that would fit its needs. IDBS uses Masergy as its network infrastructure provider. Masergy operates the largest independent global network platform and also offers fully-integrated cloud communications, cloud-based security and managed network services. Masergy links all IDBS’ sites through a global MPLS network providing a businessgrade connection that experiences virtually no downtime. Therefore, IDBS needed a cloud vendor that was capable of linking to Masergy’s network and maintaining the business-class connection that IDBS required.

Glasstire, a small, not-for-profit company offering information, services and social media to the art community, had been hosting its website with a small provider for years. However, the organization had experienced numerous performance issues that caused the site to go down, along with other ongoing availability issues. The security of the site was also inadequate, as it was hacked into and infused with a Trojan spam generator and numerous illicit redirects. The hacking was so invasive that the entire site had to be rebuilt. The new website developer wanted to run the new site on a Debian (Linux OS). Glasstire also wanted the ability to grow over time and handle increasing traffic as well as add new services such as a dedicated email service. Finally, as a result of the company’s previous issues, it wanted a vendor that would provide remote management capabilities and have a local datacenter so that support and dialog could be done live if needed.

GxPi, a UK-based company specializing in GxP compliance for the Life Sciences sector, faced a challenge with one of its clients. After several months of testing and user acceptance, the client encountered a severe issue with GxPi’s x-docs™ product. The problem was inconsistent and impossible to isolate, making it difficult to replicate and solve. GxPi could not work in the live environment at the client’s site due to compliance issues. The company needed a solution that would allow them to replicate the client's environment exactly, in order to identify and resolve the issue.

Rodericks Dental, a clinically led dental group, offers comprehensive NHS and private dental care with over 100 dental practices across England and Wales. High quality treatments and quality patient care are key to the comprehensive dental services that are offered by Rodericks Dental. One of the key components of operating a dental practice, is the need for all patient records, billing and other business essentials to be available at all times. Prior to working with iland, Rodericks initially built their own data centre. As time progressed, it became necessary to look at the security of this solution along with the amount of power that was being generated with their own data centre. Cost savings and increased security became top IT priorities. With other large cloud vendors, Alex discovered that they were paying for additional storage that they were not using as well as experiencing slow recovery times.

The CSN Groep, a full-service Systems Integrator and Managed Services provider, recognized the increasing need for availability and the lack of expertise in managing IT infrastructure to maximize uptime amongst their customer base. They saw the need to offer cloud-based business continuity services from a different location than that of their IaaS services. They wanted a partner who not only had deep expertise in cloud backup and disaster recovery, but could also deliver the advanced cloud security expertise needed to meet the compliance requirements of their customers. A top priority for the CSN Groep is protecting their customers’ IT systems from the ever increasing threats of cyber-attacks, viruses, and ransomware.

Cold Jet, a leader in the dry ice business, was facing a challenge when the company decided to move offices in Belgium. The company's IT team, based in Ohio, was tasked with finding a disaster recovery (DR) provider that could accommodate their new setup. The team was also looking to improve and increase their bandwidth. The search for a provider was under a tight deadline, with only a month to find a provider and get the system up and running.

Resources for Human Development (RHD) is a US human services nonprofit that delivers caring, effective, and innovative services that empower people of all abilities to achieve the highest level of independence possible and build better lives for themselves. RHD supports more than 160 human service programs across 15 US states, serving tens of thousands of people every year with programs addressing intellectual and developmental disabilities, behavioral health, homelessness, addiction recovery, and more. The RHD IT team keenly understands the impact IT has on the mission of the organization. Allen Howard, Manager of Enterprise Architecture at RHD, explains the importance of IT availability to the company and their consumers. Howard and his team, along with their forward-thinking CEO, put in place a plan to acquire a reliable and cost-effective cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) solution to ensure there is no interruption to services in the event of a disaster. After a disappointing experience with another cloud provider that was unable to deliver a DR solution that worked, Howard continued his search and left no stone unturned to ensure he found the right solution.

Vermont Law School had always prioritized data protection and IT resiliency. However, due to competing IT initiatives and a limited budget, implementing a Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) project was challenging. The school had previously deployed an off-the-shelf solution for offsite backups, but it proved to be unreliable. The urgency to implement a secure and reliable DRaaS solution was heightened when the school suffered a costly malware attack that disabled most of their IT infrastructure for over two days. This incident disrupted the business and highlighted the need for a robust DR solution.

Jurlique, a global skincare company, was facing challenges with managing backups at its remote offices and datacenter. The company was looking for a solution that could provide a consolidated view of its cloud and storage of VMs, workloads, and files. The company also required a solution that could support its operations in various regions around the world, including Asia, the U.S., and the U.K. Furthermore, Jurlique wanted a flexible pricing model to manage a configurable, collective pool of servers to adapt to fluctuating workloads.

FreeState Electric Cooperative was facing several challenges. They needed to reduce cost and resource requirements, and were looking for a simple cloud-based replication solution. They also required a flexible and scalable infrastructure to provide reliable and continuous service to their customers. Their legacy applications were running virtually, but running well below their latency requirements. They conducted research to find the right partner, which meant looking at numerous Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions including AWS and Azure. They focused their efforts on VMware partners since they operated in a VMware environment. Cost and resource savings were crucial to the company’s success.

Synergy Logistics, a software house specializing in warehouse management technologies and solutions, recognized the increasing importance of e-commerce and the subsequent rise in the number of daily transactions. They needed a cloud provider who could help them exceed their customers’ requirements in a rapidly evolving industry. The company sought a cost-effective SaaS solution that could support highly transactional businesses while maintaining on-premise levels of security and availability. The new logistics demands of next- or same-day delivery required a cloud infrastructure that provided the agility and flexibility needed to manage these demands.

Wavex, a London-based managed services provider, wanted to focus on IT strategy for its customers, rather than IT infrastructure. The company needed to ensure the highest availability levels to keep its customers' IT up and running. It also required cost-effective cloud services for its small to medium business (SMB) customer base. Wavex's customer base spans many industry sectors, including finance, real estate, and professional services, but they have had particular success in the legal sector. One of their customers, B P Collins LLP, a Thames-Valley based solicitors’ practice, needed to deploy a critical new business app in a very short time frame and migrate to a new platform that offered high availability SLAs and was low risk to the business.

The Wilson Center, a top-ranked regional studies think tank, was in need of a secure and cost-effective disaster recovery solution. The center's data is sensitive in nature and its location in the nation's capital necessitated a robust solution to protect against outside attacks. The IT department, led by Chief Technology Officer Bruce Griffith, is lean and required a low-maintenance solution. The center had previously had a bad experience with a disaster recovery solution that failed to deliver reliable data replication. The new solution needed to be flexible, reliable, and cost-effective, with the ability to protect every user's information and ensure accessibility for both daily use and emergency failovers.

Quikteks, a New Jersey-based IT consultancy, was in need of offsite backup and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solutions for their midmarket customers. The company, which manages the systems of a growing customer base, prioritizes service quality. Being based in New York, they are acutely aware of the impacts of system outages on business operations. The most recent weather event to impact the tri-state area was Hurricane Sandy, and since then, the Quikteks team has been adamant about building resilient disaster recovery and backup plans for their clients. The challenge, however, was finding a solution that matched their exacting standards for service quality and reliability.

Muhlenkamp & Company, a family-owned and operated business specializing in personalized investment management, needed a reliable, cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) solution that could meet aggressive Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs). They had a limited IT budget and a lean IT team, which necessitated a cost-effective and easy-to-manage solution. The company also needed to comply with industry regulations such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). After a failed attempt with another DR vendor, they sought a new solution that could provide reliability, visibility, and ease of testing.

The Trans Group, a transportation company, was facing challenges with their data backup solution. They had data housed in multiple locations, but there was no regional diversity, which was not a satisfactory disaster recovery strategy for the long term. The company needed on-demand access to real-time data, such as route information, to provide optimal service to the communities they serve. It was imperative that data was available on demand so that update calls could be made to schools and parents in a timely manner. However, their limited IT resources required an easy-to-use, cost-effective disaster recovery solution.

St. James Insurance Group, a pioneer in the insurance space, was facing skyrocketing IT costs, the need to protect its growing data and systems, and the ability to scale easily as needed. The company had initially deployed disaster recovery in the cloud to protect its own business and was looking to further minimize costs and create business agility by expanding its use of cloud to resource-heavy, production applications. However, finding a provider that shared their vision was a challenge.

The American Board of Urology (ABU) was given a four-week notice by its incumbent web hosting provider to move its entire website. The transition was complicated due to the use of a complex Oracle database stored on the old web server. The IT Coordinator at ABU, Charlie Hall, was the only IT person and was relatively new to the job. He was also scheduled to be away on vacation during one of the final four weeks. The situation was further complicated by the fact that he was not particularly familiar with the website.

Prolateral Consulting, a UK-based company providing hosted IT services, was experiencing rapid growth. This growth led to an increase in costs, particularly for purchasing more hardware. The company had racks of equipment in co-location sites in the UK and Germany. However, as the company grew, it needed additional sites in Europe and the USA, which meant the capital cost of equipment, maintenance, and local support services would all increase drastically. The company was reaching its capacity as a co-location and had to add expensive hardware. This, coupled with the poor state of both the UK and global economies in 2010, resulted in cost reduction becoming a priority for the company.

EXP, a SaaS provider, was experiencing growth and needed a sound IT strategy to handle it. The company began investigating whether a move to the cloud would satisfy its needs both technically and economically. Initially, most customers wanted their data local; hosted software was less common. However, a majority of customers were actively looking for cost savings and wanted their IT teams to focus on their core business and the operations that support them. This began driving customers to select a hosted model. The change in customers’ preference meant the company needed to grow its datacenter to meet escalating business demands. Historically the datacenter was hosted at a third-party site, but the company’s team operated it. EXP, like its customers, sought the best growth strategy, which resulted in lower costs and minimal impact to the company’s IT team. It looked at hosted public cloud providers to determine whether its needs might be satisfied technically and economically.

Delta Diversified Enterprises, Inc., a privately-owned electrical contractor, was facing challenges with the availability and security of their data. The company's EVP and CFO, Brad Berry, was concerned about the potential for their servers to go down in the event of a break-in, fire, or tornado. He was also burdened with the responsibility of managing much of the company's IT operations, which was becoming increasingly demanding due to IT advances and growing workplace demands. Berry realized that he needed to seek an outside vendor to update and refresh the company's technology infrastructure.

Procon, a North American mining contractor, was dealing with an aging ERP system that was no longer able to keep up with the demands of the business. The company had a large fleet of equipment to track and a workforce scattered across some of the most remote and inhospitable regions on the planet. With new ownership potentially pushing workload volumes and availability demands even higher, it was clear that it was time for a change. The company needed tighter cost control over projects and a more robust and reliable system to handle their operations.