Skipprivate cloud | Case Study
onramp customer | BuyDRM
BuyDRM IT Challenge
BuyDRM was at a crossroads. Founded in 2001, the company’s flagship product, KEYOS, enables its users to monetize, market and monitor digital media content. As the needs of the rapidly expanding pay media industry grew, so too did BuyDRM. After nine years of strong growth, BuyDRM had lost confidence that its managed hosting provider would be able to provide the level of service and support necessary for the company’s future growth. Moreover, the Dallas hosting provider’s own growth was creating operational complexities and the risk of service disruption, as it forced customers like BuyDRM to move cabinets to accommodate its changing footprint. Frustrated with the lack of continuity in service, flexibility and support, BuyDRM was in search of a new data center that was able to deliver a managed server solution with the ability to scale in concert with the company’s growth and development.
Solution
BuyDRM was drawn to OnRamp’s ability to provide customized solutions with the built-in flexibility to support customers as they scale and grow. BuyDRM initially turned to OnRamp to build, monitor and maintain a fully-managed web and mail server environment deployed on enterprise-class HP servers, and OnRamp was there to support BuyDRM every step of the way from development and deployment to management of that solution. As the company grew, so did their need for enhanced solutions to enable them to provide additional services.
“OnRamp was able to architect and deliver a solution to scale with us as we grew organically,” says BuyDRM CEO Christopher Levy. “Other data centers did not have the ability to grow and scale built in to their infrastructure or service offerings.”
OnRamp’s team of engineers worked with BuyDRM to deeply understand the company’s specific environment and the challenges of enabling its continued growth. Based on BuyDRM’s IT infrastructure needs, OnRamp recommended a Private Cloud solution to deploy a virtual platform. OnRamp’s Private Clouds offer a secure, effective and realistic way to deploy server and application virtualization. Hosted in the redundant, reliable and secure infrastructure of the OnRamp Austin Data Center, OnRamp’s Private Cloud solutions provide the economic benefits of virtualization, the control over one’s own dedicated equipment and the private, secure environment within which to run it. OnRamp built a highly available, virtual environment for BuyDRM utilizing VMware vSphere virtualization software deployed on HP blade servers. Because BuyDRM products and services run entirely on Microsoft Windows technology, BuyDRM was also able to benefit from OnRamp’s expertise as a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner. OnRamp successfully installed virtual machines running Microsoft OS and SQL servers and added a Cisco content services switch and shared HP Storageworks SAN to ensure a highly available solution. Available 24/7/365, OnRamp’s on-site technical support team monitors, manages and maintains the Private Cloud solution, removing the need for BuyDRM to invest in any additional support and IT resources.
Results
In the time since OnRamp implemented its initial managed server solution for BuyDRM, the company has grown from one database platform to a clustered, virtualized environment, enabling BuyDRM to provide a multitude of services for its users who are accessing information via multiple platforms around the globe. In addition, implementing a Private Cloud solution has enabled BuyDRM to:
- Build and scale on an as-needed basis
- Achieve efficiency through utilization and automation
- Lower IT cost by aggregating deployment onto robust blade servers
- Remove security risks associated with public cloud environments
According to Levy, “OnRamp talked the talk and walked the walk when it came to architecting a world class solution to meet our specific needs. When you’re reliant on a managed server solution that is built and managed by a third party, you need it all to work flawlessly. That’s what we got from OnRamp – a seamless solution that incorporated realistic pricing and top-notch customer support.”
Because OnRamp’s Austin Data Center provides fully hands-on, customized support from experienced network engineers, companies like BuyDRM are able to benefit from OnRamp’s unique ability to provide the tools and resources necessary to supplement their needs 24/7/365.
onramp customer | ExamSoft
ExamSoft IT Challenge
ExamSoft was facing a challenge. The company, which provides computer based testing (CBT) products, outgrew its production environment. ExamSoft specializes in a laptop-based testing solution, allowing students to use their own laptops for examinations. The popularity of this model contributed to ExamSoft’s healthy growth. In addition, the introduction of a new Mac product to the company’s suite of services necessitated a more flexible hosted solution. As a result, ExamSoft turned to OnRamp to deliver a solution enabling an increase in availability, speed and security for their expanding customer base.
Solution
OnRamp worked closely with ExamSoft to develop a completely customized solution from inception to implementation, combining both private cloud and colocation services. OnRamp’s sales and engineering team worked closely with ExamSoft to provision an IT environment with the capacity, availability and necessary resources to support the migration of data from ExamSoft’s prior environments to OnRamp’s Austin Data Center. To facilitate this, OnRamp built a Private Cloud solution utilizing virtualization software deployed on HP blade servers. OnRamp’s Private Clouds offer a secure and effective way to deploy server and application virtualization. Hosted in the redundant, reliable and secure infrastructure of the OnRamp Austin Data Center, OnRamp’s Private Cloud solutions provide the economic benefits of virtualization, the control over one’s own dedicated equipment and the private, secure environment with which to run it. A state of the art firewall sits in front of ExamSoft’s servers, databases and web servers. OnRamp also provided colocation services for ExamSoft’s own network attached storage equipment, something other data centers were not able to support.
“After evaluating several data centers in Dallas and Austin, we were impressed with OnRamp’s ability to create both a customized colocation and managed server solution, something other data centers were not willing or able to support,” said ExamSoft VP of Technology Mark Haney. “OnRamp had all of the necessary infrastructure and equipment requirements anyone would expect from a top tier data center. It was OnRamp’s ability to deliver a completely flexible solution customized to our specific needs, coupled with their skilled, professional on-site team of network engineers that could step in and provide support when and if needed that really set them apart.”
Customers, like ExamSoft, often view OnRamp as an extension of their IT department and turn to OnRamp’s technical team for support all the way through layer seven of OSI. In addition to building the IT environment to support ExamSoft’s online operation, OnRamp’s team of experienced engineers were instrumental in facilitating the migration of data and equipment from ExamSoft’s Dallas and Florida providers to the OnRamp Austin Data Center, ensuring a seamless transition and avoiding any unplanned downtime.
According to Haney, “We wanted a place focused on hosting and we came to OnRamp because this was one of their core competencies. OnRamp has the skilled technical staff that knows what they’re doing and have helped us through our migration. There has never been a time when I can’t get someone on the phone to help with advice and answer questions.”
Results
ExamSoft’s secure, redundant and reliable data center environment, within OnRamp’s data center, has helped the company streamline its IT infrastructure and achieve a number of goals related to its strategic roadmap. The transition to a Private Cloud environment has enabled ExamSoft to reduce its hardware and space capacity by half, thereby saving the company money in both hardware and resources. The portability of the virtual server allows ExamSoft to take a copy of the virtual machine and load it in multiple environments, facilitating the internal development of applications and delivering sales and support to current customers. And, because the virtualization software makes it possible to run multiple machines on one server, ExamSoft has the flexibility and capacity to grow and scale. The flexibility that OnRamp provides to ExamSoft has served as a catalyst for ExamSoft to evaluate ways that it can work with OnRamp to further its current environment by adding high availability resources.
“OnRamp enabled us to do everything we wanted to do at the right price point and with the right people,” says Haney.
