Now - UnitedLayer

WESTED CASE STUDY
WestEd Case Study: Integrating Colo with Cloud
THE CLEAR ADVANTAGES TO
MOVING TO A HYBRID CLOUD
WITH UNITEDLAYER
WestEd is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research, development, and service
agency that works with education and other communities throughout
the United States and abroad to improve education and other important
outcomes for children, youth and adults.
Before UnitedLayer
With UnitedLayer
Before moving to UnitedLayer, WestEd
had colo infrastructure within a data
center. They paid a premium for the
location and were required to pay for
additional space that they simply did
not need.
WestEd starting working with
UnitedLayer and was immediately able
to cut colo costs by 50%. In addition,
UnitedLayer provided them with
the appealing capability to virtualize.
Virtualization is important to WestEd,
and they were happy to find a company
that does colo and virtualization, a
combination that is quite rare.
Why is Virtualization (the Cloud) Important?
Virtualization makes it possible to run multiple operating systems and applications on the same
server at the same time.
What are the Benefits of Virtualization (the Cloud)?
INCREASED IT AGILITY
FASTER DEPLOYMENT OF WORKLOADS
BETTER FLEXIBILITY
MINIMIZED DOWNTIME
ABILITY TO SCALE
INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY
REDUCTION IN CAPITAL
AND OPERATING COSTS
BUSINESS CONTINUITY AND
DISASTER RECOVERY
“
The option to virtualize (and go to the Cloud) was a very attractive
advantage for choosing UnitedLayer. Managing the hardware is a
time-­consuming task for our small technical team, and the thought
of us not having to run in crisis mode was very appealing to us.
Denise Johnson
WestEd’s IT Operations Manager
”
50 percent of enterprises will have Hybrid Cloud by 2017
But WestEd was hesitant to move to the Cloud
WestEd wanted to get out of the “hardware business” and move everything to the cloud.
They wanted to help improve their IT team’s quality of life by freeing up the resources
spent supporting hardware on nights and weekends. The problem was, they found the
entire process daunting. They realized the move wasn’t going to happen overnight so they
wanted to do it in phases.
82 percent of enterprises have a Hybrid Cloud strategy
Moving out of the server support business was a clear advantage to moving to the cloud,
but moving costs from capital to operational was an ever greater advantage for WestEd.
The move to UnitedLayer
“
UnitedLayer was quick to respond to our needs and provided us with
a huge amount of support.
Denise Johnson
”
WestEd’s IT Operations Manager
After the move
UnitedLayer moved WestEd in two stages -­colo and then to a Hybrid Cloud infrastructure
a year later.
Since moving to a Hybrid Cloud environment, WestEd has been able to experience,
first-­hand, UnitedLayer’s support, flexibility, and integration capabilities.
What are the clear advantages of this partnership?
FLEXIBILITY
ABILITY TO GROW
INTEGRATION
WestEd benefits from the following services:
Colocation
– Network, circuits, IP,
phone, video and other
internal services
Dedicated SAN Storage
– Integration between
UnitedColo and United
Private Cloud
Private Cloud for Intranet,
Authentication and E-­mail
– They have a self–managed Cloud
with the comfort of knowing that
UL can step in anytime and help
out with managed services
On-­Premise servers for backups
– Their Hybrid Cloud involves three
infrastructure types – Colo for
network, Private Cloud for email and
internet and on-premises servers for
backing up data
ABOUT UNITEDLAYER
Headquartered in San Francisco, California - one of the most
networked Internet points of presence in the world - UnitedLayer
provides its customers with Hybrid Cloud Hosting Expertise,
offering colocation, managed services, public and private clouds
and business continuity solutions.
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