8/12/2019 VMware Fortrust 12Q1 en Case Study

1/2

INDUSTRY

Datacenter services

KEY CHALLENGES

Satisfy customer demand for

enterprise-class cloud services

Decide whether to refer

customers elsewhere, buildinternal capacity or find white-

label solution

Ensure customers receive the

security, reliability and high

performance they expect

from FORTRUST

SOLUTION

FORTRUST chose to deliver

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

through PeakColo WhiteCloud

Service based on VMware

vCloud Powered infrastructure

and NetApp storage.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

FORTRUST provides an

additional infrastructure service,

enhances service offerings and

competes in growing market for

cloud services

FORTRUST customers

gain business agility toshift workloads as needed

between internal datacenters

and hosted cloud

Shift to pay-per-use finance

model avoids capital expense

(CapEx to OpEx)

VMWARE CASE STUDY

Launched in 2000, FORTRUST is a Premium Data Center Services Company delivering high-

availability enterprise infrastructure services to the business community. The FORTRUST

Data Center is a SSAE 16 SOC 1 Type 2, and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant facility progressively

designed and precisely managed to preserve business continuity for its customers seeking

secure, reliable, and quality infrastructure services to strengthen their Information Technology

environments. FORTRUST is a trusted partner who will preserve and protect their customers

Information Technology infrastructure as well as serve as an essential extension of their

operations while providing value to the customers business through quality, reliability, risk

mitigation, and customer service. FORTRUST is a privately held company located in Denver,

Colorado. Its ideal location in low-risk geography shelters the datacenter from major natural

disasters, providing clients with peace of mind. Leading companies choose FORTRUST to be

their trusted partner who will serve as an essential extension of their operations.

The ChallengeFORTRUST customers span a wide range

of industries, including FORTUNE 100, 500,

and 1000 companies across e-commerce,

banking and financial, healthcare, IT services,

high tech, education, media and government.

Many have high transaction volumes in the

tens of millions, using high-performance

Microsoft SQL or Oracle databases. With the

emergence of cloud computing, a growing

number of FORTRUST customers were

asking for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

FORTRUSTs core competencies, however,

revolve around highly reliable physical

infrastructure and colocation services, not

cloud technology. Therefore, FORTRUST

decided to find a partner that could provide

a white-label IaaS solution.

A key requirement was that the solution

runs on VMware software. FORTRUST had

virtualized its own back-office applications

on VMware vSphere; therefore company

engineers understood and appreciated

VMware technology. Furthermore, the

vast majority of FORTRUST customers

FORTRUST chose to deliver IaaS through PeakColo

WhiteCloud Service

that were virtualizing were doing so on the

VMware platform. A hosted-cloud solution on

the same platform would provide essential

interoperability, with no additional training

hours or cost.

Many FORTRUST customers also have

VMware-based virtual clusters on premise that

they want to extend out into the cloud, says

Rob Timmons, Vice President of FORTRUST.

From a hybrid-cloud/colocation perspective,

VMware technology provides natural synergy.

The Solution

FORTRUSTs search for a VMware-based cloud

solution led to PeakColo, a Denver-basedcompany whose White Label Infrastructure-

as-a-Service is based on VMware vCloud

Powered infrastructure and NetApp storage.

Established in 2006, PeakColo delivers

public, private, hybrid, disaster recovery

(DR) and custom solutions from SSAE16/SOC

1- compliant datacenters in Denver, Phoenix,

and the UK. PeakColos WhiteCloud Service

enables value added distributors, regional

datacenters, system integrators and value-

For over 10 years, FORTRUST has provided high availability datacenter

and co-location services to enterprise customers. More and more

customers, however, were asking for cloud services as well. FORTRUST

had to decide whether to refer these customers elsewhere, build internal

capacity or find a white-label solution. The answer was WhiteCloud

Service from PeakColo, a premier VMware Service Provider.

8/12/2019 VMware Fortrust 12Q1 en Case Study

2/2

VMware, Inc.3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.com

Copyright 2012 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws.

VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or

trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarksof their respective companies. Item No: VMW-CS-FORTRUST-USLET-103

VMWARE CASE STUDY

service level agreements (SLAs); and flexible

systems that enable business agility.

FORTRUST colocation and cloud customers

include financial firms, multi-media

companies, geospatial firms and healthcare

organizations. Their common denominator

is that they process large amounts of data

and need high input/output performance,reliability, and security governance to comply

with industry-specific regulation such as

PCI, HIPPA, and SOX. MCIS enables these

requirements with hybrid-cloud/colocation

flexibility within a SSAE 16 SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2

Type 2 compliant facility.

SpotXchange is the worlds largest video

advertising marketplace and a long time

co-location customer of FORTRUST. The

company tried Amazon for cloud services

but was not satisfied with the performance

or flexibility of the Amazon offering.

FORTRUST MCIS, with its solid state disk

technology and virtualized platform, deliverstremendous efficiencies for high level I/0

performance33 million lines of code in

20 second timeframesto quickly execute

SpotXchanges mission-critical database

analytics. SpotXchange uses vCloud

Director to spin up test and development

environments, which allows the company to

roll out to production quickly using vApps to

achieve competitive time to market. Whats

more, virtualization is delivering 4:1 server

consolidation savings.

Without VMware technology none of that

would have been possible, Timmons says. Our

customers gain enormous efficiencies, they canmove workloads as needed, and they pay only

for what they use. That puts FORTRUST above

and beyond what our competitors can offer.

Looking Ahead

FORTRUST continues to look for ways to

build competitive advantage for itself and its

customers. If a customer decides to virtualize

desktops with VMware View or enhance DR

with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM),

FORTRUST can accommodate those decisions

easily with flexible VMware licensing available

through PeakColos participation at the premier

level in the VMware Service Provider Program

(VSPP). They can just cross-connect into

FORTRUSTs virtual private cloud, Timmons

says. Theres real synergy there for extending

cloud advantages.

added resellers to provide cloud-based

offerings without the risk and capital costs of

building internal capacity.

Leveraging PeakColos IaaS infrastructure,

FORTRUST launched Managed Cloud

Infrastructure Services (MCIS), an enterprise

level cloud service that delivers on-demand

computing and storage resources. MCIS givesFORTRUST customers a cost-effective means

to extend and augment their physical and/or

virtualized environments.

The critical piece here is that we deliver a

managed hybrid cloud environment, a true

hybrid mix. This lets customers migrate

critical workloads that might be in a physical

environment today and ship those off to the

cloud, and then later bring them back as

needed, Timmons says.

The underlying solution technology includes

VMware vCloud Director and VMware

vCloud Connector. Built on top of VMwares

virtualization platform, vSphere, VMwarevCloud Director enables consolidation of

virtual resources across multiple clusters;

encapsulation of application services as

portable vApps; and deployment of those

services on-demand with isolation and

control. VMware vCloud Connector enables

enterprises to seamlessly span public and

private cloud environments.

Using vCloud Connector, customers can

ship their virtual machines in and out of

the FORTRUST cloud, says Josh Mariea,

PeakColos VP of business development. The

NetApp Storage Area Network (SAN) provides

the advantages of VMwares strategicpartnership with NetApp. The solutions are

tightly woven to meet critical governance

requirements like HIPPA and PCI in a multi-

tenant environment while enabling customers

to gain enterprise-class IO performance and

the efficiency and agility of secure, reliable

pay-as-you-go capacity on demand.

Business Benefits

MCIS and its underlying VMware technology

from PeakColo enable FORTRUST to satisfy

customer demand for enterprise-class cloud

services. The worldwide market for cloud

services is projected to grow to $44 billionby 2013. FORTRUST now can offer these

services to its growing customer base.

FORTRUST customers benefit from lower

capital and operating expenses; efficient

resource usage; reliable uptime; 100 percent

Many FORTRUST customers

also have VMware-based virtual

clusters on premise that they

want to extend out into the

cloud. From a hybrid-cloud/

colocation perspective, VMwaretechnology provides natural

synergy.

Rob Timmons

Vice President of Sales,

FORTRUST

VMWARE FOOTPRINT

VMware vSphere 5

VMware vCloud Director 1.5

VMware vShield Edge 5

VMware Site Recovery

Manager 5

VMware vCloud Connector 1.5

PARTNER

PeakColo

NetApp