Each year, our sister publication Computer Dealer News hosts the Channel Elite Awards to recognize IT Solution Provider for their innovation, leadership, and commitment for creating value for their customers. As Canada’s leading IT channel publication, CDN invited solution providers to submit their best work to nine different categories for 2013’s awards. Here, we present the case studies these award nominees put forward to us. Find out who the big winners are on Sept. 11 when CDN presents them at the CEA Awards Gala.
Learn more about CDN’s Channel Elite Awards 2013
Nominee: Infinite IT Solutions from Mississauga, Ontario
Cloud Solution description
Infinite IT has one of the most scalable 100%-CANADIAN Cloud services offerings available that was engineered to avoid the complexities of compliance with foreign laws. The Infinite Cloud leverages several different infrastructure platforms including Infinite IT’s private infrastructure at 151 Front Street, the SunGard Availability Services data centre in Mississauga, with a third point of presence up and coming on the west coast of Canada in the next 3-6 months. Infinite Cloud accommodates a customer’s requirement to scale quickly and easily, yet contain costs, maintain security and ultimately purchase a Service Level Agreement for the service. most of the “big-branded” services such as Amazon Cloud and Microsoft Azure cannot offer a Service Level Agreement as aggressive as infinite Cloud, nor do either guarantee that the client data will never leave Canadian Soil. The main reason why Infinite Cloud can do this is because Infinite IT owns the infrastructure right from the customer premise to the backend services. This includes all connectivity to Infinite Cloud (which traverses over the Infinite Wide Area Network, or iWan – not the public internet). Infinite Cloud was built to provide clients with a seamless integration of infrastructure to ensure operational resiliency and availability.
What type of cloud architecture was deployed and how were these decisions made with security in mind?
The entire solution utilized a HYBRID CLOUD architecture. Our client, a developer of health care software solutions, currently resides in Infinite IT’s data centres as a Managed Services customer. Infinite IT connected the client’s Toronto office into the data centre to reduce security risks and enable quality of service and access to the infrastructure in the Infinite Data Centre. The next step was to take the most mission critical production applications that powered their client infrastructure and push that to a pure cloud infrastructure, thereby reducing any hardware failure risks, and mitigating any hardware capacity restrictions. The client has the ability to scale the application power to 1,000 times the current size on demand with the click of a button. The client has been a consistent provider of ECG management software solutions in the English speaking world for the past 17 years.
How does this solution push the boundaries of a typical cloud computing solution and qualify as innovative?
Infinite Cloud enables the best of every world that a client may need when it comes to cloud services. Whether it is pure public cloud, hybrid-cloud, or 100% private cloud services, Infinite IT is one of the only ALL-CANADIAN providers that can deliver on an on-demand and elastic solution that scales with the customer’s needs. Backed by some of the largest data centre companies in the world, Infinite Cloud truly delivers based on customized customer needs, and not by filling a cloud-requirement with a customer demand. Infinite IT owns everything from the data centre services to the fibre (or wireless) connectivity between the data centre and the customer’s offices, and is able to monitor and manage the entire footprint for a customer with customized service levels and customized proactive management policies. “Since we own everything the customer needs, Infinite IT is able to deliver Infinite Cloud services in a way that most customers find appealing”, says Ussia. “It is how we designed the solution from the ground up, allowing our customers to use any feature we offer on demand and at a cost that competes with them doing it internally”. Infinite Cloud includes essential services such as private-data vaulting, virtual machine failover, application hosting, proactive management of a customer’s IT environment, private data connectivity via Layer 2 or MPLS back to the customer’s services, and several other offerings. Over the years, Infinite IT has won several awards for how distinctive Infinite Cloud really is. Ease of management – For your production needs, Infinite Cloud services deliver world-class IT infrastructure and operational support in either a multi-tenant or a dedicated, private environment. We provide your applications with a fully managed cloud solution with all the necessary compute, storage, network, and backup they need. Recoverability – Infinite Cloud provides multiple layers of cloud data protection, with a wide range of recovery options mapped to the criticality of your applications. In addition to a high availability options for production cloud environments, Infinite Cloud offers Recover to Cloud solutions delivering a fully managed cloud recovery solution. Reliability and Availability – Infinite Cloud employs disciplined process control in all that we do, whether we are managing your production environment or recovering your critical cloud data. Infinite Cloud is structured around the internationally recognized, mature Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) v3 framework to deliver accountability, ownership and transparency around IT Service Management (ITSM) Whether leveraging the Cloud for production or recovery Infinite Cloud delivers the resilient infrastructure to keep your applications always on, always available.
Why was this type of cloud solution the right choice for this business case?
Our client came to Infinite IT looking for a more secure, elastic, stable and cost-controlled way of running their business. Our client is going through major growth and is announcing some significant service enhancements to help save lives all the time. They are growing at an amazing rate, and their CEO was focused on being even more disruptive in their highly competitive landscape. They were ready to disrupt and compete in the consumer products market in an effort to radically change how consumers achieve more advanced healthcare. “The last at-home healthcare test was introduced more than 30 years ago,” says their CEO. “We saw an opportunity to create the next revolutionary device that could turn a very doctor-focused test into one consumers could do themselves.” The device is a handheld object that uses monitoring software to transmit ECG readings over the Internet to a reporting center. Once received, physicians interpret the data and provide results within 30 minutes. With the potential for the product to reach hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, its success depends greatly upon “a stable and secure pipeline with a constant up-time” through which to transmit highly sensitive data.
How was the success of the system measured and what were the results?
“The Infinite IT team got our system up and running quickly – and I won’t even pretend to understand the intricacies that were involved in doing so,” says the CEO. “We are completely confident that they’ll be able to replicate what we have in Ontario in whatever region we require next and they will be able to accommodate our needs as demand increases.” The solution delivers on an underlying platform that leverages proven, best-in-class technology and 24/7/365 management and monitoring of the client’s virtualized infrastructure.
How did the design and implementation of the solution break new ground for you as a solution provider?
Infinite IT’s experience in and knowledge of industry regulatory requirements helped deliver a secure and reliable solution. The client was confident that Infinite IT could support the specific technical and regulatory requirements demanded by international regions, and provide the flexibility and scale to support the growth they were anticipating. The client believes it can sell 50,000-100,000 new home heart-monitoring units this year, which might require them to scale up operations; Infinite IT can handle that scale easily. The teams at Infinite IT worked towards a backend design completely customized for the client, allowing for quick go-to market execution, along with the most elastic offerings to power their future growth. The client’s offices are inter-connected via a private network powered by Infinite IT, integrating their data centers and infrastructure within the Infinite IT Enterprise “Infinite Cloud” platform. Infinite Cloud was built to provide clients like CardioComm with a seamless integration of infrastructure to ensure operational resiliency and availability. The Infinite IT team “got our system up and running quickly – and I won’t even pretend to understand the intricacies that were involved in doing so,” says the CEO. “We are completely confident that they’ll be able to replicate what we have in Ontario in whatever region we require next and they’ll be able to accommodate our needs as demand increases.”
How does the solution further your client’s green or environmentally friendly plans?
The client is now moving their entire infrastructure over to Infinite Cloud, and is focused on driving even more cost out of their IT budget. This means they will no longer have an IT Lifecycle, which will ultimately reduce their product requirements and their overall carbon footprint.
