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 Inc. from Mississauga, Ontario
Describe the solution, service or initiative
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 makes it original or 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.
Describe the improvement this solution made to the customer’s sales or revenues and provide measurable evidence of such.
“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 one client. “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.” According to one client: We could not imagine a better partnership than SunGard AS and Infinite IT to stand behind its software and the PEN. As the product launches around the world, its technology will be backed by SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services in the diverse regions as well as Infinite Cloud for the Canadian landscape. The solution delivers on an underlying platform that leverages proven, best-in-class technology and 24/7/365 management and monitoring of our virtualized infrastructure. “We have plans to push more of our services into Infinite IT and SunGard’s joint cloud environment,” said the client. “Soon, we will have several analysis algorithms running on the client side stored in the Cloud, which is a testament to Infinite IT and its ability to launch, manage and handle this innovative technology.” The client was able to reduce their IT budget by 18% in 2013 due to the services moving to Infinite Cloud, and has also reduced their connectivity costs by 15% Their annual budget was $150,000 for hardware purchases, and that has now been reduced to $50,000. Infinite Cloud costs were only $5,000 per month, which represents a $40,000 annual savings before staff reduction. The solution has proven to save the client hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of the 3 year engagement, with only more features in the future adding to the savings.
Describe the improvement that was made to the customers efficiency, with measurable evidence.
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.
How did the solution improve the customer’s ability to serve internal or external clients?
One client came to Infinite IT looking for a more secure, elastic, stable and cost-controlled way of running their business. The 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. The CEO and his team 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,” said the 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 the client’s monitoring software to transmit ECG readings over the Internet to the client’s 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 what the CEO calls “a stable and secure pipeline with a constant up-time” through which to transmit highly sensitive data. Once the product was cleared as a consumer and prescription product, the CEO immediately set out to determine what vendor could provide the solutions necessary to avoid any kind of data disruption and to meet several requirements concerning medical privacy rules, firewalls and other software safeguards. “The last thing we wanted was for people to buy our product and then not be able to send or receive information because of an error on the back end,” says the CEO. So he engaged with the clients’s technology advisor at Infinite IT Solutions* to create the most available and resilient infrastructure to support the client’s future. The results since the initial engagement have proven to be the right decision as the client is now able to expand it’s environment on demand and without risk to existing services.
In what ways does the solution go above and beyond industry expectations?
“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 client’s 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.” According to the CEO, their company could not imagine a better partnership than SunGard AS and Infinite IT to stand behind its product software and systems. As the product launches around the world, its technology will be backed by SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services in the diverse regions as well as Infinite Cloud for the Canadian landscape. 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. “We have plans to push more of our services into Infinite IT and SunGard’s joint cloud environment,” says the client’s CEO. “Soon, we will have several analysis algorithms running on the client side stored in the Cloud, which is a testament to Infinite IT and its ability to launch, manage and handle this innovative technology.”
How does the solution further your customer’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. The client also no longer needs to make trips to a data centre or have costly equipment onsite that consume electricity or require cooling. In 2013, it also afforded the client to downsize their existing office and allow several employees to work full time from home. This solution is currently being deployed and will appear on next year’s Channel Elite Award submission.