Featured Case Study Trust the Source PREMIUM FACILITY SERVICES LEADER EXCEEDS SECURITY DEMANDS FOR HIGH-PROFILE BRANDS

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1 Featured Case Study Trust the Source PREMIUM FACILITY SERVICES LEADER EXCEEDS SECURITY DEMANDS FOR HIGH-PROFILE BRANDS

2 Featured Case Study Trust the Source PREMIUM FACILITY SERVICES LEADER EXCEEDS SECURITY DEMANDS FOR HIGH-PROFILE BRANDS Founded: 2001 Headquarters: Phoenix, Ariz. Employees: 400-Plus Industry: Services Market Profile: Private Website: facilitysource.com Customers The Limited, Talbots, Henri Bendel, Office Max, AutoZone, Dollar Tree, Apple, Starbucks, Advance Auto Parts, O Reilly, Office Depot, FedEx Office, Abercrombie & Fitch, Rite Aid, American Eagle, Walgreens, GNC, The Home Depot When a company caters to the requirements of Fortune 100 brands, certain standards are always expected. FacilitySource, a SaaS-based leader in facility maintenance services, exceeds these challenges with recurring efficiency. With each customer engagement, the Columbus- and Phoenix-based service provider is expected to deliver an elite level of security, performance and ease-of-use. The company serves as a partner and consultant that specializes in facility management, store support and incident handling for multi-site organizations. Sunil Padiyar is an expert at leveraging technology to power solutions that fulfill critical customer requirements. The company s CTO understood that FacilitySource needed to scale. Securely and quickly. And like many large enterprises that expanded during the virtualization era, FacilitySource learned that what worked before couldn t meet the demands for growth, scalability and protection. Security issues have escalated to a point that companies won t do business with you unless you demonstrate that you have a highly secure network. Sunil Padiyar CTO, ARMOR.COM PAGE 2

3 Finding fortune As FacilitySource drew the interest of more and more Fortune 500 companies, their standards grew particularly around security. Even during preliminary customer discussions, questions around FacilitySource s security acumen were front and center. Especially when it comes to security and data breaches, brand name companies are extremely sensitive to how we secure servers, how we manage data, and how we remain in compliance with changing security standards, said Padiyar. Security issues have escalated to a point that companies won t do business with you unless you demonstrate that you have a highly secure network. Their legacy co-location infrastructure perfectly acceptable for the time was showing signs of age. And their mid-level hosting vendor was just that. A vendor. FacilitySource was looking for a true partner that was not only ready to fuel virtualization, but would do so in manner that was secure and managed. Padiyar had three key requirements for their new provider: security, virtualization and around-the-clock managed cloud services. That s where the relationship with Armor began. And FacilitySource found the perfect managed secure cloud that aligned with their objectives. Known Standards FacilitySource had three key requirements their cloud provider had to exceed: 1. SECURITY 2. VIRTUALIZATION 3. CLOUD ARMOR.COM PAGE 3

4 How does FacilitySource do it? Central repository for work order management & asset-tracking One of the secrets behind FacilitySource s streamlined, SaaS-based approach is their proprietary work-order management platform, fmpilot 2. It s the front-end customer solution that helps facilitate incident tickets, requests, workflows, payments, quotes and support for multi-site organizations. And it s powered completely by a custom managed secure cloud infrastructure. Fully customizable/business-rule driven Granular visibility to maintenance expenses Spend thresholds built into system Contract & document management Invoice validation Statutory compliance ARMOR.COM PAGE 4

5 No more co-lo FacilitySource s legacy environment was built on a standard redundancy co-location infrastructure. When critical changes were needed or an issue was discovered, someone from the FacilitySource staff had to physically go to the data center. That costs money, time, resources and patience. Any time we wanted to add more capacity, someone had to go in there, set up a box, put a drive in, said Padiyar. Clearly that wasn t going to work. We were in a business that needed virtualization: the ability to bring up servers, on demand, to continuously feed the fire as more and more customers signed on. Their co-location vendor at the time wasn t meeting the requirements of their service-level agreement (SLA) either. This made transitioning to a premium managed secure cloud partner more logical. Amplify It One of FacilitySource s key customers a well-known big-box DIY store had stringent security needs. And while FacilitySource was always aligned with proactive security, the discussions with this customer were a catalyst for Padiyar s team to reevaluate all their networks and amplify it. From security and performance, to scalability and support, the environment evolved to new elite levels. When we were co-located, we didn t have anyone there who could do things for us besides power on and off a server. Our SLAs were not being met, said Padiyar. We physically had to run to the co-location every time there was a problem. 24/7 managed hosting and monitoring was a very critical ARMOR.COM PAGE 5

6 Security that scales That s when FacilitySource and Armor got to work. The teams collaborated to design the best solution possible. It was the only way to scale with the power, security and performance that the business deserved. Armor provided a service that was beyond what a typical hosting company would do, said Padiyar. Armor engineers looked at the physical co-location situation that we had and worked with our architects to figure out multiple server farms with specialization for handling Web, database and application traffic. Jordan Wagner, director of client services at FacilitySource, mirrored these needs. As the business grew and more top customers were drawn to FacilitySource s straightforward facilities management offerings, the company had to keep pushing. Scale was a big driver for this change. As we prepared for growth, we needed someone that was able to easily scale with us. Jordan Wagner Director of Client Services, FacilitySource Scale was a big driver for this change, said Wagner. As we prepared for growth, we needed someone that was able to easily scale with ARMOR.COM PAGE 6

7 Pass the test But it wasn t just capacity and performance. Many commodity infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers can scale. As mentioned, FacilitySource and the Fortune 100 brands they serve expects the best in security as well. And this level of dedication is only available from a true managed secure cloud expert. Part of [customers ] best practices are to run network tests, said Padiyar. They have specialized tools that try to do a SQL injection to see if the hosting site is going to hold up. Every time we have it done it with Armor, we ve passed with zero exceptions. We wouldn t pass the screening by brand name companies unless we had a secure environment like Armor. We wouldn t pass the screening by brand name companies unless we had a secure environment like Armor. Sunil Padiyar CTO, ARMOR.COM PAGE 7

8 High-end talent But technology and expertise will only take an organization to a certain level. To exceed that standard, organizations must attract the best talent in the industry. Regardless of what it takes. This dedication remains evident to the FacilitySource team. Armor has really intelligent professionals in their respective fields; high-end talent as opposed to a typical hosting company that may just hire an administrator, said Padiyar. They were picking network architects over administrators. For some organizations where security and management aren t needed a simple IaaS approach may be appropriate. But for elite organizations that value brand trust and customer confidence, there are no shortcuts. You get what you pay for. That s what I m finding out. Armor is a premium provider there s no question, said Padiyar. I ve found on several occasions that the premium is worth it. You feel the difference, especially in reaction time, debugging issues and offering a variety of state-of-the-art solutions. If someone is looking to be the best and have topof-line hardware behind virtualization compared to commodity hardware I d say it s well worth it. Powerful hardware. Powerful drives. Powerful network architecture. And it s all secure. You get what you pay for. That s what I m finding out. Armor is a premium provider there s no question. Sunil Padiyar CTO, ARMOR.COM PAGE 8

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