Advanced Network Solutions (ANS) has been in the business of providing IT services and strategies for more than three decades, starting as a traditional technology consulting company and evolving into predominantly a hosting service provider. ANS takes businesses to the cloud, running fully managed hosting operations that take care of enterprise IT needs.
With more than 60% of Software as a Service (SaaS) demand coming from the health care space and all types of companies moving to cloud computing, ANS’s business is booming. ANS needed to make a move to accommodate growing security and compliance needs, seeking an SSAE audited colocation provider with high availability infrastructure. The data center had to be ultra-secure in a geographic safe zone with multiple layers of redundancy and security.
ANS was also rapidly advancing new strategies that go beyond solutions offered by the saturated market of managed service providers (MSPs). The company opted to layer in the know-how of a premium colocation provider to manage a 100% uptime infrastructure so ANS can focus on the main applications that drive its business and empower customers. Narrowing the search based on these criteria, ANS turned to Cologix Columbus.
“What we offer to clients is the ability to focus on their business and not worry about technology,” noted ANS CEO Joseph R. Aiello. “Cologix does the same for our business by focusing on facility infrastructure, security, power and cooling concerns. This enables ANS to focus on the middle tier where we supply business computing, design and application hosting resources, software tools, in addition to disaster recovery and backup solutions without having to spend time on the infrastructure management side of business.”
By colocating with Cologix, ANS now has a duplicate of its Akron, OH site and is able to replicate customers located in Columbus to the Akron data center as a backup, and vice versa. As business continues to build in Columbus, ANS will use both sites to back up each other and deliver primary services with both data centers serving as vaults and replication centers.
The round trip from ANS headquarters in Akron to Columbus is around four hours, so ANS leverages Cologix Remote Hands service periodically. This allows ANS to rest assured that the services are performed by experts — whether it’s inspecting a system, adding or replacing components, or mounting drives for backup data seeding, etc. Having this ability is important for ANS, saving the company time and expense. However, if an in-person visit is required, ANS can access the facility 24/7.
Additionally, with today’s compliance needs, most companies can’t continue to house and manage critical IT infrastructure and software whether in accounting, software, health care or other fields. ANS compliance needs are met with Cologix, as the company’s Columbus data centers meet a slew of regulatory measures, including SSAE 16 SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, ISO 27000, and IRS 2075.
ANS is unique in that it encourages its clients to get rid of capital expenditure and, instead of hiring internal staff to ensure the latest software and virus updates and other vital features are in place, move these operations to experts that manage these services on a daily basis. This correlates with Cologix’s approach that allows companies to outsource IT infrastructure to be overseen by certified data center technicians who ensure power, cooling, space, and connectivity capacity are always in place. ANS solutions provide a different layer from Cologix colocation, facilitating a complementary, value-added service for Cologix clients. As such, referrals are commonplace between both companies.
Further, ANS chose Cologix because it’s not just about the company; it’s about the partnership mentality. ANS met with the Cologix executive team and discussed a commitment to working and growing together, which was a differentiator for Cologix. ANS CEO Joseph Aiello noted that where there’s a commitment and positive relationship, you find success, and that’s what he anticipates with Cologix.
“There are two key benefits of working with Cologix: Remote Hands enabling us to meet client needs as well as our own, and Cologix-facilitated partnerships, especially with telecom providers,” said Aiello. “Forty-plus carriers make Cologix Columbus incredibly unique and valuable, better than other data centers I’ve experienced. Having so many providers located with Cologix lowers costs, and we can make this savings available to others. We’re able to offer high bandwidth solutions like private cloud environments and sophisticated backup and disaster recovery solutions based on these partnerships.”
This article was originally posted “Cloud hosting provider partners with data center to widen its reach” from Cloud Strategy Magazine.
