Company Name: IPStack Technologies
Headquarters: Latham, New York
Website: www.ipstack.net
Year Founded: 2002
The Background
IPStack is focused on helping clients identify the resources needed to fill the “expertise gap” when it comes to network and cloud migration, security, compliance, management and support. Dave Cafaro and Suzanne Kennedy lead the executive team, both bringing over 25 years of experience in the IT and telecommunications space.
Dave and Suzanne had been working hard to identify and implement a cloud deal for about a year prior to this one, after deciding to transition from focusing primarily on network services to cloud service offerings.
The Introduction
RapidScale’s Northeast Partner Experience Manager, Matt Coso, had a longstanding relationship with Dave and Suzanne, but had yet to engage with them since joining the RapidScale team. In June 2016, Matt called Dave to re-engage and update him on the new position.
Soon after, IPStack uncovered an opportunity in the manufacturing space thanks to a key referral from a sales colleague. They knew it was a massive opportunity and wanted to bring in the provider that would best fit the customer environment.
As well as the IPStack team knew Matt, they still weren’t familiar with RapidScale and needed to gain further knowledge before engaging their team with the customer. That September, RapidScale’s Senior Vice President of Technology, Duane Barnes, flew to New York to join Matt and complete a half-day whiteboard session, walking Dave and Suzanne through RapidScale’s background and solution offerings. This instilled the confidence IPStack needed to introduce RapidScale to the prospect.
The Opportunity
The customer is a Northeast-based lumber manufacturer with 420 users and 21 locations. The manufacturer had a 420-user Citrix desktop platform with IBM that was being managed by an MSP and had nagging technical issues, as well as multiple in-house servers they were struggling to manage while growing at a rapid pace. They were also due for a Microsoft Exchange renewal, which was expiring in January 2017. The customer wanted to offload as many workloads as possible to enable their limited IT staff to leverage technology and drive innovation and revenue. Dealing with multiple vendors had become tedious and caused frustration due to limited support and projects not being completed in a timely manner. Ultimately, the customer sought a partnership that could accomplish consolidating infrastructure and taking ownership of their entire IT footprint, strategy and management.
The Process
Once IPStack engaged the customer and vetted RapidScale, they were able to set up a joint customer meeting a week and a half later. This initial on-site meeting brought to light clear synergies between the customer environment and RapidScale’s core competencies and value. The first spark flew from the discussion surrounding the customer’s upcoming Exchange renewal, as RapidScale introduced their Hosted Exchange offering, CloudMail. The process flew from there.
The manufacturer revealed they wanted to complete initial implementations by January 2017, as they had to move off of certain platforms and were eager to improve their environment. They had even experienced such unreliable support that they were willing to move away from an incomplete three-year contract, which RapidScale helped remediate.
RapidScale began to build a solution that would fix the customer’s key issues and consolidate services, while also uncovering some key areas for massive cost savings and adding 24x7x365 support. During a second on-site customer meeting, RapidScale presented the first draft of the proposal.
The following meetings consisted of tweaking the final proposal and engagement with more members of RapidScale’s team. During this time, the customer also completed thorough due diligence. They spoke to RapidScale senior management, including spending an hour on the phone with CEO Randy Jeter to confirm their business model, structure and expertise, and contacted 12 references.
IPStack remained heavily involved throughout the entire process, playing the valuable role of the trusted advisors. The customer constantly looked to them for guidance, trusting Dave and Suzanne to recommend a reliable provider and solution set.
Just one month after the initial proposal was drafted, the deal closed.
The Outcome
The final solution included taking over the 420 desktops with RapidScale’s CloudDesktop offering. This very large support pain point was resolved with RapidScale’s team of on-staff certified Citrix engineers that the manufacturer now has direct access to. RapidScale also replaced the majority of existing Microsoft licenses with SPLA, Office 365 and Citrix licenses that resulted in $207,000 annual savings. CloudMail replaced the customer’s existing email service, consolidating the server environment by 42 percent. The RapidScale solution resolved 100 percent of the pain points, claimed complete ownership of the environment, and freed the IT team from ongoing, nagging, reactionary issues. Instead, the customer’s IT team can focus on more innovative initiatives and projects that drive profitability for the company.
Almost a year later, the customer expressed new pain due to slow connectivity. They were looking to move away from their existing MPLS network. They had private connectivity with one MPLS circuit, which was slow and unreliable. They faced challenges with network reliability, speed, resiliency and future network migration. The customer wanted an SD-WAN solution to integrate with the existing MPLS network and allow for future decommissioning of MPLS in favor of DIA. They also wanted integration with their newly implemented CloudDesktop solution. IPStack recommended bringing in RapidScale once again due to their proven success, robust capabilities and continued support.
With RapidScale’s new SD-WAN offering, the customer is able to aggregate multiple broadband connections to provide more capacity, resiliency, and a higher quality of service applications. They reduced expensive circuits by leveraging lower-cost broadband. The SD-WAN solution also allows the customer to be vendor agnostic with their connectivity, giving them flexibility to choose the lowest cost and/or best provider available as pricing and options change going forward. RapidScale added value with always-on reliability, network upgrade cost avoidance, consolidation of network devices and future proofing the network.
This recent addition has made the lumber manufacturer a $65,831 MRR customer.
The Future
IPStack and RapidScale are now in new conversations with the customer around disaster recovery and UCaaS, and the manufacturer is heavily leaning on the RapidScale team for guidance on complementary UCaaS recommendations. While this product is not part of RapidScale’s solution set, IPStack has worked hard to remain hand-in-hand with the managed cloud provider while working on all other aspects of the customer environment.
RapidScale continues to win by being in front of customers, white boarding, hand holding and demonstrating their value. RapidScale is easy to do business with and 100 percent partner focused with no direct sales team. They offer customers full management, 24x7x365 reliable, live support and white-glove service.
RapidScale is part of PlanetOne’s Preferred Provider Portfolio.
