CenturyLink

En Masse Entertainment, an online gaming company, was facing the challenge of delivering an uninterrupted online gaming experience that keeps players in the game and the excitement streaming. The company was looking at spending more than $1 million in capital expense just to upgrade its internal infrastructure to the latest technology. With the business expanding into other games and a mobile gaming initiative coming to fruition, a new IT strategy was necessary to avoid soaring costs and the erosion of the user experience so vital in the gaming world. The company was expanding into Brazil, Australia and elsewhere. So any solution had to have a global footprint, with multiple data centers to avoid latency issues that can kill game performance.

Youth Dynamics, a nonprofit mental and behavioral health services agency in Montana, was facing challenges with its patchwork approach to voice and internet services. The agency had multiple providers, which proved costly and introduced performance and reliability issues. The staff also faced difficulties in knowing which carrier to call for support during service outages, leading to frustration and productivity losses. The agency wanted to consolidate its voice and internet service with one statewide provider to improve efficiency, performance, and reliability. They also sought cost transparency, cost savings, round-the-clock customer support, and data security to maintain client confidentiality and comply with regulations. Additionally, they wanted a converged voice and data IP network to future-proof their IT strategy and enable advanced video collaboration and mobility services.

The Utah Education and Telehealth Network (UETN) was conceived as an analog system for interactive video conferencing, but it has evolved into a high-speed network connecting public and higher education from the smallest school to the largest university. The Network now includes applied technology colleges, libraries, and healthcare clinics. The challenge was to connect school districts, state-run colleges, and clinics with a resource-sharing network providing education and healthcare across the state. The state's smaller communities are spread among three different areas: the Rocky Mountains, the high brush and canyon area of the Colorado Plateau in the south and east, and the Basin and Ridge Region that contains both the Great Salt Lake and one of the driest deserts in the United States. About 12 percent of Utah citizens live in these rural areas. That's about 360,000 people among Utah's nearly 3 million residents.

Ciena, a fast-growing networking technology provider, was looking to grow its IT services and deliver new capabilities to support business growth, while managing cost. The company was predominantly operating an internally focused model, which added its own levels of complexity in terms of patching, support, and maintaining large environments. As the company grew, it started to stretch the infrastructure requirements of the IT organization. The IT goals involved cost management, flexibility, and reliability. Predictability in cost and performance were two of the needs identified as critical to support the next wave of growth and business planning. The managed services model offered an opportunity to lock these in as part of service level agreements (SLA).

Landmark Implement, a leading John Deere dealer in the US, was formed through the merger of four equipment dealers and grew through further acquisitions. However, the company had not developed a real IT strategy for integrating these sites into a single operation. Newly acquired offices brought multiple vendors, multiple transport types, and varying levels of network performance. Centralized applications had no consistency and it was difficult to rein in costs as they attempted to stitch things together with technologies such as frame relay over leased lines. Amid this increasing complexity, John Deere also raised its expectations of IT capability among its leading dealers in the Large Ag Sector where Landmark plays. Landmark hired Brian Martin as director of IT to address these related challenges and opportunities.

Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, a luxury hospitality brand under Hilton Worldwide, was facing a significant challenge with its Wi-Fi performance. The hotel's guests, who were largely tech-savvy and had high expectations for the hotel's amenities, were experiencing slow internet speeds. This was particularly problematic for business guests who relied on the internet for conference calls and large file transfers, and vacationers who wanted to upload photos and videos or stream content. The issue was exacerbated during the hotel's busy winter season when occupancy rates were high. The poor Wi-Fi performance led to a drop in customer satisfaction ratings and complaints from customers, which caught the attention of Hilton executives. The hotel's brand, market share, and room rates were at risk.

First Southwest Bank, a regional Colorado bank, was facing a challenge with its existing network. The bank's network was unable to keep up with their business growth, leading to constraints and impeding employees' ability to complete transactions. The network latency among a patchwork of various providers had already impacted customer service and the bank was prepared to expand its reach. The network performance also constrained the development of new programs for loans or online banking tools. The bank's own IT operation was affected by the poor network performance. The failover site for disaster recovery was located closer to the main data center site than they wanted, posing a risk in case of a natural disaster.

Barrow Neurological Associates was facing a significant challenge with their existing T-1 lines. The slow speed of these lines was causing complaints from doctors and patients due to the long time it took to access patient images and records from a centralized office. Additionally, the company was under pressure to implement a bandwidth-hungry electronic medical records (EMR) solution. The company had tested an appliance solution to boost the T-1’s performance, but it was still too slow. VPN solutions were also considered, but these also utilized slow T-1 lines. The company needed a solution that delivered high speed, while being easy to implement and manage.

Sysomos, a Canadian company offering social intelligence solutions, faced the challenge of managing a fast-growing business with shifting compute needs based on customer demand. The company's real-time insights and advanced sentiment analysis tools required constant uptime to monitor social media activity related to their clients' brands. However, the company experienced service outages with their initial colocation vendor, disrupting their business and causing a delay in returning to real-time monitoring. Furthermore, as Sysomos grew and attracted more Fortune 500 customers, the company needed an on-demand capability that could scale up or down as needed.