CASE STUDY

Hybrid IT solution provider Flexential aims to simplify solutions for companies trying to solve complex data challenges. They help customers solve hybrid IT challenges, offering high-density computing requirements driven by AI and machine learning and seamlessly interconnecting applications. Flexential’s FlexAnywhere® platform lets customers leverage data center and connectivity needs, professional services, and compute-intensive application technology in one solution.

“Our approach is to go in-depth to understand what’s driving change and challenging our customers,” said James Ochoa, Flexential’s VP of Cloud. “The FlexAnywhere platform powers our solutions, where we can bring the hybrid multi-cloud to our customers, leveraging co-location, cloud, and connectivity to public-cloud providers.”

“We’ve been in the driver’s seat of solving many of our customers’ technology challenges,” Ochoa continued. “But data challenges continue to evolve, with all eyes on storage. Customers struggle to find the right mix to help them keep up with rapid growth and increasing demands.”

Challenge: Flexible active storage with robust data protection

Data is growing at an exponential rate, regularly doubling in size. If left unchecked, unstructured data growth can quickly overwhelm an organization’s infrastructure. This happened time and time again for Ochoa’s customers, which began Flexential’s search for a scalable, repeatable solution.

“One of the key challenges for our customers is gaining better control over and protecting their data,” Ochoa said. “We needed an active storage solution that integrated seamlessly with the FlexAnywhere platform and overcame our customers’ biggest obstacles.”

The FlexAnywhere platform offers multiple cloud storage services that fit production to archive data use cases, spanning file, block, and object data types. “The type of customers we see leveraging archive storage include manufacturing, finance, and enterprise,” he continued. “If you do any business and have any data, you’re a perfect candidate for it. Having all those solutions together on the FlexAnywhere platform makes all the difference to our customers looking for flexibility and efficiency.” Finding the right storage partner to elevate the FlexAnywhere platform’s capabilities was crucial to achieving Flexential’s goals.

Solution: Predictably-priced hot cloud storage with enhanced data protection

A cloud storage offering for Flexential’s FlexAnywhere platform came in the way of leveraging its preexisting partnership with Wasabi.

Through their recently announced bilateral peering agreement, Flexential can offer customers Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage via a private peering pathway through Flexential’s IP Bandwidth. FlexAnywhere platform customers can now access Wasabi directly over a standard internet connection without routing traffic through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), significantly improving their performance and data transfer speeds and reducing latency. Said Ochoa, “Wasabi and Flexential are adding the value of a direct, internal private connection for our FlexAnywhere customers leveraging Wasabi storage for disaster recovery and resiliency. That’s a huge impact.”

In addition, price predictability, data scalability, and security were key differentiators for the FlexAnywhere platform. “All these factors make it a no-brainer for us to partner with Wasabi,” Ochoa said.

Streamlined pricing

Wasabi offers single-tier, high-performing hot cloud storage without added egress fees. “We can’t always control how data grows, but we can control the price point at which it grows,” Ochoa said. “Wasabi’s streamlined pricing lets us know how much it will cost to store data, with straightforward math that helps our customers better understand what they’re committing to,” Ochoa added that price predictability helps, especially for disaster preparedness, by minimizing the effects of unknown elements.

Scalability

Beyond transparent pricing, storage scalability is crucial in managing data growth. “The FlexAnywhere platform makes it easy for companies to grow and scale on the platform, and trusting the platform can scale up and down with them helps our customers feel more confident in their performance,” Ochoa said. “When you pair that up with some of the innovations that Wasabi’s doing, it reconfirms our decision that archive storage with Wasabi is the path forward.”

Data protection with object lock

“More and more companies want the control to lock down or make data immutable, meaning no one can delete anything unless you’re an administrator in the environment,” Ochoa said. “Wasabi Object Lock gives our customers that control and confidence.”