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A Gateway, Empathy, and Expertise: Datapipe optimizes the cost of customers' workloads running in Azure, and solves compliance challenges

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Datapipe–a global cloud solutions leader

Datapipe already had extensive cloud platform experience when it became the first US-based Microsoft partner to offer Azure via the Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) program. Seen as a pioneer in managed services, and recently recognized by Gartner as a “Leader” in the 2017 Public Cloud Infrastructure MSP Magic Quadrant worldwide based on “Completeness of Vision” and “Ability to Execute,” Datapipe was well-positioned to offer high quality managed cloud solutions. Headquartered in New Jersey, Datapipe has global reach with regional offices in the UK, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Datapipe partners with customers to understand what success looks like from their eyes, then creates a solution tailored to that customer’s needs. It relies on the internal operations team, excellent partner relationships, and extensive Azure CSP knowledge when migrating to the cloud. Customers with Microsoft-based solutions frequently choose Datapipe because of their proven experience and ability to replicate solutions worldwide—a huge cost efficiency. “Datapipe’s key value-add is the complete service model,” said Kevin Hamilton, Datapipe’s Director of Service Delivery Management. “Each customer is offered a custom solution comprising of service management, advanced monitoring, best practice designs incorporating security management, deployment services, change management, and more.”

"Datapipe’s key value-add is the complete service model."

- Kevin Hamilton, Director of Service Delivery Management, Datapipe

Working with Azure CSP has been beneficial to Datapipe, as Azure has some great features that other cloud platforms just don’t offer. Features such as backup, database as a service, and express route global availability are appealing due to Datapipe’s extensive enterprise client base.


Expert partnering

Operationally integrated services such as Alert Logic Threat Manager make it easy for Datapipe to directly take care of provisioning and account setup for the end customer. It can deploy the integrated solution from the Azure marketplace in a matter of hours. Once deployed, Alert Logic provides the ongoing service, invoiced through Datapipe.

Datapipe utilizes Alert Logic Threat Manager to effectively take care of network monitoring, vulnerability scanning, and intrusion detection. Threat Manager also scans VMs in the environment to ensure that they have the right patch level or are configured properly so that assets are not compromised. Additionally, Alert Logic Log Manager collects logs from both VMs and applications running on the VM or PaaS services. These include Azure SQL Database or Azure App Service—a platform for web applications—and underlying Azure activity logs. The logs are collected, reviewed, and retained for the end customer.

Science Logic provides pre-configured best practice monitoring policies, which can be tuned to meet specific customer needs. Science Logic delivers comprehensive visibility and monitoring of the entire IT universe—on-premises and in multiple clouds—from a single console. Science Logic monitors individual servers and Azure, IOs, latency, CPU memory, and additional components that affect performance. By leveraging Science Logic’s automation and monitoring templates to accelerate adoption of new technologies, Datapipe continues to create cost-efficient solutions for customers.

Microsoft Azure uses modern Intel® Xeon® processor technologies. Dv3-series instances are based on the latest generation 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon® E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) processor, and with Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 can go to 3.5 GHz. They are powerful enough for many enterprise-grade applications. Best practice monitoring policies provide insights of the current CPU utilization of different workloads for different customers, and performance can be easily adjusted in the agile way.


A gateway, empathy, and expertise

Datapipe One, the company’s client portal, is a gateway to all the systems Datapipe has developed, including ticketing, monitoring, CMDB, client portal, change management, and incident management. Datapipe created Datapipe One to give clients an interface that looks and feels the same on any platform, in any region. A treasure trove of reporting and metrics systems are layered to ensure customers can tune and optimize their cloud platform to support their business.

Before customers get to Datapipe One, Datapipe’s engineers customize plans for their entire lifecycle. With their fully-managed options, they strive to make it look as easy as 1-2-3. It all begins with a plan derived from application analysis and prioritization to determine a comprehensive and achievable migration strategy. Building ensues with an automated deployment of multi-region environments, including robust security controls, governing models, and performance optimization. Once a customer is up and running and has ongoing monitoring and optimization in place, Datapipe works with them to identify next steps.

Datapipe prides itself on developing a strong understanding of its clients’ business, educating customers about the cloud and migration process, and taking the load off seamlessly. This relationship is embedded in the company’s corporate culture and is a trademarked term, “Operational Empathy®.” Once Datapipe project managers put a solution in place, customers have a dedicated service delivery manager who pulls the resources to dig further if a customer has an issue that needs resolving.

Datapipe achieved its eleventh Microsoft competency in 2017 and now has eight gold and three silver competencies. The company is dedicated not only to having cloud solution offerings, but being experts and truly understanding the products and solutions. In addition, Datapipe is well-versed in HIPAA, turnkey PCI, government certifications including FedRAMP and FISMA, and other technical compliance competencies.