Property management company gains cloud stability and IT productivity

Meeting the demands of commercial real estate tenets requires one thing— stability. When IT executives at a major property management company began taking a cloud-first approach to digital transformation, their goal was to reap the full benefits of the cloud without jeopardizing the company’s highly dependable services. After all, the company owns and manages thousands of properties and has hundreds of employees and contractors relying on them.

With a lean IT department, three data centers, and lots of hardware and vendors to manage, executives recognized their cloud migration would be a challenging journey. However, they also saw the opportunity to simplify their technology footprint while saving time and money. Focused on service optimization, voice communications, network stability, and security, the IT team didn’t want to build solutions from scratch. Instead, they wanted a managed service.

“Everything was in-house, so we were spending a lot of time troubleshooting problems,” explained the V.P. of IT. “We needed to use more cloud services rather than building more internal data centers.”

With a comprehensive selection criteria in hand, and the team evaluated multiple providers, ultimately deciding on Masergy. “We found Masergy to be a good fit for us, because it has a high-performance global network and we could get the attention we needed—unlike with large telecommunication providers. The network availability was very important to us, as was the customer experience and the converged solutions,” he said.

SD-WAN and UCaaS in one managed service

The company leveraged Masergy’s Managed SD-WAN Secure service to improve the availability of their network, but the solution also empowers the entire organization with advanced communications tools using Masergy’s Unified Communications as Service (UCaaS). Service level agreements are integral to the company’s requirements, and SD-WAN application-based routing prioritizes network bandwidth for superior application performance. Plus, Masergy’s direct interconnections to the Microsoft Azure® cloud provide service level agreements (SLAs) of 100% “Anyone can provide cloud phone services—the bigger part of it is the quality of service. When a single company provides SD-WAN, UCaaS, and management, quality is assured.” VP of IT Property management company gains cloud stability and IT productivity CASE STUDY Managed SD-WAN Secure Multi-Cloud Connectivity Unified Communications Copyright ©2021 Masergy. All rights reserved. masergy.com availability to their cloud environment. On-demand controls also provide the flexibility to make adjustments with ease. Meanwhile, the solution allows offices to bring their own internet services. IT leaders paired SD-WAN and UCaaS together to ensure industry-leading user experiences for cloud telephony. Best of all, Masergy monitors and manages these services 24/7. “Anyone can provide cloud phone services—the bigger part of it is the quality of service. When a single company provides SD-WAN, UCaaS, and management, quality is assured,” explained the V.P. of IT.

IT without the complexity

With a single platform for data, voice, and internet services, the company now has one partner delivering on more of its needs, making IT management less complicated. Managers enjoy the increased visibility, control, and security of the solution. Plus, decommissioning hardware has reduced operational costs and power consumption, which is also important. “With Masergy, we eliminated most of our data centers. We are no longer in the business of going through all the firewall rules every day or updating the firmware on all these devices. We are focused on our core business,” he said.

Reliable services come with flexibility

While productivity gains are significant, improvements in reliability and agility are the biggest benefits. Before, the company had experienced network outages over the years, but now the network environment is a lot more stable. Automatic failover and multiple connections reduced downtime. From a single dashboard, the company can manage connectivity across their enterprise and connect with multiple cloud platforms with greater speed and reliability. In fact, with Masergy’s SLAs, IT leaders can create and control a predictable cloud application experience.

Recognized results

• Enabled a high-performance, cloud-first strategy
• Resolved application performance issues
• Converged services to reduce IT costs
• Improved productivity for the IT team
• Strengthened business continuity

Resilient infrastructure services are the foundation of business continuity, and annual disaster recovery testing, including complete failovers, verify the stability of the company’s multi-cloud environment. “We do a lot more Disaster Recovery (DR) testing nowadays, and our failovers have gone very well every time,” explained the V.P. of IT.

Partnership when it matters most

The 2020 pandemic served as another test of the company network, and again the team found it resilient under pressure. When 90% of employees started working from home, the IT team had the flexibility needed to enable remote work. Today, employees have all the same technology benefits no matter where they are located. “In March 2020, the first thing we did was increase our bandwidth and VPN licenses, and it was a quick turnaround with Masergy. We didn’t have to wait two weeks. It was seamless—even when we needed to reroute some traffic directly to the internet and ensure applications were getting the right bandwidth,” he said. Best of all, Masergy is a good cultural fit for the company, even helping the internal IT team to better integrate solutions from their other partners. “One thing we like about Masergy is that our account manager is always available to take our calls and escalation is easy. Multiple Masergy engineers don’t just do what we ask, they work as part of our team.”