Managed Hosting Services Help Web Performance Monitoring Solutions Provider Improve Performance, Reliability, and Scalability

An IT-based company whose success is dependent on the performance of its IT infrastructure.

Business Need

Catchpoint was founded in 2008 to provide Web performance monitoring solutions to Internet-dependent businesses, which allow them to quickly analyze and improve speed, reliability, and availability of their Internet services and applications. Catchpoint’s solutions give companies a unique purview into their end-users’ online experiences, allowing them to anticipate, detect, identify the source of – and then solve – performance problems before customers experience them.

As a startup, Catchpoint faced a typical challenge – how to optimize the use of business resources in a way that would ensure not just the survival of a fledgling organization but also its success. Based on their previous experience with managing multiple, globally dispersed data centers, the Catchpoint executive team was acutely aware of the problems associated in dealing with hardware failures, multiple network providers, and capacity planning. They knew these tasks would require a substantial amount of capital expenditures and a 24×7 support staff. Their goal was to minimize these challenges so they could focus on growing their business.

Another goal was to mitigate the challenge of vendor management for pricing and service delivery. Catchpoint wanted a single point of contact for all IT services instead of multiple contacts with multiple vendors in many geographic locations. In addition, they wanted this single vendor to provide these services with a simple pricing model that would be easy to scale and would include 24×7 support and a well-defined service level agreement. To maintain their business focus, reduce costs, and deliver the highest quality of service to their customers, Catchpoint decided to outsource their IT infrastructure needs to a managed services provider.

Solution and Approach

Catchpoint selected Synoptek’s fully managed dedicated hosting services based on their evaluation of Synoptek’s ability to offer rapid deployment, quick response to different situations, a wide and deep technical bench, cost-effectiveness, and ease of management.

Through close collaboration, Catchpoint and Synoptek consultants first developed a technology plan to meet their specialized needs and business goals. This included the definition of the best geo-distributed vantage points for the network nodes used to collect customer Internet data, the computing resources needed, SAN capacity, and system performance requirements. Monitoring and management of these resources and a reporting framework were considered in the design criteria so Catchpoint could maintain visibility into overall system performance.

The solution included Managed Hosting for Catchpoint’s back-end infrastructure in Synoptek’s Las Vegas, Nevada data center plus seven other points of presence (PoPs) for the Catchpoint vantage points and a disaster recovery center in San Jose, California.

All assets are owned by Synoptek and the solution is delivered to Catchpoint entirely as an “Operating Expense” IT service. The scope of services includes Synoptek being responsible for all areas of management – from remote monitoring and management to complete operation of the infrastructure. In addition, customized service level agreements (SLAs) ensure that response times are met when problems occur to maintain the highest level of the system uptime.

Business Results

Mehdi Daoudi, Chief Executive Officer and Founder at Catchpoint outlined multiple benefits that his company has been able to realize using Synoptek’s managed hosting services:

• “Competitive advantage by freeing us to build our product better.”
• “Great solution design using multi-vendor products and multi-technology components to create the level of reliability/ uptime, security, and scalability our customers can appreciate.”
• “Constantly stay on top of latest technology which continually offers us the opportunity to improve performance, reduce cost, and optimize service delivery.”
• “Hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings by Synoptek owning the assets, including best-of-breed infrastructure and extremely knowledgeable engineers, freeing up our capital.”

“The outsourcing of our complete infrastructure to Synoptek has contributed substantially to our ability to concentrate on our core competencies instead of getting bogged down in buying and managing servers, SANs and routers”, said Daoudi. The reasons, he feels, include “the ability to tap into the deep technical bench for design and deployment planning, coupled with the Synoptek team making the extra effort to understand his business to define the right solutions, and then managing them.”

What’s Next for Synoptek and Catchpoint?

Synoptek will continue to work as a seamless extension of Catchpoints IT staff, focusing on improved performance, reliability, and scalability. Synoptek will continue its role as a bank of technical knowledge and resources while delivering measurable results that align with Catchpoint’s business objectives.