Case Study
Progressive Data Services is a data company that provides direct marketing services, Big Data and software development services to companies ranging in size from small startups to Fortune 500 global enterprises. Based in Southfield, Michigan, the company is headed by Sean Morse and Brian Allen and was founded in 2013 as a successor company to Burnett Direct.
In 2010, a Fortune 500 company contracted Progressive Data, still operating as Burnett Direct at the time, to develop the UI and backend processes of a turnkey marketing web application. In order to make this project successful, Brian and Sean realized that they needed to outsource their IT needs to a trusted provider who was equipped to handle the necessary security controls and backup requirements their new client had.
“We are absolutely a security-minded company,” Sean said. “We have to maintain a culture of security. There’s no way around it. We wanted a local provider that we were comfortable with and reflected the same value of security that we have.”
After researching several national and local providers, Progressive Data selected OTAVA as their hosted IT partner of choice. Although they started with a few managed dedicated servers, they were so comfortable with OTAVA that they migrated their entire client infrastructure to a dedicated private cloud in 2016. They also use Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) with a 1-hour RPO to protect a large financial service company’s mission-critical systems.
For both Brian and Sean, OTAVA’s dedicated support, culture of security and compliance, and level of expertise has put them at ease.
“The comfort level we had with OTAVA was instantaneous,” Brian said. “Their knowledge and expertise, ability to communicate and to convey some complex concepts and terminology into simple terms was very reassuring.”
“It’s great that we can pass along the open nature that OTAVA has with us to our clients,” Sean added. “Our auditors are consistently comfortable with us, and that’s because OTAVA has the right culture of openness and compliance. Because we’re hosted at OTAVA, we can just pass along those compliances like SOC 2 to our clients, which has definitely given us an edge.”
Progressive Data’s private cloud is fully monitored and managed by OTAVA staff and includes services such as patch management and first responder remediation to proactively resolve any issues that arise. With DRaaS, Progressive Data’s recovery site can be spun up as a warm site within minutes if need be. Both Brian and Sean are confident that if their production environment is down for any reason, they can quickly recover with minimal time lost.
“We’re happy that disaster recovery is one of those things that OTAVA really understands,” Sean said. “If we’re down, money is flying out of our bank accounts. It’s really important that we stay up. And OTAVA gets that.”
As Progressive Data Services looks to the future, scalability is key. Sean and Brian are especially excited about the fact that they can easily scale their business with OTAVA and not have to make additional capital expenditures. No matter what their future business demands are, they are confident they can rely on OTAVA to provide the same steady support they’ve always received.
“The scalability is a phone call away,” Sean said. “We can call them up and say, ‘I need you to spin up a new server,’ and they’ll do it.”
“The level of service across the board from OTAVA has been nothing short of exceptional,” Brian added. “It’s only getting better and better as the years go along. Whenever we pick up the phone, someone is immediately available to answer questions.”
With OTAVA, Progressive Data Services found the true IT partner they needed. They can rest assured that OTAVA has the knowledge, experts and equipment to keep their clients’ mission-critical systems and sensitive data secure, and they have peace of mind knowing their environment is monitored every hour by OTAVA’s knowledgeable staff. This ensures that Progressive Data can focus on providing direct marketing and application development services, putting them in a better position to compete directly with companies many times their size.
