Cloud services and DRaaS provide a solid foundation

The challenge

The search for a reliable, secure partner to host IT environment

Prior to 2014, Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, a global leader in designing and manufacturing engineered wood products, was managing and operating its IT infrastructure in-house. When the company transitioned to a new enterprise resource planning environment the timing was right to move away from this on-site scenario and enlist the services of a professional cloud services provider. Under the direction of its chief information officer, Louisiana-Pacific began looking for a reliable, secure partner to host its environment.

The search for a provider to support its move from on-premise to the cloud came down to Flexential and another company. Louisiana-Pacific recognized that while both providers were comparable in price, service level, managed security capabilities and partner-enabled operating system administration, Flexential offered a more personal, consultative approach that better aligned with Louisiana-Pacific’s needs and expectations.

 

The solution

Seamless migration keeps productivity on track

While Louisiana-Pacific’s internal IT team is highly seasoned in IT infrastructure, cloud migration was a new endeavor, and the team relied heavily on Flexential for guidance and assistance.

“We were brand new to this and didn’t know all the ins and outs of how it all worked,” says Jim Scott, infrastructure manager at Louisiana-Pacific. “Flexential had a project team and a project manager that helped guide the transition.”

Scott was pleased with the execution of the migration and built a strong relationship with the Flexential team in the process. Critical to the success of the migration was the ability to transfer all of the systems without impacting any of Louisiana-Pacific’s 2,300 users. The Flexential collaborative approach and expertise in cloud migration minimized disruptions and resulted in a seamless transition.

In addition to hosting its environment in the cloud, Louisiana-Pacific also utilizes the Flexential DRaaS to deliver a secure disaster recovery-as-a-service solution. Prior to engaging Flexential for disaster recovery, Louisiana-Pacific restored from tapes and had no failover systems in place to aid in the recovery process. As a result, operations would have come to a standstill while IT rebuilt, restored and, ultimately, turned the service back up after a failure.

“The disaster recovery part of things, for us internally in IT, is way better than what we had,” acknowledges Scott.

The results

Strong customer service and reliability fortify partnership

The majority of the transition was completed by the end of 2016. Nearly all of Louisiana-Pacific’s systems were migrated to the cloud, creating an efficient, business-enabling hybrid IT environment that maximizes performance, privacy and security.

Imperative to Louisiana-Pacific and the success of the partnership is Flexential responsiveness and flexibility. Its ability and willingness to modify requirements, adjust to changing needs and provide the most appropriate resources for a project or issue further empowers the relationship. Louisiana-Pacific is also reaping the benefits associated with backups, disk space and compute capacity within the cloud, alleviating the need for Louisiana-Pacific to purchase, maintain and upgrade the equipment.

Louisiana-Pacific also appreciates the flexibility that Flexential offers to efficiently increase its footprint and add services as needed to meet evolving business demands. Additionally, its flexible billing model further minimizes upfront costs.

The reliability of the Flexential cloud is another positive. While uptime was always good when Louisiana-Pacific managed its infrastructure internally, it continues to meet very high standards under Flexential. With a portfolio of geographically diverse data centers and built-in backup, interconnection and network redundancies, Flexential cloud solutions deliver the accessibility and resilience Louisiana-Pacific’s business requires.

Leveraging added service to maximize value

As Louisiana-Pacific continues to mature into its processes and strengthen its relationship with Flexential, the company expects to receive even more value from the cloud. Flexential leads quarterly business reviews with the company to discuss Louisiana-Pacific’s current and future needs and provide guidance and expertise around additional services that can help support and drive Louisiana-Pacific’s continued business success. This systematic review is an essential element of the partnership and ensures Louisiana-Pacific is leveraging the most impactful services.

“The possibilities that lie ahead are very encouraging,” says Scott.