Introducing the largest, debt-free, privately held, data centre services provider in the Midwest
US Signal helps companies transform their IT operations to meet constantly evolving technology and business needs. With their array of industry-leading data centre technologies, cloud solutions and managed services all powered by their own robust, secure network, US Signal can go beyond typical service offerings to fulfil even the most unique or complex technical requirements.
Delivering a variety of hosting, colocation and cloud-based services to organisations in the Michigan region, US Signal’s services exist as an alternative to public cloud vendors such as Amazon AWS. A key differentiator that sets them apart from typical public cloud providers is the fact that they don’t charge egress fees, making them an appealing choice for customers who want to retain control over their data.
With growth, comes challenges
Like any corporation experiencing rapid expansion of their customer base, US Signal saw a pressing need to scale their infrastructure.This was also their opportunity to reassess their Ceph-powered software-defined storage solution that had been in place since 2012, against their growing demands and future prospects.
In the process, US Signal unearthed several requirements for their future growth:
- More effective cluster management across multiple, disconnected sites
- Better resilience enabling stringent SLA adherence
- Improved integration with services billing
- More energy efficient storage appliances
- Superior support for zero downtime migration
- Interoperability with existing Ceph environment
The next step: why US Signal chose SoftIron
What US Signal needed was to implement a seamless and future-proofed growth strategy plan that accommodated customer expectations in delivery and maintained their reputation as a driver of digital transformation in a highly competitive and mission-critical environment – with no room for failure.
In SoftIron, US Signal discovered a partner that understood their challenges and goals, providing value over and above the hardware and software component to help them maximise their advantages. SoftIron’s data storage platform provided the ideal foundation needed to scale up and out, with its flexible ability to support block, file and object storage along with multi-protocol environments – quickly proving to US Signal that it was an outstanding solution to support w broad variety of storage needs, at any scale.
As US Signal’s Research and Development Engineer Berant Lemmenes said;
“We’ve been working with Ceph for a long time, and it’s rare that a vendor comes along who is able to genuinely improve the experience. SoftIron has certainly demonstrated the commitment to their vision to simplify and enable the adoption of Ceph at scale, and we’ve reaped the benefits of their solution already, allowing us to seamlessly expand and improve efficiencies across the board.”
For any organisations that provide Storage As A Service (STaaS), including disaster recovery and archive use cases, SoftIron’s hyper-efficient HyperDrive makes secure, flexible scale achievable, allowing organisations to adapt their solution as they need.
And just like US Signal, SoftIron’s solution involves no lock-in contracts.
For more details on how US Signal achieved scale and efficiency with our storage platform, read the full US Signal case study.
