Case study: Worldstream Elastic Network empowers Deltics solutions

Managed services provider Deltics from Hengelo, the Netherlands, is an IT infrastructure provider specialized in providing managed WAN, LAN, and WiFi network solutions throughout the Netherlands. For newly marketed Backup & Disaster Recovery and Security ‘as-a-service’ solutions, Deltics uses the Worldstream Elastic Network (WEN). The company expects to launch more as-a-service products based on the WEN software-defined platform.

Deltics became a customer of Worldstream in early 2020. Previously, the managed services provider used a data center nearby. Gradually the management came to the conclusion that Deltics itself could no longer make the difference in terms of infrastructure and housing for its managed services. The MSP found an infrastructure partner in Worldstream with the desired level of engineering, certified data centers of its own, and the necessary scalable capacity. The 24x7 on-site presence of Worldstream’s experienced engineers from now on eliminates the need for a data center around the corner.

Worldstream’s infrastructure and housing services are primarily used by Deltics to facilitate its FlexCloud managed services for customers. Deltics then migrated the in-house designed FlexCloud managed backup platform and Office 365 backup services to Worldstream’s data centers in Naaldwijk. When Worldstream introduced the Worldstream Elastic Network (WEN) at the end of 2020, the IT architect and engineers at Deltics immediately saw the many ‘as-a-service’ options that this SDN (software-defined networking) solution could additionally bring them. The initially introduced managed FlexCloud products of Deltics based on WEN are products for Backup & Disaster Recovery.

 The Organization

Deltics counts 70 employees. It has a strong technical orientation, serving customers throughout the Netherlands with IT consultancy and infrastructure services. The company is a specialist in the design, implementation, and maintenance of networks and IT solutions. Besides knowledge of generic IT infrastructures, Deltics is a highly innovative player in the Dutch market in the field of Wifi, LAN, and security solutions. Deltics works closely together with HPE Aruba amongst other partners. The engineers and consultants of Deltics are certified at the very highest HPE Aruba network technology levels, as a result of which Deltics is competing with major European players and involved in fine-tuning the certification exams for HPE Aruba.

Deltics was founded in 2011, but its company history goes back to 1986 through sister company Betagraphics, a supplier of CAD/CAM infrastructures. Betagraphics still provides design, consultancy and consulting services for the CAD/CAM market. With its IT consultancy and project management services, Deltics primarily serves customers within healthcare, manufacturing, utility and education. Clients include renowned parties such as Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital / Dutch Cancer Institute, Maasstad Hospital, Isala, Twence and ROC van Twente. Also, Afriflora Sher Holland, the world’s largest rose grower with a greenhouse complex of about 650 hectares (about 900 soccer fields) is served by Deltics. The worldwide backups of Afriflora Sher Holland are stored in the data centers of Worldstream in Naaldwijk.

The Challenge

Deltics is successful in the project-based delivery of IT services. For several years now, however, the demand from customers who purchase consumer-based IT services from Deltics has been increasing. In other words, the use of IT infrastructure - fully managed - for a fixed monthly fee. When Worldstream sat down with Deltics to talk about the Worldstream Elastic Network (WEN), Deltics’ technical specialists immediately became enthusiastic. They instantly saw the many possibilities to roll out new as-a-service solutions based on WEN. As Deltics is already strong in providing project-based backup & recovery, their first choice was to develop Backup & Disaster Recovery as-a-service based on WEN.

Previously, Deltics provided hardware-driven dual data center solutions for backup & recovery. An expensive insurance premium with a mirror location which was often hardly used. Deltics had to install separate network feeds for connectivity to fallback data center locations. Underneath, the feed then consisted of about 5 to 6 network providers. “This usually made it fairly complex and often not completely transparent,” says Rob Bultman, Commercial Director at Deltics. “A lot of things also had to be organized technically first, which took us quite a lot of engineering time. Moreover, as far as performance was concerned, you didn’t get any guarantees, unless we would pay a lot of money for deploying our own fibers.”

Cost Reduction of 50%

With WEN as the basis for Deltics’ newly introduced FlexCloud Backup & Disaster Recovery solutions, the complexity, performance uncertainties and high costs for backup & disaster recovery are a thing of the past. “For us, WEN is definitely an accelerator for bringing in new customers throughout the Netherlands,” says Bultman.

“Based on WEN, we can now install a plug & play failover data center location in data centers where the underlying Worldstream network backbone has a network PoP,” he says. “Setting up a backup & disaster recovery solution like this has suddenly become very easy. It gives us cloud-oriented flexibility, which is in line with our customers’ consumer-based IT needs. Next to that, in the areas of security, latency and performance, the use of Worldstream’s SDN offers significant added value for our customers - at a cost reduction of about 50 percent.”

Applications: Hybrid IT, IoT, Edge Computing

Deltics is now investigating which applications with the support of WEN are even more commercially interesting for them. “Our technical people are very enthusiastic about the extensive possibilities WEN has to offer,” says Bultman. “It’s now up to us to translate those technical advantages into business benefits for our customers. In the end, that’s where the added value pays off.”

The Worldstream Elastic Network offers a managed services provider like Deltics the opportunity to further expand its on-demand product portfolio. Backup & disaster recovery is the so-called ‘sweet spot’ for Deltics, but much more is possible. You may for example think of the ‘on-demand’ (and pay-per-use) provisioning of bare metal hardware, hypervisors, VMs, cloud instances, twin- and multidata center setups, and cybersecurity solutions. In data centers where the underlying backbone has a network Point-of-Presence (PoP), in the Netherlands and worldwide.

Functionality can be dynamically interconnected through the Worldstream Elastic Network. The SDN solution also provides cloud entry points with secure connections to popular cloud providers, while workloads can be migrated live between different data centers. This makes the software-defined network suitable for today’s applications including hybrid IT, IoT (Internet of Things) and edge computing.

Standardization, Bandwidth and Latency

Transparency and standardization for the underlying infrastructure as well as service scalability are important for ‘as-a-service’ IT solutions, stated Deltics.

“In the front-end, all we do for customers must be truly unique while in the back-end it must be technically possible to deploy things the same way every time,” says Bultman. “Next to that, it should be possible to apply performance warrantees to these services. With WEN we can do it all. The bandwidth and latency values are guaranteed thanks to private connections. The response times are fixed. The SLAs are fixed. It allows us to easily market on-demand solutions against monthly fees. Backup & disaster recovery is the first solution we now offer based on WEN. In this particular case, we use WEN to transfer the data to Worldstream’s flagship data center in Naaldwijk in the extension of a client’s Local Area Network. The customer doesn’t notice any of this. It could also involve another data center though where a physical Worldstream network PoP is present.”

Flexible and Constructive Partner

The choice for Worldstream was an easy one, says Bultman. “With the data center services provider we previously used we had a one-sided relationship. There was no collaboration of any kind. With Worldstream it’s different. They think along with us right down to the management level and are far more flexible. The first discussions already showed it while in the meantime they have proven it. In addition, our portfolios fit seamlessly together. Where one stops, the other continues.”

“In the case of WEN it is very clear where Worldstream’s work ends and the work begins for us as a channel partner,” says Bultman. “For Worldstream as an infrastructure provider it really stops with the delivery of WEN. They provide the rack space, compute, storage, power, physical network and SDN, as well as the uptime guarantees. We get all the space we need to develop our managed services part and the intelligent layer on top with new services for our customers. Yes, it’s a great collaboration we have with Worldstream.”

Client Request Deltics

• Certified data centers in the Netherlands for data compliance reasons
• High-quality server, network, and data center infrastructure
• Experienced engineers on-site for solid engineering management and control
• Infra provider who thinks along flexibly and constructively with its channel partners
• Network infrastructure to roll out on-demand business models

Solution delivered by Worldstream

Worldstream offers managed services provider Deltics certified (and energy efficient) data center space and Infra services with 24x7 experienced engineers on-site. From Worldstream’s flagship data center in Naaldwijk, in the Rotterdam/Den Haag region in the Netherlands, Deltics can serve customers throughout the country. The rack space, server and network setup and uptime guarantees provide a basis for Deltics to house LAN, WiFi and cloud infrastructures for its customers and to achieve reliable backups.

The Worldstream Elastic Network, launched at the end of 2020 and based on Worldstream’s 10Tbit/s global network backbone, enables Deltics to roll out solid managed solutions throughout the Netherlands. As a channel partner, it is clear to Deltics exactly how far Worldstream goes in delivering infrastructural services and where the work for Deltics as an MSP begins.