**Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from the Digital Issue, “ Profiting From Private Cloud Services,” which is available for download from Channel Partners Cloud Insights.**

By J.R. Cook

Payrolling, a 15-year-old company located near Mexico City, has become a recognized leader in providing payroll and human resources consulting services in Mexico. Many of Payrolling’s clients  especially in the financial services sector  are subject to security audits which require an examination of Payrolling’s practices several times a year.

Challenge

Clients and auditors increasingly demanded a higher level of security from Payrolling. With each request, Payrolling either went back to its outsourced data center provider to add more services or had to find support elsewhere.

Ultimately, the data center was unable to keep pace with growing demands. “The data center we worked with was one of the best in Mexico, but they didn’t meet our standards,” said Maria Isabel Bueno, operations director. “Our banking clients in particular were looking for a higher level of security, so we had to find another provider.”

Solution

Payrolling searched for an American data center that complied with the company’s extensive security requirements. Rapid response from a knowledgeable team and a custom solution that meets Payrolling’s current and future security demands made EarthLink Business stand out from the other candidates. “From the first call to EarthLink, the service was absolutely impressive. The quality and velocity of their response went well beyond any other provider,” Bueno said.

An EarthLink team met with Payrolling to understand its specific requirements and delivered a custom private cloud solution. “EarthLink was the only data center to offer everything we needed in one solution,” Bueno said. Payrolling now hosts the majority of its data center IT services with EarthLink.

Due to the high security, privacy and compliance needs of Payrolling’s clients, dedicated servers are used for business applications, and a dedicated hosted email platform with email security and encryption is in place.

To protect Payrolling’s infrastructure, EarthLink evaluated multiple options and implemented a custom firewall as part of its Hosted Network Security service to create a private cloud. EarthLink’s fully managed Hosted Network Security service protects Payrolling from inbound and outbound security threats and provides 24/7/365 monitoring.

To support its complete virtualized private cloud infrastructure, Payrolling chose EarthLink’s Platinum Managed Hosting Service. “Payroll is a critical process for our clients and it has to go out on time,” said Marcelo Ahuerma, IT and implementation manager. “With Platinum Managed Services, we have peace-of-mind we’ll get immediate response and resolution if there’s a problem.”

When a client’s audit demanded quarterly external and annual internal vulnerability assessments, Payrolling also engaged EarthLink. Previously, Payrolling did not have a provider with these capabilities.

Results

EarthLink helped Payrolling elevate its security to meet client and auditor demands with a single data center provider. Payrolling now complies with auditor demands from the start, rather than adding security services upon request, creating a much smoother audit process. When auditors have questions, EarthLink can answer them.

“We are at the upper end of the security level required by our clients and auditors,” Ahuerma said. “Now, we find that we’re meeting the expectations of audits from the beginning, instead of having to add security afterward. Our initial planning with EarthLink was so complete, everything was covered.”

Payrolling can grow and scale easily, giving prospective clients the confidence to trust in their services. “Moving our data center to EarthLink was the best business decision we have made,” Ahuerma said. “We are better prepared to grow and can more effectively compete for clients who demand the highest level of security available. We are closing several deals now and clients can trust us to protect their data.”

J.R. Cook is vice president of sales for the partner channel at

EarthLink Business

, which offers both telecom and IT services. He has almost 15 years of experience managing channel partner relationships with companies including New Edge Networks, TelePacific and Mpower.


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