Pro2col Develops Secure Cloud-based Managed File Transfer Solution

revx's UK-based private cloud data centre holds ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and Cyber Essentials certification, and undergoes annual CREST-certified penetration testing.

“revx's security and compliance posture mirrors our own, so we can tick all the boxes and offer CloudMFT to customers that have the most stringent security requirements,” says Chris.

Another factor was the pricing model, which led to Pro2col ruling out public cloud owing to its typically consumption-based model. This would have made it difficult for Pro2col to meet customers' expectations for a fixed cost over a certain period, given the difficulty of accurately predicting transfer volumes.

“The revx private cloud lets us build in enough headroom to minimise overages for our customers,” says Chris.

The ready scalability of the revx private cloud enables Pro2col to offer multiple levels of CloudMFT as standard, with bolt-ons that make it easy to tailor solutions to customers' individual needs. All CloudMFT solutions are configured by experienced Pro2col consultants, which gets customers off to a flying start with what Dave calls “the gold standard” of deployment.

“Because we're putting the whole environment together for the customer, we know it will operate in an optimal way,” he says. “That leads to fewer support tickets being raised, which is better for our customers and for us.”

When a support ticket does get raised for a CloudMFT customer, the Pro2col team can start resolving it fast. They can go into the revx private cloud to check log files, network connectivity and other elements straightaway, with no need to wait for the customer to provide access to their data centre or third-party hosting service. If an infrastructure issue needs handing over to revx for resolution, their support team is at the end of a phone 24/7.

Being alerted to this increase in expenditure, Clearswift initiated an analysis of the public cloud cost structure, with the objective to identify both the reason for the cost increase and a proposed solution that would return the business to the expected monthly cost.

The analysis of the public service highlighted an unknown cost specific to ‘data transfer’ charges incurred through data downloads, which increased the expected monthly cost by up to 300% depending on the amount of data transferred in the period. Clearswift, therefore, looked at options for a cloud-based partner who could deliver the service required with a planned and consistent cost.

zsah understood that using public cloud services would carry hidden connectivity costs and proposed a solution to migrate the Clearswift Update Servers onto zsah infrastructure. The international reach of zsah, with Data Centres covering the EMEA, Americas and Asia Pacific regions, also provided Clearswift with the option of deploying their update services in the regionally appropriate geography.

Predictable, stable costs.

Overall, moving from public cloud to zsah's private cloud for this specific service helped Clearswift achieve its objective of greatly reducing annual cost and achieving predictable and stable costs.