Logicworks is a leading cloud computing and managed hosting provider headquartered in New York City, specializing in high-availability public, private and hybrid cloud solutions. Their customers include large media, advertising, and e-commerce businesses, as well as companies offering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions across healthcare and financial services sectors.

The challenge: serving diverse customer cloud computing needs

To maintain a competitive position in the marketplace, Logicworks was constantly expanding its services to keep up with growing demand. Customers were looking for the right mix of infrastructure to meet their specific business requirements. Customers also needed the ability to dynamically scale their web properties and applications based on variable need. Media companies, for example, utilize private cloud services for routine operations while simultaneously leveraging the public cloud to self-provision infrastructure services for burst capacity, helping them handle the sudden spikes in traffic following a breaking story. Logicworks was looking for a cloud solution that could provide them the flexibility to address customer requirements, including rapid scalability for growing SaaS providers, seasonal capacity for e-commerce companies and ad hoc development environments for companies preparing new products for launch. “In today’s world, customers need to be able to choose the right infrastructure solution for their specific business and application type,” says Ken Ziegler, CEO of Logicworks. “To be competitive, we have to offer a flexible range of cloud and hosting services on both dedicated and multi-tenant infrastructure.”

The solution: a single platform for private and public clouds

As an answer to increasing customer demand around flexibility, manageability and control, Logicworks chose Citrix CloudPlatform to offer two versions of cloud services from a single solution. Hosted private cloud services are delivered through dedicated infrastructure. Customers can also opt for a variable consumption model with self-service access to hosted public cloud services delivered through a multi-tenant infrastructure. “In addition to offering private clouds that an enterprise can split among business units, we are also able to build a multi-tenant cloud solution that can serve many different customers,” says Ziegler. “With features like enterprise-friendly VLAN isolation, port forwarding, VPN and built-in load balancing, choosing Citrix CloudPlatform was a no-brainer for us. Citrix clearly understands the challenges facing a cloud service provider.”

Key benefit: providing the right value for each customer

“CloudPlatform helps us fulfill our mission of ‘The Cloud Your Way,” says Ziegler. Logicworks can deploy CloudPlatform on a private basis for clients that want dedicated infrastructure, then allow them to manage their usage of Logicworks public cloud services through ‘a single pane of glass’. Ziegler also cites the solution’s open nature and multi-hypervisor support as key advantages. “If a customer wants to run some apps on Citrix XenServer, another set of apps on VMware, CloudPlatform lets us accomplish that. Similarly, if they want to run some assets on an Amazon cloud in addition to their Logicworks private cloud, we’ll be able to give them a simple way to manage them together and move virtual machines from one cloud to the other. Capabilities such as these make us that much more valuable to our customers.”

Key benefit: gaining capabilities through partner ecosystems

CloudPlatform is based on the leading, open source Apache CloudStack project. The combination of Citrix in-house engineering and thousands of Apache community members and developers is driving feature-rich capabilities making it the leading platform to build, manage and deliver cloud services. “The rapid evolution of CloudPlatform eliminates the need for us to build our own cloud orchestration platform or capabilities such as software-defined networking and object storage. We can rely on Citrix to provide a platform that will scale well with the industry as it evolves”, says Ziegler. The flexibility and open architecture of CloudPlatform also allows Logicworks to work with other companies in the ecosystem to integrate additional value added services and explore joint solutions and customers. “We rely on the best partners in the business to help us complete our solution,” Ziegler goes on to say. This enables Logicworks to offer differentiated technology to customers and enhance their competitive position in the marketplace. Customers benefit from a turnkey solution that allows them to manage their entire infrastructure from a single platform.

Looking ahead

Logicworks anticipates strong growth in the cloud marketplace as it evolves beyond small and medium-sized enterprises to gain broader adoption. Ziegler says, “Over the next five years, we’ll see massive migrations into the public and private cloud universe. Our goal is to have the right suite of products to attract those companies and meet their diverse and increasingly sophisticated needs, including configuration management and automation, globalization, and the flexibility and agility to move between private and public consumption. Our Citrix partnership is a key part of that strategy.”