Datacenter provider adopts Citrix NetScaler to offer an effective load-balancing solution to its customers

Ascenty, a Brazilian enterprise, provides large-deployment/high-density colocation, managed hosting, cloud computing, managed services and telecommunications services. The company owns two datacenters located in the state of São Paulo and plans to construct two more. It has a 3,000-kilometer dedicated fiber-optic network, which connects its datacenters and connects to Brazilian telecommunications carriers.  

The Challenge: Offering a load-balancing solution that meets all customer needs

To remain competitive in the datacenter business, Ascenty needed to offer a web-based load-balancing solution that could meet the requirements of enterprises of all sizes. Without such a solution, Ascenty had to spend time and valuable resources to build expensive customized solutions, which could take 60 days to complete.

The Solution: Using Citrix NetScaler to implement an effective load-balancing solution

Because Ascenty was using Citrix XenApp to give customers access to servers hosted in its datacenters, the company naturally turned to Citrix for its load-balancing solution. With Citrix NetScaler, Ascenty customers no longer need to worry about website crashes due to spikes in traffic. By balancing application requests across multiple servers, the load balancer prevents any application server from becoming a single point of failure, thus improving overall application availability and responsiveness.

The deployment, led by Citrix partner Akcela, took only 10 days and went quickly and smoothly, says Marcos Siqueira, head of datacenter services at Ascenty. "During the implementation period, we conducted several tests because we had to adapt NetScaler to an existing infrastructure,” he says. “It is a very complex process; but with all the planning we had done, it ended up being easy, thanks to the high quality of the professionals involved from the presales Citrix team to the Akcela implementation team.” Because NetScaler has been integrated into its Cloud Portal, Ascenty can give customers the ability to administer the solution themselves without asking for help from the company’s IT department.

Key Benefits

Staying competitive by offering a flexible solution

“Our portfolio is more complete following the NetScaler adoption and we now offer what companies need. We are definitely more competitive,” says Siqueira. With its new flexible solution, Ascenty can provide a basic entry-level package and, over time, upsell customers a more complete offering.

Improving business agility and reducing infrastructure costs

Before implementing NetScaler, Ascenty could only offer a customized load-balancing solution that might take months to implement. Now the company can enable the required infrastructure within two days, without additional costs.

Quickly acquiring new customers

Within three months of adopting NetScaler, Ascenty acquired three new customers. Its new load-balancing solution, says Siqueira, will contribute directly to an increase in 2015 revenue.

Looking ahead

Citrix has become a top strategic partner with Ascenty. "We are in talks with Citrix about adding other products to our service portfolio, such as mobility," says Siqueira.