Cancer Research Group "Races Ahead" with A Hybrid Solution

Modern businesses must make constant changes to keep up with markets and satisfy their user bases. Sometimes hybrid solutions provide the method to meet user demand and keep business applications humming. Even nonprofits, who are seeking to raise funds for such important activities as cancer research, need to adjust their infrastructure to meet user demand, while still keeping their administrative function running.

Activity on the Cancer Research UK's Race for Life website is cyclical, as publicity builds ahead of each summer’s events. As a result, the charity’s websites are faced with spikes in activity, placing pressure on a hosting resource that was coming to the end of life.

“It became clear with the success of fundraising activities such as Race for Life that the old system was not fit for purpose and needed a major overhaul,” said Mick Briggs, Head of Infrastructure at Cancer Research UK.

In this case study from CenturyLink, we learn how the web application and infrastructure - the essential elements of the Race for Life online service - were migrated to CenturyLink’s dedicated cloud. The cloud product offered a full support service level agreement for the infrastructure and operating systems up to application layer.

Briggs added, “This arrangement means that our customer facing applications are supported by CenturyLink with internal resources being alerted to application and website issues out of hours. Nine-to-five applications such as the CRM system are colocated separately with development and disaster recovery applications colocated in a second CenturyLink data center and sharing the same virtualized infrastructure, which is managed by Cancer Research UK. As a result, we are able to develop and test on our side, without needing dedicated DR infrastructure and without using valuable resources on out of hours maintenance and support of production infrastructure.”

The partnership created a unique dedicated hybrid cloud environment that not only affords Cancer Research UK the 24/7 support it requires, but also gives Cancer Research UK a colocation environment in which the charity can continue development of its own web applications and its disaster recovery.

Download this case study today to learn how Cancer Research UK has saved on IT monitoring and support as a result of adopting CenturyLink’s solution. When critical research and lives are at stake – working with a partner who can meet that high level of demand – is critical for the success of your organization, and everyone who relies on it.