Desktop-as-a-Service provider leverages Equinix Metal™ to enable remote workforces
By leveraging VMware on automated bare metal, Dizzion reduced time to market by 84 percent, expanded globally and improved connectivity to Azure and AWS
Ending 2019 with a three-year revenue surge of 195 percent and a handful of industry plaudits, Dizzion (rhymes with “vision”) is on a roll. The Denver-based firm has been a leader in the managed Desktop as a Service (DaaS) space since its founding in 2011—even with heavyweights entering the DaaS market along the way.
Dizzion delivers virtual desktops and other cloud platforms to global customers, including business process outsourcers (BPO), healthcare and financial services, educational institutions, and other compliance-conscious verticals such as legal and insurance. Enterprise and outsourced contact center agent desktops are the most frequently deployed use cases.
From Commodity to Craft
Though not a completely new concept at the time, the virtual workplace was still in the early stages of growth when Dizzion first launched.
“Since our founding, we’ve helped clients meet complex business needs head-on. This experience has been baked into our platform, enabling a fast-multiplying array of remote employers to ‘control their own destiny’ with end-user computing services, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) expertise, and ‘ultra-scalable cloud platforms built for performance’,” says Manny Ladis, company co-founder and VP of Sales.
Helping customers with digital transformation and rapid provisioning, however, necessitated a rethink of their own infrastructure. “We had a vision of moving out of the business of managing our own infrastructure in the cloud and focusing more on growing and scaling the business.”
“Customers choose Dizzion managed DaaS because they need a high-performance, compliant desktop solution for their remote workforce. Commodity desktops won’t suffice. If a telemedicine doctor, for example, is unable to provide life-saving information to the team on the other side, there are serious ramifications. The closer we get to the users, the more we optimize the end-user environment, and the more empowered each remote worker becomes to deliver maximum success.”
Digital Transformation is a Moving Target
Equinix Metal’s automated bare metal helps unlock the power of Dizzion’s proprietary architecture. Its interconnected approach provides a stable and robust infrastructure substrate that allows Dizzion to be agile in times of unpredictable utilization such as local seasonal spikes or global disaster scenarios like the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially true when rapid spin-up is needed.
“With Equinix Metal, we have the ability to respond faster to customer needs, delivering near instantly once we get the request,” says Dizzion CTO and co-founder Robert Green.
To avoid the latency typically experienced with virtualization, Dizzion opted to leverage Equinix Metal’s rapid public cloud deployment capabilities to implement VMware across their single-tenant, dedicated global infrastructure. Equinix Metal’s neutral platform gave Dizzion the flexibility to use VMware—as well as any other tool of choice—to fully manage their customers’ digital experience.
“We evaluated other providers and determined that Equinix Metal’s bare metal offering was a better solution for Dizzion,” Green says. “With Equinix Metal, we can leverage our proprietary Cloud Orchestration Service Management Operations System (COSMOS), developed over the past seven years, without extensive modification to automate and manage our private cloud infrastructure. This saves us valuable time and money.”
Optimizing for Long-term Business Growth, Success
“Having full control of the entire software stack allows us to fine-tune for performance, control updates, and prevent unplanned changes that can cause havoc in the environment,” Green says. “Had we chosen an alternate path, we would have had to continue to build out our private cloud colo footprint and over-spend for infrastructure to support seasonal customer growth. Additionally, we would have had to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars and months of work to extend COSMOS to public cloud constructs.”
With Equinix Metal, Dizzion reduced its server infrastructure spend for seasonal workloads by 70%, making growth much more manageable. Additionally, by moving from their own colocation to Equinix Metal, Dizzion was able to:
- Streamline the process for opening new locations from 3 months down to 2 weeks, enabling global expansion
- Achieve faster direct connections to Azure and AWS, lowering latency issues
- Reduce costs of deploying a new point of presence by 45%.
Dizzion is a global provider and many of their contact center customers are growing multinationals. With Equinix Metal—especially now that it is part of Equinix—Dizzion has an ideal partner. Together, Equinix Metal share a vision for edge computing that powers, protects, and connects the digital world. That powerful combination allows organizations like Dizzion to expand their global reach through 210 data centers, leveraging a rich ecosystem of 1,800 networks, 20,000 developers, and 356,000 interconnections.
“Looking ahead, having the entire Equinix datacenter colocation ecosystem and network available to us along with Equinix Metal is very exciting,” Green says. “Particularly appealing to us is the speed-to-market potential and interconnection opportunities their combined platforms provide.”
