Founded in 1999, Wisconsin Independent Network (WIN) was created by a consortium of 31 rural phone companies in Wisconsin. Servicing Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, WIN provides fiber-optic networking, consulting and data center services to its members and their customers.
When WIN opened its colocation data center in 2008, they had in-house expertise but found that they needed help in a range of specialized areas. “Our uninterruptible power supply vendor recommended 2NSystems, their regional value-added reseller (VAR), for help with power,” says Matt Yach, senior director-network engineering and operations at WIN. “We quickly discovered that 2NSystems was more than a VAR. They had a wealth of knowledge in a variety of areas and could provide engineering services without a lot of extra cost.”
Project Included
THE CHALLENGE
“Power an cooling were our most critical challenges, but we needed to address other areas as well, including surveillance, archiving, inventory management and more,” says Yach. “And we thought we were going to have to act as integrator to get a lot of different systems working together.”
THE SOLUTION
“We’ve come to view 2NSystems as an extension of our own workforce. They’ve handled a lot of our design, implementation, physical installation, turn-up, and contractor management. They have relationships throughout the industry that they can bring to bear, and being ‘vendor agnostic’ they can help us choose the best technology for each of our needs.
THE RESULT
“Working with 2NSystems we’ve been able to streamline implementation cycles and handle expansions with less disruption. We can do things right the first time, and there’s been significant knowledge transfer so we can take on increasing responsibility for support. Best of all we found that you don’t have to juggle a lot of different partnerships; all you need is the right system integrator.”