ConnectEDU provides web-based services to help students manage their education and career paths. They selected NaviSite's Managed Cloud Services to scale resources elastically to match demand, lower costs, improve compliance with regulations, and ensure business continuity. Using the cloud platform reduced ConnectEDU's costs by over 30% and allowed them to quickly deploy new services and scale resources on demand.

1. CASE STUDY ConnectEDU Delivers Web-Based Services with
NaviSite Managed Cloud Services (MCS)
Benefits
BACKGROUND
• Reduce overall costs by
more than 30% Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, ConnectEDU helps 2.5 million high school and college
• Eliminate traditional hard- students manage their education and career paths. Founded in 2002, ConnectEDU offers web-based
ware/software costs with tools that use real-time academic performance data – and access to a network of guidance counsel-
usage-based billing ors, career advisors, student loan officers, admissions officers, and potential employers – to guide
students through a personalized set of college and career options.
• Cut deployment times
from 3 months to 3 weeks
for new services
• Adjust CPU & RAM
THE CHALLENGE
resources per machine, ConnectEDU has been experiencing rapid growth over the past few years, and needed a flexible,
on-demand, to speed cost-effective and efficient IT infrastructure that could accommodate seasonal demand spikes for
performance-related tasks its applications and web-based tools , as well as a technology foundation for longer term customer
• Provide an ideal test growth. ConnectEDU has been a NaviSite customer for more than three years – using its man-
environment for high- aged hosting and database administration services. When NaviSite announced its Managed Cloud
volume simulations Services (MCS), ConnectEDU seized the opportunity to leverage the cloud for applications, such as
• Leverage robust, built-in SuperApp, which simplifies and speeds the entire college application process – from gathering sup-
disaster recovery to assure porting documents, such as letters of recommendations and transcripts, to completing and submit-
business continuity ting the application. ConnectEDU also saw an opportunity to use the cloud for a planned state-by-
state rollout of a new student loan portal.
• Ensure a compliant IT
environment
GOALS
• Scale IT resources to match demand – ConnectEDU required infrastructure that could scale up
and down to support new student applications, meet seasonal demand spikes, and accommo-
date continuing customer growth.
• Speed development and quality assurance (QA) projects – ConnectEDU needed an agile, test,
development, and QA environment.
• Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) – ConnectEDU looked to the cloud as a more cost-efficient
alternative to traditional hosting.
• Comply with regulations – ConnectEDU must comply with federal regulations that govern the
handling of confidential student records and data, as well as standards for handling credit card
data.
• Improve Business Continuity – ConnectEDU required integrated disaster recovery to ensure
that applications and data could be quickly recovered.

2. BUSINESS IMPACT
After evaluating cloud offerings from several other service providers, ConnectEDU selected NaviS-
ite MCS for its enterprise-class capabilities. “With its leading-edge infrastructure, built-in disaster
recovery, and range of services, MCS differentiated itself as a high-performance, enterprise-class
cloud,” said Rick Blaisdell, CTO, ConnectEDU. “It was uniquely suited to our requirements for per-
formance, scalability, availability, and security.”
A Once on NaviSite’s cloud platform, ConnectEDU used AppCenter, a web-based management tool,
to create its IT environments. “We needed to be able to quickly build and tear down develop-
ment and QA environments,” said Blaisdell. “Not only does AppCenter make it easy to create our
IT environments, it allowed us to instantly convert a test environment to a full-blown production
environment with a simple mouse-click. This ‘cloning’ capability was ideal for the staggered, state
by state rollout of our student loan portal.” NaviSite’s cloud platform also enables ConnectEDU to
ratchet CPU and RAM resources up – or down – to complete performance-related tasks in shorter
At-A-Glance time periods.
With MCS, ConnectEDU has reduced its costs by more than 30%. MCS enables ConnectEDU to scale
Founded in 2002 up to meet seasonal demand spikes, and then scale back down when the additional resources
are no longer required. Unlike other cloud providers that charge for each virtual machine (VM) de-
Mission: ConnectEDU’s mission is
ployed, NaviSite employs an innovative billing model based on aggregate resource usage. Custom-
to give every student from every
neighborhood across the country, ers pay only for the resources they actually consume. ConnectEDU has also been able to eliminate
the best opportunity to achieve its traditional hardware and software costs, since these costs are built into the usage-based billing
the dream of a college education
model.
and a promising career.
ConnectEDU handles sensitive student records and data, and must comply with strict federal reg-
Website: www.connectedu.com ulations. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), for example, defines the require-
ments for handling student education records. Since ConnectEDU offers student services for the
Corporate Headquarters:
K-6 market, it must also adhere to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Connect-
600 Atlantic Ave., 20th Floor
Boston, MA 02210 USA
EDU also required a PCI DSS compliant environment. NaviSite worked closely with ConnectEDU to
ensure full compliance with these regulations and standards.
For ConnectEDU, business
continuity was also an
With its leading-edge infrastruc- important consideration.
ture, built-in disaster recovery, and
range of services, MCS differenti-
The cloud platform, built on
ated itself as a high-performance, Cisco’s Unified Computing
enterprise-class cloud. It was System (UCS) and VMware
uniquely suited to our scalability, vSphere is architected for
performance, availability, and
high-availability with dual
security requirements.
fabric interconnects and
server blades dedicated to
Rick Blaisdell high-availability. MCS also
CTO, ConnectEDU
includes built-in disaster
recovery, combined with
a state-of-the-art opera-
tions center and a highly
resilient service delivery
infrastructure spanning
multiple data centers.
POSITIONED FOR CONTINUED GROWTH
400 Minuteman Rd With NaviSite’s flexible, cloud-based infrastructure, ConnectEDU is confident it can handle contin-
Andover, MA 01810 ued business growth, while taking on ambitious development projects. “With this leading-edge
cloud platform, ConnectEDU can concentrate on developing and deploying secured, reliable and
www.navisite.com scalable applications,” said Blaisdell.
877-485-9251
Copyright 2010 NaviSite
Part #CS-CEDU010-001 For more information about NaviSite Managed Cloud Services, or other solutions, please contact a
NaviSite expert at 877-485-9251 or visit us at www.navisite.com.