“Our Clients Want Out Of The On Premise Hardware Business - No PTFs, Upgrades, Or Backups. Cloud400 Works Great For Our Customers And Made It Easy To Offer A Software as a Service Solution.”
Background
Symmetrical Solutions was founded in 2002 by Bob Dzialowski, Craig Ostovich, and Steve Nevinski to develop software designed to help non-profit member-oriented organizations efficiently and effectively manage their business operations, helping organizations toward growth and increased profitability as a result of improved member service and fundraising capabilities.
Integrated Software For Non Profits Built On IBM i
As Bob Dzialowski explains, “We had all worked separately for different YMCAs. We came together to build our system to serve YMCA software needs all over the country. Our system helped them with membership, child care, instructional programs, sports programs, camp programs and fund raising. There wasn’t a complete integrated system at the time, so we built it on the IBM i.
“Our company designs and develops the software. The back end is RPG and the front end is a JavaScript application framework toolkit running on Apache.”
Original Symmetrical Clients Had Entry Servers
“When we first started,” Bob continues, “the YMCAs had all their own machines. Entry servers would cost $35,000 to $45,000.”
Clients Want Out Of Hardware Business – No PTFs, Upgrades, Backups
“We sense now that the talents of the YMCAs don’t want to do backups, PTFs or upgrades anymore. In-house servers are more expensive and our clients wanted out of the hardware business.”
Symmetrical Solutions Running IBM i Since 1990
“We came to understand that our competition was cloud-based and that our competition offers software solutions that run mostly on network servers. To us, the IBM i has been the most reliable and easy to use server for our software.
“I mean we just love the IBM i. We have been running on it since 1990. DB2 is unbelievable. It’s amazing.”
Search Begins For IBM i Hosting Provider
Faced with growing competition from Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) providers, Symmetrical started to search out IBM i application hosting providers so they could offer their Protivity software on a SAAS basis.
“We thought we could host Protivity ourselves,” Bob recalls. “We soon learned that hosting was more complex than we initially figured when it came to security, upgrade path, things that weren’t protected, a lot of issues like that.”
Finding Cloud400 Excellent For Symmetrical Customers
“Finding Cloud400 was excellent because the Y’s no longer have to buy these expensive servers. Their staffs’ don’t need to hassle with backups, PTFs, or upgrades and they don’t want to pay the annual IBM support costs. Our competition was offering a cloud service, so we had to find a cloud solution for our customers to stay competitive.
“Cloud400 works great for our customers that want a cloud solution instead of an in-house server. And, Cloud400 made it easy for us to offer a Software as a Service solution because we were used to on-premise servers.”
Cloud400 – Best Price, Free 60 Day Trial
“In our search for places to host our system, we found other providers but they were just too expensive for our customers. We found some providers that wanted $3,600 per month. You add that to our software service and there is no way we could sell it.
“Cloud400 stood out because they had the best price and a free 60-day trial period.”
Cloud400 Team Very Competent, Helpful, Easy To Work With
When asked what it was like to work with Cloud400, Bob responded, “The Cloud400 team was technically very competent, helpful and easy to work with. They were great. It works. Pretty simple.
“Cloud400 was also very patient with us as we adapted our SAAS offering to our market. This took longer than we expected because cloud hosting was all new to us.”
Cloud400 Perfect For Symmetrical Customer
“Cloud400 is perfect for our customers because they no longer have to buy a machine, house it, back it up, apply PTFs or have to pay for IBM hardware and software support. Our customers don’t have to know how to manage the hardware. In fact, they pretty much don’t want the hardware at their site anymore.”
Cloud400 Scalable, Affordable
“Another thing I like about Cloud400 is you can add as you need it. Our smaller customers can get by with 0.1 core (1,000 CPW). Maybe a bigger client needs 0.2 to 0.3 cores (2000 – 30000 CPW). The wonderful thing is that our customers don’t have to buy a complete machine with Cloud400 and this makes Cloud400 very affordable.”
Bob Dzialowski Recommends Cloud400
“I would highly recommend Cloud400,” Bob says. “I think it is a great service. Cloud400 has really helped us close more business and we look forward to a long relationship with your company.”