Migrating to the Alternative Cloud

Michael Stuckey, Head of Support Development at Infomedia, describes why Infomedia decided to partner with Linode (now Akamai). “Our longevity as a company is due to our commitment to innovation, both in terms of design and underlying technology, so we need a hosting partner that supports that and enables us to move quickly,” he said. “We’ve had to part ways with numerous hosting companies that just couldn’t keep up with our pace. The relationship always starts well, but then we encounter growing pains and discover we cannot move as quickly as we would like.”

Daniel Weaver, Web Developer and System Administrator at Infomedia, added, “At the end of the day, Infomedia is the one responsible to our clients for performance and reliability, so we’re seeking cloud providers that can give us more scalability, more control, more access, and less downtime. The other providers we’ve been with have always claimed 99.9% uptime, and never delivered on that promise.”

Infomedia tested the waters with Akamai's cloud computing services (formerly Linode) by hosting its development server and a handful of larger clients on Akamai for a couple of years. “When we’ve done server migrations in the past, it was a tremendous amount of work, and the process has not been without laws, so we had concerns, especially about downtime,” admitted Stuckey. “We’ve also had subdomains slip through the cracks in the past, and we didn’t want to have things fall off again.”

A smooth transition

Pleased with Akamai’s customer service and reliable performance, Infomedia decided to expand the relationship, migrating 150 customer websites with help from Akamai Professional Services.

“As it turns out, this migration with Linode [now Akamai] was different from any other migration that we’ve ever done,” continued Weaver. “I attribute that to the fact that we had a customer success manager involved in the process with us from day one. Although we chose to stay involved in the process, we certainly could have taken a completely hands-off approach if we had wanted to. [They] made this migration easy, and the job was completed smoothly in 90 days, start to finish.”

Relationship-based service

In addition to managing the migration, Akamai has provided additional value to Infomedia through its relationship-based service approach.

“Linode [now Akamai] offers something truly unique these days: a real person who answers the phone!” said Stuckey. ”You can have a conversation with real people who are generous enough to give you the keys to the kingdom if that’s what you want, but the team is also there with a personable, no-arrogance service approach to help when you need it. I also love that they don’t pretend to have answers when they don’t. They are humble enough to admit when they don’t know, and then they promptly figure it out.”

Great performance at a great price

Another significant value is Akamai’s price. “When we started looking at the numbers, we quickly realized that we could save so much money in the long run by going with [Akamai],” said Stuckey. And even in the short term, it was a no-brainer from a price-performance perspective. For instance, Infomedia could get two dedicated servers up and running for less than the cost of one dedicated server with other service providers.

“When we looked at the amount of support that Linode [now Akamai] gives, the response time, the uptime, the price, it left us asking, ‘Could this be real?’” said Stuckey. “We’re very pleased to say that it is and that we’re extremely happy to have [them] as a hosting provider for Infomedia.”

About Infomedia

Infomedia is a full-service web design and digital marketing company based in Birmingham, Alabama, providing website design and hosting services since 1994. The company manages a growing list of 400–500 websites. Rather than hosting its own servers on-premises, Infomedia partners with third-party cloud providers.