ThinkOn
Simplifying The Smbs Journey To Cloud

The adoption of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies among businesses is on the rise. Today, the motivation for cloud adoption has moved past the monetary and IT benefits and become more about boosting an organization's adaptability and agility. But some organizations that are still in the early phases of shifting their onpremises workload to the cloud are focusing only on saving money on computing and storage. Such a constrained vision often hinders businesses from achieving the true ROI of the cloud as it excludes other critical aspects such as automation of IT processes as well as the implementation and utilization of cloud-native technologies and marketplaces.

Helping such businesses realize the true benefit of cloud migration and increase their ROI is ThinkOn—a Canadian cloud service provider of storage, compute, and networking resources. ThinkOn works with best-in-class technology partners to build secure, fast, and scalable solutions for enterprise application hosting, cloud data management, big data analytics, and flexible disaster recovery-as-a-service. ThinkOn takes a modular approach similar to Lego blocks, offering impactful outcome-based recipes and different cloud services that can be seamlessly integrated depending on organization-specific requirements to simplify the usage of various cloud services for its clients.

“We are the OEM of cloud services to resellers and MSPs. We develop and deliver outcome oriented cloud solutions through our partner network of managed service providers, value-added resellers, and system integrators who integrate, implement, and co-sell our cloud portfolio to support customers' IT transformation," says Craig McLellan, founder and CEO of ThinkOn.

The company's team and partner network focus on simplicity, innovation at speed, complete interoperability, and feedback mechanisms that are critical for meeting all service level agreements (SLAs) for cloud adoption and deployment. This model enables ThinkOn to prioritize the success of its partners by offering reliable, outcome oriented solutions its partners can stand behind and serve their customers with the best cloud oriented services available.

ThinkOn has become a preferred cloud solution provider owing to its ability to always maintain a partner-first mindset, enabling it to combine its superior support services with transparent pricing. This combination assures that ThinkOn's clients never incur any hidden transactions or egress fees. As a result, the cost of any cloud migration or implementation project remains predictably consistent throughout the endeavor.

Bringing a Vision to Fruition

As a proud, data-obsessed Canadian, McLellan wanted to enter the technology market by delivering high-quality services centered on creating sustainable data and cloud solutions.

Early in his endeavor, he recognized that the Canadian marketplace would immensely benefit from a fully integrated service provider instead of niche players focused on specific aspects of cloud adoption. This realization subsequently led to the establishment of ThinkOn. Since then, McLellan's team of data-obsessed experts has helped over 1,800 enterprises and commercial customers make their data more resilient, secure, actionable, and searchable.

Concurrently, to ensure the impactful delivery of its solutions, ThinkOn partners with successful technology vendors across various markets. In each case, ThinkOn selects a partner based on the services' alignment with its existing capabilities to deliver excellent services and ensure the highest probability of success. ThinkOn's partner list includes industry leaders such as Veeam, Dell, Hitachi, and VMware.

"Some people equate data as an asset to oil, but I disagree with that comparison, because if someone steals your oil, you know it," states McLellan.

ThinkOn addresses the rising concern around data security with its status as the first Canadian partner recognized in the VMware Sovereign Cloud program, making it easier for businesses to adopt cutting-edge cloud strategies that ensure round-the-clock data security and compliance. At the highest level of this collaboration with VMware, ThinkOn has been recognized for delivering services in a verifiably sovereign way for Canada's domestic workloads. At the same time, ThinkOn helps customers engage with a trusted national cloud service provider to meet geo-specific requirements around data sovereignty, jurisdictional control, access and integrity, security, compliance, independence, mobility, analytics, and innovation.

”We Are The Oem Of Cloud Services. We Develop And Deliver Modular Cloud Solutions Through Our Partner Network Of Managed Service Providers, Value-Added Resellers, And System Integrators”

Alongside the VMware partnership, ThinkOn also leverages its collaboration with Veeam to offer protection assurances for the underlying infrastructure of Microsoft deployments and help its clients meet their contractual SLAs. ThinkOn extends its guaranteed protections to customer data created on any SaaS platform and allows its clients to protect business-critical data from risk based on their terms.

The extensive partner network also allows ThinkOn to maintain compatibility with all enterprise workloads and provide both cloud, and bare-metal server deployment options. Moreover, ThinkOn's private and hybrid cloud services combine single-tenant control with enhanced security and compliance assurances on dedicated infrastructure. This allows customers to gain the benefits of cloud-like scalability and usagebased pricing while maintaining their investments in existing infrastructure. Customers can also selectively migrate applications and data to the public cloud on an ad hoc basis owing to ThinkOn's holistic compatibility with private and public cloud infrastructure.From a workforce perspective, ThinkOn's team of modernization experts assists in migrating on-prem applications to cloud platforms and enables clients' teams to progress at their own pace.

A Proven Instance of Success

The benefits of partnering with ThinkOn can be best explained through a case study. One of Canada's leading home design companies, Umbra, needed a reliable backup solution and disaster recovery plan to deploy a new Commvault solution. Working closely with the client's internal team, ThinkOn implemented a highavailability solution that ensures disaster recovery in less than four hours. A comprehensive data backup with offsite data vaulting capabilities to protect against ransomware was also developed for the home design market leader. Over the last eight years of this partnership, Umbra has continued to grow through responsive disaster recovery plans and licensing of cloud services.

Thinkon Always Maintains A Partnerfirst Mindset, Which Not Only Results In Superior Support Services But Also Translates To Transparent Pricing Wherein A Client Doesn’t Incur Any Hidden Transactions Or /Egress Fees

In another instance, ThinkOn helped the Native American Cowichan Tribes set up a community electronic medical record (cEMR) system called Mustimuhw. The challenge was making sure Mustimuhw was always available while maintaining compliance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which governs how organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information. Without compliance, the Cowichan community was subject to hefty fines. To resolve this situation, ThinkOn joined hands with its partners, Veeam, and the leading Canadian-managed IT service provider, Clear Concepts, to develop the necessary data protection and backup solution for the cEMR. Under this arrangement, Veeam takes backups and replicates the app data to ThinkOn's cloud to ensure the security of public information, while Clear Concepts takes care of any technical support needed to restore data and run the cEMR app smoothly.

The Path Ahead

With numerous similar success stories under its hood, ThinkOn is now poised to enhance its capabilities even further. The company is doubling down in the area of unstructured data and currently working on a new, post-quantum secure, and searchable indexing system. A typical use case of this indexing system can be a compliance audit wherein a compliance officer working for a midsize insurance company can scan an entire archive without ever actually touching the archive. ThinkOn also ensures high data security for the indexing system through homomorphic encryption. This will give people the ability to safely index data at rest.

Alongside this, ThinkOn is also planning on expanding its footprints and building a completely Canada-native cloud services supply chain. ThinkOn is all set to catalyze a new era of innovative and domestic cloud services in the coming months.

For more information, go to: www.thinkon.com