Background

Stonetree Network Solutions specializes in bringing the "Fortune 100" technology experience to small and medium-sized businesses in the Denver, Colorado area. Innovative offerings include their popular STONEMail service for spam-free, virus-free, HIPAA/PCI/SOX-compliant secure email – all without the overhead expense of an in-house email solution. Clients can access their email the same way they would with a traditional email server without the worry of server configuration, backup, retention, archives, or upgrades.

Other Stonetree services include outsourced IT, disaster recovery, electronic backup, hosted email solution, project implementations, wireless installation and support, and virus scans and malware protection for a client base as diverse as medical offices, engineering firms, property managers, nonprofit organizations and more.

'Blended' Business Model

In order to make good on the kind of quality services they were committed to delivering, Stonetree owners Dan and Andrea Mullen chose to partner with technology providers who Dan Mullen calls "the best of the best." Their business relies on a combination of smart technologies that include the Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Server 2008 R2 platform, HP ProLiant Servers, VMWare, and WatchGuard network security solutions.

Mullen does not refer to his company as a managed services provider (MSP). "We offer 'blended services.' By that I mean a combination of some of the services an MSP would provide, but with the personal on-site touch that lets the clients actually know who we are. We become an integral part of their team, and it doesn't cost them any more for the personal service. We charge a flat rate with no additional fees for after-hours or emergency support."

Differentiating with Old-Fashion Customer Service

Mullen believes the cost-per-month/per-device service model isn't going to last. When providers only offer behind-the-scenes remote access services it brings product differentiation solely down to price. "Someone is always going to beat you on price," Mullen reflected. "Someone can always offer to charge a dollar or two less per device. At Stonetree, we work on client retention. We want to make sure that they stay with us so that we have a viable business. We're dedicated to being the client's advocate for the long term by providing personal service, backed by technical expertise and excellent products."

"And we make it cost-effective," Mullen continued. "If you've already decided that you're going to pay an IT person between $60,000 and $100,000 a year, our service can shave that cost down for the SMB market to 20%, 40%, even 60% of what they would normally pay to have somebody on staff. We give them all the benefits of an on-site IT person, with only a fraction of the overhead. There's definitely no lack of folks with technical skills, so it's not a matter of being technical enough to do the work. The big deal is getting clients to trust you to use those skills in their best interests."

Partnering with WatchGuard

Stonetree chose WatchGuard network security solutions for their STONEMail email service. "We looked at all the other competitors in this space, including Cisco and Juniper, and the WatchGuard boxes were very easy to manage, easy to support, easy to order. WatchGuard has responded to client needs and the needs of the industry in a way that is timely and effective. They have kept up with the industry, with us, and the needs of our clients."

Stonetree relies on a WatchGuard XTM 510 for firewall and VPN, connected to a 40 GB fiber backbone to utilize the high performance capabilities of the 510. "We particularly like the flexibility of the XTM centralized management console," said Mullen. "Instead of going to each of our clients individually with changes, we can implement one-touch configuration or firmware updates to all of our managed WatchGuard devices– saving our clients money and us a great deal of time."

The WatchGuard Quarantine Management Server (QMS) is a key component of the STONEMail hosted email service. Because Stonetree has such a variety of clients, they need the flexibility of the QMS to handle client needs in diverse environments. "We are able to set it up based on domain, organization, user and group, so all clients have their own spam quarantine. They have the ability to control how their quarantined messages are handled, just as if they had a QMS at their own location."

There's no sitting still in the hosted services business. "We constantly evaluate – ask ourselves if this is still the right thing for our clients and time and time again WatchGuard has proven to be the best choice. You walk into our collocation facilities and there are a lot of red boxes sitting there. We have 100% confidence that we are taking care of our clients in the best way possible."

For example, Mullen describes one of the features he relies on in the WatchGuard XCS 170, which has powerful built-in data loss prevention capabilities to prevent sensitive data leaving the network. "If somebody were to send credit card information unencrypted," he said, "the WatchGuard XCS solution 'has their back' on the hardware side. As it scans out-bound email content, it would be able to detect that the email was not encrypted but should have been, and encrypt it automatically to keep the customer safe and in compliance."

Yes, but Does It Scale?

Because Stonetree is always looking to the future, scalability is an important concern. According to Stonetree VP Andrea Mullen, "We typically recommend that the client buy something just a little bigger that we can extend past the three to five year time frame of capital expense. We always assume that our clients' businesses are going to grow and double or triple in size. We want to protect their investment.

"That being said, we take that same model to our Exchange host. With the WatchGuard platform, we know we can scale as our business gets more popular and people understand what it does and how it can benefit their business. We're confident that we can continue to scale those systems and not worry that we're going to hit a theoretic limitation."

Measuring Success

Since technical expertise isn't enough in the competitive world of hosted services, Stonetree couples their expertise with an unflinching commitment to getting the job done for their clients. The satisfaction can be enormous. Dan Mullen relates the story of being brought in to help a local medical office migrate off a dying server.

"The server was about seven years old and one drive from each RAID array was dead. They were on the edge and close to losing all of their data. The server was also out of space and they had no equipment locally that could be used for backup to save themselves. With this server on its last breath, we made the commitment to move them quickly.

"Basically, we had to hard convert them because we had to get them into the cloud immediately. Literally, we were taking doctors' mail, putting it on external drives and physically driving it down to our collocation station to copy it to the server and remote it in to the WatchGuard product. We were using our STONEMail service, which relies on Microsoft Exchange 2010, the WatchGuard XTM 510 and XCS 170, with a WatchGuard Quarantine Management Server 500.

"We had 36 hours with two guys manning the keyboards at all times to create accounts on the Exchange and move the mail to the new system for this 30-doctor, 150-user practice – and we did it. No problems. That's a success story for the client, for WatchGuard, and for Stonetree."

To learn more about Stonetree Network Security Solutions and their STONEMail Email Service for SMBs, visit www.istonetree.com.

For more information on WatchGuard network security solutions, visit www.watchguard.com.

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