Case Study – PlayPower Scales IT to Enable Design Team—10X Faster with No Downtime

PlayPower designs and manufactures recreation equipment built to be fun and safe for all ages and abilities. PlayPower’s US sales team of nearly 300 representatives works directly with each prospect to determine their needs, and then uses those specifications to create a rendering of each customized playscape. Showing prospects accurate visual renderings early on makes all the difference in keeping prospects engaged during the sales process. The higher the engagement, the more likely it is that the purchase will be completed.

The impressive, high-resolution renderings were critical in generating sales for PlayPower; however, the amount of time it took to create each one was limiting sales potential—and business growth. PlayPower needed a solution that could shorten rendering times without putting a strain on IT resources, budgets, or the company’s infrastructure.

Challenges

Speed & Efficiency
Before partnering with Hostway|HOSTING, each rendering was created in-house on dedicated servers supported by PlayPower’s IT team, and each client rendering took up to 10 hours to complete. Not only did the process put a burden on PlayPower’s servers and staff, but it also meant Sales was limited in how many potential proposals could be produced each week. With faster rendering times, PlayPower could speed up the sales process and create more revenue, faster.

Infrastructure Growth Needs
Seeking a solution to the ongoing rendering challenges, PlayPower was preparing to make a large CAPEX investment to add thirty additional on-premise servers; however, when PlayPower considered the resources necessary to scale and manage that kind of infrastructure, the company realized there was a new challenge at hand—how to add and manage thirty new servers without investing in more IT resources. That’s when PlayPower decided to engage with Hostway|HOSTING to explore more efficient and affordable ways to scale.

Solution

Building a Highly-Available Managed Cloud Infrastructure
Hostway|HOSTING helped PlayPower transform by transitioning from a legacy infrastructure to Hostway|HOSTING’s expert team and a high-powered, scalable private cloud computing farm.

High Availability, Managed 24/7/365
To allow the PlayPower team to focus on day-to-day business needs during the transition, Hostway|HOSTING provided a perfect-uptime, high-performance, virtualized dedicated infrastructure solution that was deployed, built, configured, and supported by Hostway|HOSTING.

Expert Management
For continued support, Hostway|HOSTING managed PlayPower’s constantly growing database of over 100TB of dedicated storage.

Results

Hostway|HOSTING created a powerful managed cloud solution for PlayPower that reduced playscape rendering times from 10 hours to 1 hour without needing to hire additional IT resources or investing in additional CAPEX. Making the transition to the new and improved Hostway|HOSTING infrastructure solution enabled PlayPower to:

• Produce 10x more high-res proposals
• Continue business as usual and not lose any cycles on internal projects
• Provide a seamless growth plan as the company revenues increase

“Leveraging Hostway|HOSTING’s private cloud has been a game-changer for our Sales team. A lot of businesses underestimate how a solid infrastructure can boost their growth potential, but PlayPower’s successful transition is proof that when you give your business teams a great IT solution, they can work faster and achieve revenue goals more quickly.” — Alfred Sobrinho, Vice President of Information Technology at PlayPower, Inc.

“Hostway|HOSTING’s server administration and setup is second to none. This has enabled the proposal group to focus on the imperative parts of the design for our clients. By expanding the speed of our renderings, we can create higher-end projects in less time, enabling us to accomplish more with less.” — Rodney Holland, Sr. Manager Design & Proposals at PlayPower, Inc.