Experience reliable IT service from a provider focused on support, community, and sustainability: Green House Data

Green House Data was founded in 2007 with a simple mission: provide the high-availability and raw power needed for critical business infrastructure while remaining a transparent, responsibly run company.

 Across eight data center locations spanning the country and our Cheyenne, Wyoming headquarters, Green House Data imbues our trademark data center services with exceptional support, while powering it all with renewable energy.

 The day-to-day business at Green House Data is focused on three commitments:

 Commitment To Customers: When we say “Built right. Just for you,” we’re talking about more than just custom infrastructure. This mantra drives every action across every department. If it doesn’t benefit the customer, forget it. And, we created a 15-Minute Hear from a Human SLA, so if there ever is a problem, our customers are not left waiting.

 Commitment To Uptime: Whether it is IaaS, traditional colocation, or a hybrid solution, the root of our business is IT infrastructure. We’re proud to have some of the best data center designers, network architects, and system administrators around, all focused on keeping your IT running smoothly. We take our 100% uptime SLA seriously, and constantly monitor all of our sites.

 Commitment To Responsible Business: We’ve always offered 5% of our compute space and employee time to non-profits, and in 2014, Green House Data became a B-Corp so we could even better hold ourselves accountable to the environment, our staff, our shareholders, and the community around us. Every employee knows the financial status and growth strategy of the company. Everyone, from top executive to brand-new employee, is encouraged to volunteer and provide services to non-profits. And of course there’s our dedication to energy-efficiency and green power, too.

 From the executive’s desk

To build innovative IT business value for every client, every single day. We are passionate stewards of customer data and systems, balancing high availability with high performance, security, and service. Our support-centric, transparent philosophy means we will always do what is right for the customer.

 We lead by example in a historically resource-intensive industry by choosing 100% sustainable power and highly-efficient operational design. This effort provides our customers with options to reduce their own carbon footprint and drives cost savings. We believe the greenest electron is the one never used.

 Furthermore, we donate 5% of our most important company resources—compute power and employee time—to non-profits both domestically and internationally.

 Built right. Just for you.

As a Service Solutions: Take some of the load off your IT team with infrastructure solutions delivered “as a Service,” including backup, managed cloud IaaS, managed servers, virtual desktops, security, and even load balancing.

 Experienced technicians, administrators, engineers, and data center operations staff are ready to free up your IT resources, so you can focus on service delivery and the user experience instead of setting up and configuring servers, network equipment, operating systems and application platforms, or disaster recovery services.

 Managed IT Services: Choose the managed it solutions that are right for your organization. Business information technology solutions take pressure off your staff and helps get more out of your IT investments. Cloud consulting services, disaster recovery services, infrastructure consulting, and other management services are part Green House Data’s comprehensive Managed IT Services menu.

 In addition, hands-on managed services, like installation of equipment are available. We take a pro-active approach to every service delivered, keeping hardware and software up to date for you. If you are ready to move beyond traditional break/fix and into a model where your MSP helps your IT strategy, give us a call.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure with Horizon™: Most small to mid-sized organizations do not have the resources or expertise to manage the hardware, networking, and storage for their hosted desktop. Green House Data’s VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution provides the technical expertise you need, and dramatically reduces the costs of an initial setup. You will no longer need to worry about patching, updates, monitoring, or security for your system. This single platform streamlines delivery, protection, and management of your virtual desktops, while driving down costs and ensuring that you can work anytime, anywhere, across all devices.

 VDI is ideal for:

• Insight into user applications, data, and activity
• Easy management for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
• Flexible, scalable desktop environments
• Simplified patching and updates with linked clones
• Control of any machine from any web browser
• Integrated business continuity and disaster recovery
• Meeting compliance and regulatory standards

 Disaster Recovery Services: From traditional Disaster Recovery (DR) to Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), disaster recovery services make up a comprehensive approach to protect your business from downtime. Green House Data pairs IT business continuity systems with geographically diverse physical and cloud data centers keep your business infrastructure operational during and after system outages. Whether you need a completely custom solution or you would like to use one of our disaster recovery templates, we can meet your requirements for security, compliance, recovery points, and recovery time.

 One of many happy clients

 Black Hills Energy

As a natural gas and electric utility, Black Hills Energy requires 24/7 access to critical IT/business systems to deliver trusted service to over 1.2 million customers across eight states in the Midwest and Mountain West. The company also produces and sources its own natural gas and electricity across the country. With those huge responsibilities at stake and a diverse range of services, sites, and complex operations spread across a wide and varied geography, the company’s IT services can never waver.

 After working with several colocation providers, the company’s IT leadership landed on Green House Data’s Cheyenne facility as a natural fit for their colocation needs. For Brian Schaben, Director of Infrastructure and Operations Services at Black Hills Energy, co-located data centers are always the top choice.

 “I would never bring our data center back on premise,” Schaben said. “We could triple our size and I would still recommend colocation. We get big-time infrastructure benefits for a fraction of the cost. Plus, Green House Data’s core competency is data center management. We need our data centers to be up 100 percent of  the time, and colocation provides that.”

 Choosing the Ideal Colocation Provider

Black Hills prefers to locate facilities in the company’s service territories to support communities the company serves. That immediately made Green House Data’s modern data center in Cheyenne an attractive option, but robust connectivity, a focus on customer service and security and compliance coverage are what set the site above the competition.

 “Cheyenne was a good choice for several reasons,” Schaben said. “A lot of fiber bandwidth goes into Cheyenne. And it’s a very well-managed facility.”

 Extra Hands Make All the Difference

As an energy producer and provider, Black Hills has to adhere to strict regulatory standards in serving its 1.2 million residential and commercial utility customers.

 “Considering the amount of time spent in daily operations, it is extremely beneficial for Black Hills to use some of the managed services, remote hands and eyes that Green House Data provides,” Schaben said. “If we do not have technical staff in the area, it is nice to know we can rely on Green House Data for these services.”

 The professional resources available at Green House Data allow Black Hills to focus the company’s efforts where needed, while entrusting other responsibilities to a service provider focused on the customer experience. Black Hills has many complex operations in progress at all times, and losing systems because of cooling issues or equipment shut down is unacceptable. Having experienced such issues with an on-premise data center, Schaben said he has been impressed with the onsite support and customer service delivered by the Green House Data staff.

 “It’s just wonderful,” Schaben said. “I don’t have any complaints. I’ve never had to follow up on a ticket. My team loves working with the staff there, so all is well.”

 Meet the man behind Green House’s success

 Shawn Mills, CEO & Founder: Shawn Mills is a founding member of Green House Data and a technology entrepreneur. Under his leadership, Green House Data has undergone rapid expansion, launching cloud and colocation data centers coast-to-coast.

 Shawn has been chosen to speak at industry events and locations like Data Center World, the National Center for Super Computing Applications, and Cloud Computing Expo, and his writing has appeared in EdTech Magazine, Data Center Knowledge, and Manufacturing Digital.

 “We strive to deliver high performance, custom technology infrastructure solutions to our customers from the most environmentally, operationally, and capitally efficient data centers in the country.”

 “Whether you are moving to an IaaS environment, executing on hybrid initiatives, or modernizing your data center, our expert engineers and architects are on hand to make your project a success.”