From Data Centers to Managed Services: Green House Data and VMware Technology Play a Sustainable Role

Green House Data got its start in 2007 by helping clients on their IT journey, with sustainable cloud services at the center of their practice. We spoke with CTO Thomas Burns, who co-founded Green House Data with CIO Cortney Thompson and CEO Shawn Mills, about the company’s journey over the past 12 years, the changes shaping IT, and why no two enterprises are the same.

When Green House got started, many organizations were only just beginning to look not only at the cost of their data centers, but also how they might be made more efficient – which inspired the company’s name.

“We had a vision for sustainability and our initial business plan was to build out more efficient, cost-effective locations,” says Burns. “One of the ways we wanted to reduce the of the overall impact of colocation facilities was to utilize virtualization technologies from VMware. As a result, virtualization was one of the services we focused on when looking at clients’ infrastructure. And of course, we could lower their costs at the same time.”

Projects quickly evolved into a hybrid model in which customers utilized their own, now virtualized infrastructure, supplemented by Green House Data’s public and private cloud services to augment their growth.

In fact, the genesis for the company’s gBlock® Cloud, which is a VMware Cloud Verified service,  can be traced to a project for Green House Data’s first customer — one that remains a valued client to this day. The firm, a media property, was looking for colocation, but exploring the requirements in detail, Green House Data’s virtual VMware infrastructure proved to be a highly effective, less costly, and quick to implement option.

Green House Data’s infrastructure grew, and today the gBlock Cloud comes in public, private, and hybrid cloud configurations, with compute, storage, and networking capabilities. To ensure availability and low latency, cloud deployments and cloud data centers are located across the country, including Bellingham, Seattle, Cheyenne, Dallas, Denver, Orangeburg in New York, and Atlanta.

Of course, IT needs continue to evolve. Burns notes that the company’s customers not only demand cloud services, but also other capabilities that software-based networks make possible.

“We serve organizations of every kind, but have a particularly strong presence in financial services, health care, information technology, manufacturing, and retail,” he says. “Perhaps not surprisingly, we see a lot of demand for private cloud – particularly for compliance reasons — and we work extensively with legacy systems which for many of our customers are still are viable and worthy of adaptation.”

“One thing we’re seeing a lot more need for is innovation in the application stack that today’s networks make possible,” he continues. “That’s why we support the full software development cycle and DevOps operations our customers need to do business in new, more effective ways. Our clients know they can rely on us to design and deploy basically anything they need.”

“Being VMware Cloud Verified provides our customers with the peace of mind of knowing that we provide not only the best technology, but also the best practices expertise needed to realize its full potential.

“We also created our own, proprietary discovery process – SpotLITE – because we’ve found that every organization, no matter how similar it may appear to other organizations in its field, has unique needs,” says Burns. “Corporate IT teams and the enterprises they oversee should expect a solution that is built right, just for them.”

Learn more about Green House Data and its partnership with VMware here.