Founded in 2009, DECA Financial Services is an accounts receivable management (ARM) agency experienced in collecting debt of any type. After experiencing tremendous capital expenditures on technology infrastructure and personnel at a prior employer, the DECA founders searched for a cloud hosting provider that offered ease-of-use and scalability to host their technology platform. Being a technology-driven agency, DECA needed a robust infrastructure platform to run all of its processes, while not having to deal with the IT resources, people and costs associated with owning the infrastructure hardware.

DECA's needs:

• World-class infrastructure without the capital outlay of hosting it in-house
• A scalable and high-performance solution to allow for growing accounts' workloads
• Tight security and compliance to handle sensitive financial data

Why DECA chose BlueLock:

• Competitively priced, especially when compared with in-house solution
• Overall market performance and reputation
• Enterprise class VMware-based cloud solution
• Client service focus

Founded in 2009, DECA Financial Services is an accounts receivable management (ARM) agency experienced in collecting debt of any type, including - but not limited to - health care, student loans, state and local tax portfolios, child support obligations, campus-based tuition accounts, and credit card portfolios. The DECA leadership team brings more than 50 years of experience in the full service accounts receivable management industry.  The company operates in the most competitive environments within the ARM industry and frequently outperforms well-known players in the market.

DECA's founders experienced tremendous capital expenditures on IT infrastructure and the personnel necessary to manage it at their previous employer. As a result of their experiences, it was determined that a cloud hosting provider with scalability and ease-of-use was necessary to host the company's technology platform for the 2009 launch of DECA. "We're a technology-driven company. Having a robust infrastructure platform to run all of our processes, while not needing to manage the IT resources, people and costs ourselves was extremely important," said Todd Wolfe, President and CEO, DECA Financial Services.

Finding the Best Solution
DECA tasked Milestone Advisors with finding an infrastructure solution that would enable flexibility and scalability. After a highly systemized procurement process, BlueLock's VMware-based Virtual Cloud Enterprise was selected based on competitive pricing, market performance and customer service. "BlueLock's team of professionals consistently demonstrated that the company understood our needs and were willing to pull up their sleeves to help develop a solution that was right for our growing company," said Wolfe.

Named America's VMware Service Provider Program Partner of the Year, BlueLock is an experienced provider of cloud computing and managed IT services, offering the people, expertise and IT infrastructure in a world-class, SAS 70 certified datacenter. BlueLock CloudSuite, a comprehensive set of cloud computing solutions, offers a tailored selection of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments to best configure users'

computing resources. With CloudSuite's array of public and virtual private cloud computing solutions, clients have the ability to utilize cloud resources based on their specific needs to optimize deployment, management, and investment.

Although pricing wasn't the only factor in DECA's decision, the cost savings and quality of product that BlueLock offered were substantial. DECA found that cloud computing offered significant savings on upfront capital while delivering substantial tax savings as depreciating hardware was no longer an issue.

"Had we built our own infrastructure, we would have spent at least $600,000 on hardware and another $100,000 for one employee to manage the infrastructure - ultimately costing over $700,000 in the first year alone," said James Hefty, Director of Operations Support, DECA Financial Services. "With BlueLock, our projected first year spend is around $60,000, compared to the original $700,000. Now we have a much higher quality IT environment than we would have if we hosted it ourselves - at a fraction of the price."

Business Value
DECA Financial Services moved their CR Systems Titanium SQL-based and dialer integrated collection platform onto BlueLock's VMware-based Virtual Cloud Enterprise and experienced the flexibility, scalability and superior performance they sought.

"To ensure optimum performance, we measure and document our vendor partners' performance statistics on a weekly basis," said Wolfe. "On a 100-point performance and support scorecard, we consider anything less than 90 a failure. BlueLock consistently scores a 100. The costs and management of IT are the biggest stresses for most businesses and it's comforting to know that we have a world-class technology infrastructure without the headaches commonly associated with it."

DECA has also benefited from BlueLock's team of experts who offer a combined 100+ years of experience operating data centers, virtualizing IT environments and helping companies to achieve their business and IT objectives. "With BlueLock we have an entire expert team looking out for us and our efficiencies - something we otherwise couldn't afford," said Wolfe.

Future Plans
As DECA secures additional collection accounts, the company plans to grow its team from 10 full-time employees to 40 as well as its existing IT environment by the end of 2010.

"We've already put the model in place and expanding is just a matter of adding capacity at BlueLock," said Wolfe. "We don't have to look at the critical planning that goes into expanding because BlueLock handles that without us having worry about it. Thanks to BlueLock, no other ARM firm, regardless of its size, can out-scale DECA's technology platform."