FC Stone

LightEdge Provides Single-source Business Network Solutions

Overview
FC Stone, Inc. is a widely recognized commodity risk management and trading company headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa with 13 additional locations in the US and 4 international offices. Companies around the world depend on their sound risk management strategies to help maximize their investments.

When FC Stone was interested in investing in technology to grow their business, they sought out LightEdge Solutions and have used LightEdge's services since.

In 1997, FC Stone began with 256k Business Internet service, and has progressively added more bandwidth as the company has expanded their technical operations. Currently FC Stone requires multiple T1 lines to meet their international business needs.

The Challenge
While there are many advantages of working through regional business offices, it is also difficult to feel connected with the main office. File sharing, collaboration and general communication efforts are made more difficult through regionalization efforts.

FC Stone concluded that they needed a Wide Area Network (WAN) to provide the connectivity necessary between offices, and wanted to explore the added flexibility, simplicity and scalability offered through an IP-based WAN architecture. The company laid out a needs list which included: network security, remote access and disaster recovery/business continuity solutions. As experts in risk management, they were unwilling to take chances with the information that was so vital to their business.

After analyzing the market, FC Stone found that few local service providers could provide the security, functionality and cost structure that it required. LightEdge, however, was able to meet the intricate needs of FC Stone and ultimately provided the company with a solution.

The LightEdge Solution
In 2001, LightEdge upgraded FC Stone's interoffice connections to a complete Meshed IP WAN. This provided both the functionality and security required through a single source provider. During the upgrade, FC Stone also turned to LightEdge for Remote Access Servers, Managed Firewall, URL Filtering and Spam Filtering services. Soon after, the company upsourced several IT hosting projects to LightEdge, and currently utilizes both collocated and dedicated servers in the LightEdge Data Center.

Just this year, FC Stone implemented a full Disaster Recovery solution based on the unique partnership between LightEdge and ACS. They also purchased Audio Conferencing and "Hoot-and-Holler" services from LightEdge. FC Stone realized a cost savings of 75% off their monthly "Hoot-and-Holler expenses and a significant savings off their combined monthly bill due to the switch.