MarineCFO.com

Marine, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) 

Profile

MarineCFO.com launched in 2007 to address the distinct and complex needs of marine transportation, a multi-million dollar industry that includes keeping up with continually increasing requirements for both offshore and inland operations. MarineCFO provides on-vessel, marine operations, personnel, fleet maintenance and financial management solutions to customers ranging from the largest industry players to small, family-run companies in a comprehensive software solution built on a web-based SaaS platform. 

Operating in the maritime transportation means more than just managing the financial components of running a business. A successful marine fleet operation includes managing multiple vessels, including traffic management and routine maintenance, and crews/personnel, including schedules, certification and expenses, as well as coordinating onshore operations to support the fleet. 

As the industry grows, so do the complexities of managing both offshore and inland facilities operations. MarineCFO understands these specific and unique needs and has become the first and leading provider of solutions on the SaaS platform designed specifically to help marine operations be efficient and compliant. 

“Our goal is to provide efficient and easy to use tools that streamline operations critical to the marine business,” said MarineCFO founder and CTO, Dean Shoultz. “Our customers depend on us for continued, mission critical solutions, so we needed the same confidence when it came to a hosting provider.” 

Challenge

Since customers trust MarineCFO to help increase business efficiencies and reduce operating costs, it was important that the solutions offered were robust, dependable and flexible to continue meeting the industry’s changing needs and requirements. Shoultz and his team created MarineCFO on the SaaS platform to provide customers with a solution that is available anytime, anywhere, and is easy to use and affordable.  

"The SaaS model gives us the ability to reach a whole new market within the industry, broadening our reach,” explained Shoultz. “The initial interest we’ve received has been extremely positive, meaning we need to be prepared for some immediate and rapid growth.” 

As MarineCFO set out to provide a variety of on-demand features accessible for all companies, Shoultz knew they needed a hosting solution that provided the highest quality service that would keep up with the demand, at the right cost.  

“When considering a hosting provider, we chose PEER 1 for our needs, knowing we would receive a world class solution and support,” said Shoultz.  

Solution

Starting small with a few robust servers when the company began, MarineCFO now has a multifaceted, managed hosting solution with PEER 1, which complements strengths of its team of ISV and application experts, setting the company up for success and continued growth.   

Because MarineCFO is an online database driven solution, it was critical that the company and its customers not be affected should a technical problem arise. MarineCFO depends 100 percent on PEER 1 to monitor its solution and continually keep its data updated, providing continuous, uninterrupted access to the solutions its customers depend on. 

An important part of MarineCFO’s solution is PEER 1’s Load Balancing service, which sets the company up to experience increased capacity, availability and scalability. Various other managed hosting components make up the MarineCFO solution including SAN storage, clustering and firewalls to protect its servers. 

Benefits 

Scalable Solutions

Having a solution that is scalable is critical for MarineCFO as a fast growing company. MarineCFO has grown tremendously since its inception and needs a solution that is easy to scale as more and more customers recognize the benefits of its SaaS solution.  

“As our company grows, we just call PEER 1 and they drop in a new server,” said Shoultz. The servers deployed by MarineCFO are automatically detected and integrated into the system, allowing fast and seamless extension of the existing solution. Without any costly server upgrades, MarineCFO can easily and quickly insert new servers to address current and future customer demand. 

Additionally, with PEER 1’s Load Balancing service, MarineCFO’s solution is highly effective and scalable, designed to increase capacity, scalability and availability of its applications to its customers. By distributing traffic among all of the servers, Load Balancing is essential for MarineCFO, which has a high traffic application with static content. 

Flexible Solutions

As MarineCFO continues to evolve its SaaS product offering, it not only needs its hosting solution to be scalable, but also flexible and customizable. PEER 1 works with MarineCFO to ensure it always has the

best-designed and most effective solution for the current needs of the company and its customers.  

As a managed hosting customer, a wide range of storage and back-up management tools are available to MarineCFO along with personalized support. MarineCFO’s solution includes PEER 1's Storage Area Network (SAN), giving them a customizable storage environment that is high-performing, highly available and highly scalable for their customers’ mission-critical data. 

PEER 1 also works with MarineCFO to customize its firewalls to ensure it meets all of the security needs that come with hosting a SaaS solution. The dedicated firewall solution that MarineCFO uses, Juniper® Networks Security Appliances, is managed by PEER 1 network security experts and protects its servers and customers’ data from internet threats and vulnerabilities. 

Solid and Knowledgeable Support

While MarineCFO’s experience with PEER 1 to date has left them with little reason to contact technical support, Shoultz’s dedicated Technical Account Manager provides personalized attention that goes above and beyond PEER 1’s guaranteed FirstCall Support^TM. Shoultz and the rest of MarineCFO are at ease knowing that any challenges, questions or requests are addressed and resolved quickly. 

In addition to PEER 1 in-house experts being available at every point-of-contact 24 hours each day of the year, PEER 1 offers a one hour or less hardware replacement guarantee. Should MarineCFO experience any hardware issues, they will be fixed with minimal hardware downtime and disruption to business. 

“The PEER 1 engineers are extremely knowledgeable. Their skill set complements our skill set and works very well together,” explained Shoultz. “We have a dedicated engineer and a one hour response time. This is what separates PEER 1 from everyone else."