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Building Lives That Work
Goodwill Industries of Central Florida transforms lives and reduces waste leveraging CoreSite’s colocation services, team support and compliant data center environment
The Challenge
At the heart of Goodwill Industries of Central Florida (GICF) lies a powerful mission: to uplift and empower individuals through education and vocational training. With 31 retail thrift stores and outlets serving as vital lifelines, GICF generates essential funds that fuel programs for Central Floridians striving to achieve their personal and professional aspirations. However, managing the flow of donations, sales and unsold items through its sustainability cycle—from retail locations to outlets and salvage partners—requires a robust IT infrastructure that guarantees seamless operations. Managing its IT infrastructure in-house, GICF relied on a single power supplier and lacked critical system redundancies, putting the organization at risk of a service outage. To ensure uptime, GICF sought a data center provider that could ensure the reliability, security and compliance of its IT environment, which enables the organization to help people continue on their prosperity journey.
The Solution
Located five miles from GICF’s corporate office, the CoreSite Orlando data center (OR1) offers the critical colocation data center services and cross connects GICF needs to seamlessly support its business. With redundant critical systems, two power suppliers, diverse network paths, and a dual jet engine-fueled backup power supply, OR1 delivers resiliency GICF could not achieve on its own. OR1 also offers access to 15+ on-premises carriers and 15+ networks, allowing GICF to choose the connectivity options that best align with its IT strategy. Beyond technical capabilities, OR1 prioritizes physical security with robust measures including private fenced property, multi-layered security features, comprehensive video surveillance, and round-the-clock monitoring by professional personnel. By colocating at OR1, GICF can focus on its mission of positively transforming lives while the CoreSite team focuses on efficiently running the data center.
GICF’s CoreSite deployment reduces its cost of ownership, allowing the nonprofit to take advantage of economies of scale to reduce and stabilize its power costs. GICF also does not have to purchase, manage and maintain expensive data center infrastructure. CoreSite’s scheduled maintenance and oversight of the data center environment helps optimize GICF’s server performance, controlling operational costs and extending the life cycle of its IT equipment. These cumulative savings allow GICF to direct more money toward providing education, skill development and prosperity planning services—rather than its IT infrastructure.
Resiliency Helps Sustainability Efforts
Offering access to multiple power suppliers and redundant infrastructure, OR1 alleviates concern that power constraints or cooling, power or connectivity failures will cause service disruptions. This resiliency ensures GICF can manage and sell donations, coordinate services for in-need community members and manage its sustainability cycle most effectively to make sure that less than 2% of donated items end up in landfills.
More Time to Dedicate to Life-Enhancing Initiatives
Operating as an extension of GICF’s internal IT team, CoreSite’s team of experienced data center professionals helps GICF optimize its IT environment. When CoreSite identified a power over draw issue, it notified GICF, allowing the nonprofit to quickly address the matter to improve performance and control power expenditures. By providing an extra set of eyes and hands, this partnership allows GICF to spend less time analyzing its IT environment and more time delivering programs and services that improve the education and employment prospects of Central Floridians — and keep more items out of landfills.
Easing the Re-evaluation Process with a Compliant Data Center Environment
As a part of the broader global organization Goodwill Industries International, GICF undergoes a recertification process every three years. OR1’s Tier 3 rating helps ease the evaluation, enabling GICF to meet the rigorous compliance demands of the larger organization. The combination of robust physical security, redundant infrastructure and SOC 2 compliance helps protect GICF’s accounting data, personal data and legacy point-of-sale data, all of which must be retained for seven years pursuant to [Goodwill Industries International [OR] GICF] policy. The safety and availability of these critical workloads are integral to GICF’s operations and its ability to satisfy its compliance obligations.
“At Goodwill, we firmly believe that with enhanced education and training, individuals can unlock their potential and forge a brighter, more secure future. CoreSite empowers us with the robust digital infrastructure we need to operate seamlessly, enabling us to maximize our impact on the community—positively transforming lives and reducing waste in landfills.”
Todd Russell
Senior Director of IT, Goodwill Industries of Central Florida