
CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
FUSEBILL
Pulse Secure vADC Saves Money and Simplifies PCI Compliance for a Growing Cloud-based Subscription Billing Business
"I used the simple setup wizards, we were up and running in less than half a day."
Why was Pulse Secure chosen?
Pulse Secure TrafficScript takes some of the load off developers
Not over provisioning saves on IT budget
Easy deployment into Hyper-V environment
Company
Fusebill
Industry
Technology
Challenges
- Upgrade from NSLB’s basic load balancing functionality
- Deploy web application firewall to meet PCI requirements
- Maintain an infrastructure that supports company’s growth
Solutions
- Pulse Secure Virtual Traffic Manager
- Pulse Secure Virtual Web Application Firewall
- Runs on common off the shell servers based on Intel’s x86 architectures
Benefits
- Global traffic management functionality supports DR and backup initiatives
- Layer-7 support ensures application performance
- Solution’s scalability keeps pace with company’s growth
- Much easier PCI compliance with Pulse Secure as recognized firewall vendor
Introduction
Fusebill automates invoicing, billing, and collections for subscription based companies. Its customers span many industry sectors including software as a service, digital media, and communications.
Challenge
Fusebill’s expertise in subscription billing comes from its founders’ years of building and extending large-scale billing systems for SaaS companies. They founded Fusebill three years ago to offer that expertise as a cloud-based service to mid-sized companies and divisions of larger corporations. Today, Fusebill has more than 100 customers.
Billing activities peak at the beginning of the month, when most of Fusebill’s customers want bills and invoices sent out. After that, traffic is relatively light. One of the IT challenges has been to build up enough infrastructure to handle first-of-the-month traffic without having too many assets sitting idle the rest of the time.
The company primarily uses Microsoft products for it’s application infrastructure, including Microsoft Internet Information Services, SQL Server, Windows Server with Hyper-V, Office 365, OneDrive, etc. As such, Fusebill initially used Microsoft Network Load Balancing Services (NLBS) to distribute traffic. NLBS is strictly limited to load balancing, however, and eventually Fusebill began needing capabilities such as scripting and Layer-7 support. “NLBS is a very basic product. It’s truly just traffic management,” explains Greg Burwell, vice president of technology at Fusebill. “It’s not application-aware, not a Layer 4 through 7-type solution.”
Because Fusebill accepts credit card payments, the company is audited annually for Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance. One aspect of compliance involves having a web application firewall. Burwell was aware of firewall products that could be “bolted on” to NSLB. “But that is not a great relationship,” he says. He decided to look for an integrated solution that would provide a web application firewall along with advanced traffic management functionality.