Oceana

Since its founding in 2001, Oceana has seen more than 100 victories and protected more than one million square miles of ocean. Senior IT Manager Konstantin Kostadinov manages over a dozen websites and supports their web infrastructure. Tired of maintaining faulty equipment and dealing with software incompatibilities, Kostadinov was on the hunt for a solution to their website management woes. Their developer recommended Pantheon as the best solution for their Drupal and WordPress sites.

Pantheon came highly recommended as the best solution for both Drupal and WordPress, and it’s performed flawlessly.

Konstantin Kostadinov, Senior IT Manager

Protecting and restoring the world’s oceans on a global scale is no small feat, and running on Pantheon helps Kostadinov and his team focus on what they do best—ultimately driving the organization’s efforts further.

Out With the Old, In With the New

Before Pantheon, Oceana rented rack space at a hosting facility and ran their own equipment. They were constantly battling challenges derived from maintaining old and often faulty equipment, OS updates, backups, and dealing with software incompatibilities.

“We run more than a dozen websites crucial to our organization,” Kostadinov said. “And making sure we’re keeping up with security updates and keeping all systems online was a constant concern for us. Naturally that put a lot of stress on our web team.”

Oceana’s primary requirement for a website management platform was that it be a cloud-based solution that could grow with them, and provide a strong connection to their international constituents. They also wanted a solution that would empower marketing to make content updates and continue advocacy outreach via web properties.

“Our developer from BlueCadet spoke highly of the level of service Pantheon could provide, and our websites were already being developed on the platform,” Kostadinov said. “After some shopping around and a few calls with service providers to get a feel for the level of customer service we could expect, we were certain that Pantheon was the way to move forward.”

A Seamless Migration

BlueCadet already had a working relationship with Pantheon, giving the team at Oceana even more confidence that launch would be a success. Kostadinov was given precise instructions regarding DNS changes for each site, and migration was seamless.

“Despite various launch date push backs, and given the complexity and content volume of our websites, the actual launch process was flawless.” Kostadinov said. “Any performance related issues during the development process were being handled on the go. Pantheon’s dashboard ability to show errors/warnings, or lack of such, kept us out of the dark and ensured us that everything was being handled properly.”

Sleeping Better & Making a Difference

“The platform basically forces us to use best practices and makes it extremely easy to get help from outside developers familiar with the technologies that come with our setup,” Kostadinov said. “We have not experienced any downtime since launch, and the fast pageloads have been consistent. As an Enterprise-level client we’ve had great experience contacting Pantheon’s customer support and we consider this a huge plus.”

Kostadinov was also surprised by how little involvement is required from his team to make sure the websites are up and running, giving them the opportunity to focus on other ways to help the organization reach its goals.

The IT team and I are able to sleep better at night!

Growing on a Website Management Platform

Kostadinov and his team plan on adding additional regional sites as they open new offices, and have found this to be extremely easy on Pantheon. They are also able to focus on building working relationships with outside developers to expand the functionality and performance of their sites.

We will phase out our in-house web servers soon and move completely to SaaS, which we have no doubt is the future of web hosting. Thank you, Pantheon!