Case Study: Markel achieves 60% cost savings and rapid self-provisioning with QTS Realty Trust's Switchboard

QTS Switchboard service delivers diverse connectivity at a 60% savings for Markel Corporation

Markel Corporation, a diversified financial holding company with global offices and complex insurance, investment and ventures operations, needed a highly available, scalable IT environment. After moving production to QTS’ Richmond campus and establishing a DR site in QTS Atlanta, Markel found its redundant, diverse connectivity—multiple ports, cross connects and circuit paths—was complex and costly while still limiting visibility into network performance.

Markel adopted QTS Switchboard, a self-service, software-defined connectivity platform, to provision two 10 Gb long‑haul virtual links for replication and a 1 Gb virtual link for telephony, plus diverse connections to Azure. The SDP interface gave engineers real‑time visibility and control, reduced vendor management and billing to a single provider, and cut deployment time from months to days—delivering a 60% cost savings while improving resiliency and network performance.

Markel

Mark Baltz

Senior Director, Global Technology Services