Empowering millions: eCampus.com's flexible network makes affordable learning accessible nationwide

Since 1999, eCampus.com has been committed to making education more affordable for students across the nation. As a trusted provider of physical and digital textbooks to over 375 educational partners, they quickly became a leader in textbook affordability and accessibility. Their mission to save students money continues to define them as a pioneering leader in the online bookstore market.

“We know the costs of higher education are rising, and we need to help students combat those costs through affordable content, whether that be digital or print,” says Sr. Director of Marketing and eCommerce Tiffaney Lavoie.

Starting as a direct-to-consumer model, eCampus.com evolved into a hybrid bookstore that aims to increase access to digital content and reduce overhead costs. This evolution also improved the customer experience, allowing students to shop 24/7 from the comfort of their couch. Now, as the official virtual bookstore for over 150 schools and 3 million students nationwide, eCampus.com continues to adapt and innovate, helping institutions and students alike thrive in an increasingly digital world.

A growing need for cost-effective compliance

As eCampus.com expanded its reach, the company sought a dynamic, flexible infrastructure that could keep pace with modern students’ expectations and the seasonal surges that define the academic calendar. When their previous hosting company experienced a network-wide DoS attack, it underscored the importance of staying ahead of evolving vulnerabilities while keeping essential learning materials accessible to students.

At the same time, day-to-day infrastructure management was becoming more complex. Director of Internet Services Eric LaZur regularly drove 1.5 hours to perform system maintenance and support—an approach that was no longer sustainable as the business continued to grow.

“We needed a more resilient environment that could be remotely managed and help us stay ahead of evolving threats during our busy book seasons,” LaZur says.

Lumen stepped in with a comprehensive service package, relocating eCampus.com’s equipment to a colocation facility in Lexington, Kentucky, and providing fast, reliable fiber connectivity between the facility and the company’s corporate office. The move helped improve remote management, strengthen connectivity and support eCampus.com’s ability to proactively manage traffic and evolving cyber risks.

“They had corporate-wide DoS protection already in place, and they applied it to our accounts as soon as we moved over,” LaZur says. “That was a sigh of relief for us.”

The partnership started small, but eCampus.com soon entered a period of rapid growth. As demand increased, the company began exploring a move to a larger, more advanced Lumen facility in Cincinnati, Ohio—one designed to support greater scale, flexibility and long-term growth.

“We needed to transition to a larger co-location center that could support our growth and provide the modern capabilities we needed,” LaZur says. “This was new to us, and we were working on a tight budget. We needed flexible migration products and pricing rates that added real value.”

A new model offered greater flexibility

As part of the expansion, eCampus.com adopted Lumen® Cloud Connect and Lumen® Ethernet Fabric Connect from the Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) portfolio. For eCampus.com, Lumen® NaaS helped turn the network into a more dynamic resource—one they could scale, manage and adapt in near real-time as demand shifted across the academic calendar. That flexibility was especially important during peak book seasons, when online traffic can surge quickly and the business needs reliable performance without overbuilding for the rest of the year.

“Approximately 80% of eCampus’s sales occur during the start of each academic semester: mid-August and late January,” Lavoie says. “This seasonality requires robust infrastructure to handle surges in online book orders from colleges across the country.”

With NaaS, eCampus.com gained the ability to adjust bandwidth and bring services online as needed, helping the team support high-volume ordering periods while keeping costs aligned to actual demand. The model also reduced reliance on extensive backend hardware investments and manual service changes, giving eCampus.com more control over how and when capacity is provisioned.

That self-service capability became an important part of eCampus.com’s modernization journey. Instead of waiting on manual requests, tickets or technician dispatches, the team could manage changes online and move faster when the business required it. “We can bring services online as we need them. No need to go through an account rep to contact somebody in the backend to open up a ticket and dispatch a technician to activate a port. We can do it all online, ourselves,” LaZur says. “With a few clicks, we can connect a few ports, set the bandwidth and be ready to go within minutes.”

The impact extends beyond IT operations. By modernizing with Lumen NaaS, eCampus.com can support seasonal demand more efficiently, maintain reliable access to course materials and continue investing in the student experience. The flexible model helps eCampus.com move beyond a cost-only mindset and focus on value, quality and long-term readiness—supporting affordable options for students, including up to 90% savings on rentals.

Their strengthened infrastructure also helps eCampus.com confidently support Day One programs, also known as Inclusive and Equitable Access programs, which provide an all-inclusive solution to discover, manage and distribute course materials to students on the first day of class. This not only helps students stay on track with their studies but also promotes higher retention and completion rates by removing barriers to access essential learning resources.

Pioneering new ways to improve affordability

The collaboration with Lumen has allowed eCampus.com to offer a more reliable, cost-effective and student-friendly service, ultimately contributing to better educational outcomes and a more equitable learning environment.

With support from Lumen, eCampus.com now operates with a more flexible, remotely managed network foundation that can adapt as the business grows. Their modernized infrastructure has opened new partnership opportunities, helping them grow their customer base and pursue request for proposals (RFPs) that were previously out of reach. It also gives the team a stronger foundation for future planning, including virtualization, cloud connectivity and emerging technologies that can help eCampus.com continue improving how students access learning materials.

But the real winners here are the students and educators. Thanks to their safer, more modern infrastructure, eCampus can consistently prioritize the customers’ needs. "We always want to put the customer first," says Lavoie. "Lumen makes sure that we're able to deliver a seamless product."

Keeping up with emerging technologies plays a key part of their commitment to customer satisfaction. LaZur, who runs a small department, finds it challenging to research and study threats. “We need reliable and tested solutions that work the first time. Through Lumen, that's what we have,” he says. The cybersecurity team from Lumen provides protection against new threats and uses proven technologies like AI-driven threat intelligence, which eCampus.com is exploring with the Lumen team.

"We don't want to just throw in AI as a buzzword and be done with it. We actually want to use AI to better us, better our business model and provide a better level of service to our customers," LaZur says.

Lumen has significantly expanded eCampus.com’s capabilities and potential customer base. With their continued partnership, eCampus.com is poised to remain an industry pioneer, driving innovation and ensuring that students have the resources they need to excel. Together, they are shaping a brighter future for education, one where technology and flexibility empower students and educators alike.

To learn more about eCampus’s transformation, read the full customer success story.

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