Mission-Focused Success: ThunderCat in Action

ThunderCat partners with government agencies, educational institutions and Fortune 500 companies to deliver secure, scalable, and reliable IT solutions that directly support objectives. Our customer success stories highlight how we help customers overcome operational challenges—from modernizing infrastructure and streamlining deployments to ensuring compliance and continuity across complex environments. Backed by deep engineering expertise and trusted technology partnerships, ThunderCat delivers results that align with the unique demands of operations—on time, on budget, and without disruption.

Recent Use Cases

Zero Trust and Driving Down Costs of Maintaining Vulnerable Legacy Systems

ThunderCat, in collaboration with a team of trusted technology partners, recently supported a major government agency in its mission to strengthen national security, stimulate economic growth, and reduce disaster-related risks.

Problem: The agency was struggling to implement an effective Zero Trust architecture. Its legacy compute environment was both costly and vulnerable, lacking the resilience and scalability required to support mission-critical operations.

Challenges: The project was complicated by multiple factors, including:

    • A rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape
    • Shifting cybersecurity variables and risks
    • Budget constraints
    • A growing IT skills gap
    • Increasing compliance requirements
    • Fragmented and siloed data environments

Solution: ThunderCat’s expert team designed and deployed a modern service delivery platform tailored to the agency’s needs. Key components included:

    • Converting physical systems into secure virtual machines
    • Establishing a centralized processing center
    • Creating a catalog of recovery points for continuous data monitoring and fast, dependable recovery

Outcome: Initial results are highly encouraging:

    • System performance has significantly improved
    • Data consolidation has enhanced reliability, repeatability, and overall efficiency
    • End users now benefit from a more secure, optimized experience, directly supporting the agency’s ability to execute its mission effectively

 

TCAT Saves Agency Over $2M Across Hardware, Software and Professional Services with Reengineering Efforts

Problem: A large government defense agency’s boundary proxies became end of life in 2023. TCAT has provided them with Critical Proxy/Secure Web Gateway (SWG) security technology since 2013.

Challenge: No money. This defense agency required a path to cutover in 2024 when resources and budget were available. Very tight cutover window for these critical access points including limited availability of technical staff to manage this transition.

Solution: Without current budget for 2023, TCAT helped repurpose existing hardware. This defense agency has historically maintained Bluecoat>>Symantec>>now Broadcom proxies to provide privacy and prevent end user direct access to external websites and associated malware. TCAT coordinated a replacement solution that reduced rack footprint while increasing performance with replacement hardware and consolidated software licenses. TCAT SME served as a back stop for the defense agency’s technical staff. 

Outcome: The Proxy/SWG was redeployed with a new configuration baseline during the migration. Project completed in August 2023 reducing the defense agency’s environment from 36 devices to 14 using repurposed hardware. We assessed 2.1M in savings across hardware, software and professional services costs that were offset with our reengineering support.

 

Integration Facility: TCAT’s Asset-Ready Rollout for Civilian Infrastructure

Problem: Civilian Agency required asset tagging, additional power supply installation, and site-specific configuration of devices per deployment.

Solution: TCAT engineering and Integration services provided asset tagging, power supply installation, and engineering support to preconfigure each device with site specific configurations. TCAT integrated deployed equipment to each site.

Results: Entire Juniper solution deployed on time with zero loss of data collection capabilities.

 

Protecting the Innocent and Vulnerable

Problem: Human trafficking, child exploitation, and cyber fraud remain persistent threats across the U.S., with vulnerable individuals—particularly underage girls—being targeted and exploited through online platforms. Law enforcement agencies have struggled to keep up with the scale and speed of these crimes due to limited investigative tools and time-intensive manual processes.

Challenges: Identifying and rescuing victims requires rapid, accurate data analysis and image recognition. Traditional investigative methods often take hours or days, giving traffickers time to move victims and erase digital footprints. Agencies needed a way to dramatically accelerate victim identification and dismantle organized crime networks operating across multiple cities.

Solution: ThunderCat partnered with ICE Homeland Security Investigations and Marinus Analytics, an artificial intelligence company dedicated to ending systemic exploitation. Marinus developed a powerful AI-driven tool that scans the web for indicators of trafficking and allows law enforcement to conduct image-based searches in seconds. This enables frontline officers to more effectively detect and respond to cases of human trafficking and child abuse.

Outcome: Over the past 12 months, the AI system proactively identified more than 500 missing persons, 83% of whom were underage females between the ages of 13–17, many being commercially sexually exploited. Furthermore, a major organized crime ring operating brothels in 12 cities was successfully located and dismantled—demonstrating the real-world impact of combining advanced technology with law enforcement efforts.

 

Enhancing Radiology at a Major Government Healthcare Organization with AI

Problem: A major government healthcare organization faced a growing demand for improved efficiency and accuracy in radiological interpretation, particularly for musculoskeletal x-rays. Manual review processes were time-consuming and subject to variability, placing increased strain on radiology departments and impacting care delivery.

Challenges: 

  • Clinical Integration: Successfully incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) tools into existing clinical workflows at the medical center required careful coordination and validation.
  • Technical Oversight: Ensuring that the AI platform met federal standards and specific requirements necessitated structured oversight and collaboration.
  • Training Data & Accuracy: Adequate training of the AI system on a large dataset of musculoskeletal x-rays was essential to achieving reliable performance.
  • Procurement & Contracting: Navigating government acquisition procedures and aligning the project with contracting regulations introduced additional complexity.

Solution: The government organization deployed a combined AI platform utilizing Nediser, an AI “radiology resident” developed by Drs. Bao Do and Charles Fang at Stanford, and TeraRecon, a leading platform for advanced medical imaging visualization and AI. Nediser was trained on 168,000 x-rays and has interpreted over 37,000 clinical images since January 2021. The platform was integrated into the radiology workflow to assist with musculoskeletal imaging analysis. Deployment and testing were managed by ThunderCat’s project management office (PMO), which collaborated closely with end-user stakeholders and the contracting officer to ensure the solution aligned with clinical and technical objectives.

Outcome: 

  • Clinical Impact: Nediser is now embedded within the government organization’s radiology workflow, supporting clinicians with accurate and efficient x-ray interpretation.
  • Educational Recognition: The AI system has been recognized by AI.gov and incorporated into Stanford’s new AI curriculum for radiology residents.
  • Operational Success: TCAT PMO’s oversight ensured that the project met all integration, performance, and regulatory goals—establishing a replicable model for future AI adoption within the government organization.

 

Pioneering AI For Education and Research

Problem: The University at Albany needed scalable, high-performance computing resources to support its growing AI research and the AI Plus initiative, aimed at accelerating innovation in fields such as cybersecurity, healthcare, and drug discovery.

Challenge: A TCAT Customer since 2020, UAlbany lacked a method to quickly procure the required AI supercomputing infrastructure. With tight timelines and limited resources, securing the necessary hardware and software was a significant hurdle.  

Solution: TCAT leveraged its New York State Office of General Services (NYS OGS) to enable the rapid deployment of NVIDIA DGX Cloud and the setup of on-premises supercomputing infrastructure, all while ensuring seamless integration of AI hardware and software. 

Outcome: The $200 million public-private AI Plus initiative is strengthening the University’s programmatic and research capacity in fields such as cybersecurity, weather prediction, health data analytics, drug discovery and next-generation semiconductor design.  

 

Committed Partnership Enables VTC Success at Defense Agency

A major government defense agency required a reliable, knowledgeable partner to support its evolving video teleconferencing (VTC) and collaboration infrastructure needs across multiple sites, including remote locations. The customer faced a rapidly changing technology environment, shifting requirements from another defense agency, and internal resource constraints that made consistent planning and execution difficult. 

Over an 8-year period, ThunderCat functioned as a true extension of the agency’s IT team. From the first call, when the customer needed support contracts for just four conference rooms, ThunderCat invested time and engineering expertise without the guarantee of a purchase. That initial engagement sparked a long-term collaboration built on trust, value, and performance. Key milestones over the extended period: 

  • End-to-End Engineering Support: ThunderCat architected and installed a Cisco UC backbone, delivered architectural guidance for Microsoft Teams integration, and supported TV replacement needs—even in remote sites like Limestone, ME. 
  • Flexible, Vendor-Neutral Support: When the defense agency shifted to Logitech devices, ThunderCat helped fulfill the request without bias. At every step, the team provided product research and deep technical guidance. 
  • Rapid Incident Response: When a conference room system failed at a critical moment, ThunderCat parachuted in within hours—earning praise from the agency’s leadership. 
  • Enterprise-Wide Re-Architecture: When the agency chose to rearchitect its entire collaboration infrastructure, ThunderCat dedicated hundreds of hours of engineering time to provide two fully engineered solutions, each including over 2,000 lines of equipment and services that integrated many different OEM solutions. 
  • Long Term VTC Contract Award: In September 2024, the defense agency awarded ThunderCat a base-plus-4 option year contract valued at over $23M. The win reflects not only a successful technical solution but also the culmination of nearly a decade of unpaid, pre-contract investment in customer success. 

ThunderCat’s long-term commitment, technical leadership, and problem-solving mindset exemplify the value of a performance-based VAR. Every solution was designed before a contract was signed. Without this deep engagement and trusted relationship, the defense agency’s mission-critical collaboration infrastructure would not have succeeded. 

 

Cloud Native Development / Private Cloud for Major Agency with DevSecOps 

Problem: A major government agency needed to modernize its software development practices to support secure, scalable, and efficient application deployment across both containerized and non-containerized environments. Legacy systems and fragmented tooling limited developer agility and posed risks to security and compliance.

Challenges

    • Transitioning to cloud-native development within a private cloud infrastructure
    • Supporting a full DevSecOps pipeline while maintaining compliance in high-security environments 
    • Managing complex multi-cluster environments 
    • Automating infrastructure tasks across containerized and traditional workloads 
    • Centralizing lifecycle management for a large Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) environment 

Solution: ThunderCat designed and implemented a comprehensive DevSecOps solution by integrating Red Hat software with Cisco HyperFlex hardware, featuring: 

    • Red Hat OpenShift on Cisco HyperFlex Systems for a robust, scalable DevSecOps platform 
    • Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for efficient multi-cluster operations, compliance, vulnerability management, and real-time threat detection 
    • Red Hat Ansible Automation to streamline infrastructure tasks across non-containerized workloads 
    • Red Hat Satellite for centralized RHEL management and lifecycle control 

Outcome: The agency now operates a highly efficient, secure, and scalable development environment, enabling: 

    • Faster and more secure application deployments 
    • Enhanced developer productivity 
    • Streamlined infrastructure management 
    • Improved visibility, control, and compliance across the enterprise 

 

Efficient Network Refresh: Low-Touch Security Solution at Scale

Problem: Customer required a refresh of network perimeter defense across 250 sites.  

Solution: TCAT offered a low-touch solution where TCAT configured systems in our facility and shipped to the remote sites. TCAT engineering supported the remote site turn-up. 

Results: Deployed entire solution on time with minimal dependency on their technical staff. 

 

End-to-End Execution: TCAT Delivers Integrated Solution for Military Mission Needs

Problem: Major Systems Integrator required a quick turn solution for a Military customer and needed architecture and deployment expertise.

Solution: TCAT engineering and Integration services provided a turnkey, multi-vendor solution. Integrated the solution in our facility and our engineers went onsite to complete the deployment.

Results: Solution was delivered and operational on time and on budget.