Cloud

Colt Technology Services has announced the expansion of its Colt Intelligent Communication services (CIC) portfolio to meet growing demand from customers requiring agile, cloud-based global voice solutions. New Colt Cloud SIP is a flexible service which seamlessly connects across its IQ network to platforms from communication service providers (CSPs) such as Genesys, Twilio and Zoom. The service is ideal for companies with a hybrid workforce, looking to boost collaboration and improve their customer experience with a secure, high-performance, cloud-based voice solution which integrates with cloud platforms. It is also extending its Teams voice activation, through direct routing and operator connect to countries such as Slovakia, Luxembourg and Norway. Activating voice can be complex, but the company focuses on automating processes to reduce this complexity for its customers. Businesses benefit from its commitment to customer experience, automation and simplification, while maintaining their existing relationships with providers. Alternatively, businesses can select a new partner within its ecosystem such as Genesys, Twilio or Zoom. The company has spent time establishing voice connectivity with major CSPs; automating and integrating SIP Trunk ordering and provisioning; establishing partner agreements; and making sure services are fully compliant with regulatory standards. Now, it can connect voice services with any cloud vendor that supports a Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) capability.   Peter Coppens, VP Product Portfolio, Colt Technology Services, says, “We are excited to welcome global leaders, Genesys, Twilio and Zoom, to our popular partner ecosystem at a time when more and more businesses are moving voice to the cloud. It is a perfect fit for the modern workplace, there is no physical hardware to manage, it is secure and resilient, costs are transparent and it suits a hybrid workforce. Managing providers, contracts and provisioning is the time-consuming part. With Colt Cloud SIP, we solve that problem for our customers, interconnecting their applications to voice services almost anywhere in the world.”

Vertiv announces the opening of head office in South Africa

Vertiv has announced the official opening of its African head office and a customer experience centre, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.  According to Wojtek Piorko, Managing Director, Vertiv Africa, the formal opening of the South African premises forms an important part of the company’s ‘Africa for Africa’ initiative, and underscores the organisation’s investment in the region. “Vertiv is placing a strong business focus on Africa, as well as expanding our local network of authorised partners and service providers. Our ‘Africa for Africa’ project also emphasises the importance of meeting our local clients’ needs, of which the opening of the African head office and local customer experience centre play a key role,” explains Wojtek. The Johannesburg Customer Experience Centre provides customers with the opportunity to engage with Vertiv’s diverse range of critical infrastructure solutions for applications from the edge of the network to the cloud. These include: Vertiv SmartCabinet: a complete cabinet solution for a multitude of environments, providing intelligent and integrated infrastructure for any type of IT. Vertiv Liebert EXS: compact and flexible three-phase uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with high-efficiency operation. Vertiv Liebert EXM2: highly reliable monolithic UPS designed to provide industry-leading performance and efficiency up to 98.8%, for mid-size critical applications. In addition to the products displayed at the centre, it offers the experience of its large-scale modular data centres, power and thermal management solutions through virtual reality (VR) to customers. Wojtek clarifies, “Using our VR offering, the Vertiv Virtual Showroom, clients can embark on a unique virtual trip to experience Vertiv's capabilities, giving both novices and seasoned experts of Vertiv products a way to fully understand the entire layout of the critical digital infrastructure.”  Users wear a headset and use hand controllers to navigate the VR environment, interact with equipment, and watch animations that demonstrate a product’s value and key features. They can observe the spatial placement of its rack and row solutions, as though they were actually on site. They are also able to customise a Vertiv VR rack by placing servers, power, thermal, and storage devices into the unit.  “This experience gives decision-makers a deeper understanding of the entire infrastructure at work,” Wojtek adds. “In addition, our new centre will provide presales, sales, and product training, as well as full service certification courses for Vertiv’s authorised service partner network.” 

VAST Data in conjunction with Commvault, has announced that the two companies are enabling Expedient to deliver Service Level Agreement (SLA) to its customers, without the conventional expense associated with legacy infrastructure. Expedient is a full stack cloud service provider to transform its IT operations through multi-cloud solutions and manage infrastructure services. The service provider selected VAST to help drive greater operational efficiency and performance for customers with data protection services from Commvault, and has seen an additional data reduction since moving to VAST’s data platform, on top of Commvault’s front-end deduplication. “With VAST and Commvault, Expedient is partnering with the best software companies in the industry to deliver the most innovative IT solutions in the market,” says Bryan Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Expedient. “Our customers depend on us to manage their IT infrastructure to allow them to focus on their core business, and through these partnerships, we are improving the performance, reliability, and scalability for our customers, resulting in a higher service level and improved recovery time. That translates to better business outcomes for the short and long term.” VAST has enabled Expedient to retire its legacy Direct Attached Storage (DAS) target, in order to achieve: Rapid ransomware recovery Infrastructure consolidation at scale Improved data reduction through Commvault + VAST integration 80% less power, space, cooling Archive economics with NVMe performance Bryan continues, “We were very impressed with VAST’s consistently high data transfer and secondary data reduction. For instance, normally, sealing a deduplication database would cause storage consumption to increase as it requires all new data signatures and blocks. However, as VAST was able to identify the incoming blocks, it was able to deduplicate that data regardless.” “Together with VAST, we are enabling solution and service providers like Expedient to help their customers recover their historical backups at a much faster rate to ensure their business and operations continue to run undisrupted,” says Alan Atkinson, Chief Partner Officer at Commvault. “As we finalise our new validated design based on this successful use case, we are excited to see how our partners and customers will take advantage of this deep integration.”

HPE announces extension of HPE GreenLake private cloud portfolio

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced partnership with Equinix to extend the HPE GreenLake private cloud portfolio at Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres. It will pre-provision HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise and Private Cloud Business Edition at Equinix data centres around the world, giving customers access to a range of private cloud offerings, for greater speed, agility, flexibility, and choice in their hybrid cloud strategy. HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise is API-enabled and is an automated, flexible, scalable, and enterprise-grade private cloud with a simple modern experience. It has been designed with modular infrastructure and software, and supports the deployment of bare metal, virtual machines, and container workloads in a self-service mode. With simple rate-card pricing that delivers a pay-as-you-go consumption model, it offers six workload-optimised instances for general purpose, compute, memory and storage.HPE also expanded its private cloud portfolio with the addition of Private Cloud Business Edition. It allows customers to spin up virtual machines (VMs) across hybrid clouds on demand and self-manage their private cloud from VMs to infrastructure with AIOps-driven simplicity. With an intuitive cloud operational experience for management and seamless integration for data protection, customers can store, manage and protect data across on-premises, edge and public cloud while providing data availability and efficiency. It provides flexibility with self-service agility, as well as the option to pay up-front or pay-as-you-go.  Both editions will be pre-provisioned and available on a rolling basis at Equinix IBX data centres in metro areas such as Frankfurt, London, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto, and Washington DC. It aims to provide customers with a wide range of workload management and payment options to cover a broad spectrum of their private cloud needs. “Increasingly, global organisations are turning to digital infrastructure providers to help transform IT investments by distributing private cloud infrastructure at the edge, close to clouds, users, and applications, to enhance enterprise network capabilities that can enable rapid scaling and security, minimise latency and ensure availability of applications,” says David Tapper, Program Vice President at IDC. “By deepening their partnership, HPE and Equinix can assist customers in their hybrid cloud strategy by providing managed cloud services that provision standardised private clouds and simplify integration with public cloud providers, add capacity on an as-needed basis, and enable shorter time commitments. Together, this should help organisations achieve critical objectives such as improved productivity, lower costs and enhanced ROI.”

Cloud Industry Forum appoints new Director and Chairman

The Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) has announced that Ian Jeffs, the Infrastructure Solutions Group Country Manager at Lenovo UK & Ireland, has been appointed as Director and Chairman to usher in the next phase of cloud adoption and collaboration in the UK. With his extensive expertise in the technology industry and commitment to driving cloud innovation, Ian is well positioned to work with CIF’s CEO to lead it in its mission to promote best practices and standards within the cloud computing industry. The CIF is an industry body dedicated to driving cloud adoption and supporting organisations in their digital transformation journeys. As Chairman, Ian will spearhead its strategic initiatives, collaborating with industry leaders, policymakers, and stakeholders to shape the future of cloud computing in the UK. Ian re-joined the Lenovo family in 2020 after 12 years and was part of the first team to establish the PC business in the country after its acquisition of ThinkPad from IBM in 2004. With a career spanning 25 years in senior roles in the PC and data centre industry, he has been successful in creating thriving sales, marketing and channel businesses in large technology organisations including Tech Data, Arrow and IBM. David Terrar, CEO, CIF comments, “Ian brings a wealth of experience and a deep understanding of the technology landscape. He has successfully led Lenovo's UK ISG business, demonstrating strong leadership and fostering partnerships to drive growth and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Ian's appointment as Chairman of the CIF is a testament to his reputation and the trust placed in him by the industry.” Under Ian’s guidance, the CIF aims to further its mission of promoting innovation, transparency, trust, accountability, equity, diversity, and inclusion in cloud services, helping its members do a better job. With his strategic vision and extensive industry knowledge, he will play a pivotal role in shaping policies, guidelines, and industry best practices, fostering innovation and advancing cloud adoption. "I am honoured and excited to take on the role of Chairman at the Cloud Industry Forum," says Ian. "Cloud computing is transforming businesses across industries, and it is crucial that we continue to foster collaboration and set industry standards to ensure its secure and efficient adoption. I look forward to working with the CIF and its members to drive innovation, enable digital transformation, take a stand on key issues, and shape the future of cloud technology."

Cato Networks has announced a new SASE throughput record, achieving 5Gbps on a single encrypted tunnel with all security inspections enabled. “Once again, Cato has set the mark for SASE at scale,” says Gur Shatz, Co-Founder, President, and COO of Cato Networks. "Pushing the boundary of SASE throughput worldwide is more than an engineering achievement. It demonstrates how quickly a platform with a cloud-native architecture can make new technology globally available."  As larger enterprises adopt SASE, higher capacity connections are needed for interconnecting data centres and private clouds. Cato meets that need with leading support for 5Gbps throughput on a single, encrypted tunnel regardless of security inspections. Previously, Cato supported a maximum of 3Gbps per tunnel. The improved throughput underscores the benefits of a cloud-native architecture. It nearly doubled the performance of the Cato Socket without requiring any hardware changes. This was only possible because Cato runs the compute-intensive operations that normally degrade edge appliance performance, in the Cato Single Pass Processing Engine (SPACE) running across Cato PoPs. By improving SPACE, all edges connected to the Cato SASE Cloud gain increased throughput. Replacement of the Cato Socket is not required. By contrast, SASE solutions implemented as virtual machines (VMs) in the cloud or modified web proxies remain limited to under 1Gbps of throughput for a single tunnel. This limitation forces enterprises to have their edge appliance create and manage multiple tunnels and load-balance their traffic between them. Cato is also delivering 5Gbps connections to other cloud providers. The new Cato cross-connect will enable private, high-speed layer-2 connections between Cato and any other cloud provider connecting to the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX) or Digital Reality. The Cato cross-connect meets the need for multicloud and hybrid cloud deployments that demand reliable, high-throughput connections. It also enables channel partners to deliver Cato SSE 360 into legacy deployments by establishing a network-to-network interface (NNI) into the Cato SASE Cloud.

DE-CIX announces its newest expansion in Denmark

DE-CIX has pushed its expansion forward with its newest internet exchanges in Esbjerg and Copenhagen, Denmark. The IXs are now ready for service in the data centres of Bulk Data Centers and Digital Realty, with more enabled sites to be announced in due course. These internet exchanges are based on the DE-CIX Apollon interconnection and cloud platform, which includes cloud routing services for companies to manage their hybrid and multi-cloud scenarios and gain control of their data beyond the public internet. With the approach of one access, all clouds, and every network, it is bringing its InterconnectionFLEX service to Denmark, providing enterprises with an interconnection package as a solution for peering, cloud connectivity, and private network interconnects. Customers can have direct access to over 50 clouds, 2,000+ local and international networks, and over 250 data centres in Germany, Southern Europe, Asia, and the US. In addition, it will act as a digital hub for regional connectivity, enabling local networks low-latency interconnection and the localisation of global content, while increasing network stability, scalability, and security. The platform also offers advanced service features and automation, including access to the DE-CIX self-service portal and the DE-CIX API. “DE-CIX is proud to provide interconnection services in Denmark, bringing our state-of-the-art platform to a highly digitalised society. By interconnecting our Danish platform with not only our Nordic ecosystem, but also with our interconnection platforms in the Central and Southern European, and North American markets, it offers Denmark access to the largest data centre and carrier neutral interconnection ecosystem. DE-CIX is here to serve interconnection requirements of Danish enterprises, today and in the future,” says Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX. “We’re delighted to have the opportunity to work with DE-CIX and provide its members with access to a wide range of colocation and connectivity solutions, including direct connections to the world’s major cloud providers. Through our data centre platform, PlatformDIGITAL, businesses will benefit from low-latency, secure access to companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, helping to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and ultimately, support them as they continue their digital transformation journeys,” says Pernille Hoffman, Managing Director, Digital Realty in the Nordics. “Our partnership with DE-CIX will give local and international customers the option to interconnect and access a range of services in major markets with even lower latency. By strategically locating our data centre in Esbjerg, we leverage the advantages of a close proximity to continental Europe and robust fibre connectivity to the US. We are seeing an increase in demand for low-cost, highly sustainable solutions and with these new DE-CIX Nordics locations we are helping to support that gravity shift north, where you find the greenest energy in Europe,” says Gisle M. Eckhoff, Executive Vice President, Data Centres at Bulk Infrastructure Group.

Scality has announced today that Somerville has selected it to scale its data storage services in order to meet growing customer demand.   The solution combines a petabyte-scale stretched RING object storage architecture across three sites in Sydney and Melbourne. It runs on HPE Apollo 4000 data storage servers from Hewlett Packard Enterprise with immutable data protection, utilising Veeam backup software over an S3 API. This solution is delivered through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform to provide Somerville scalable performance with pay-per-use flexibility.Craig Somerville, CEO and Founder, Somerville IT Services, says, “For every MSP holding data on behalf of customers, and even the CIO of an enterprise organisation whose responsibility is to ensure that they protect the organisation’s data, Scality’s immutability features and resilience features are absolutely critical.”Since the initial deployment, Somerville has increased capacity. Scality’s object storage extends Veeam’s enterprise-grade capabilities and helps manage data with reduced cybersecurity risks and lower costs. Craig says, "We have one engineer who manages the platform day-to-day. He spends more time on improvements and developing the platform than the time the entire team used to spend just keeping the lights on. It’s completely changed the way we manage the data protection practice.” The HPE GreenLake deployment provides cost-savings, flexibility, and less hassle for the Somerville team. Scality continues to see adoption across all sectors including service providers, financial services, government, healthcare, life sciences and more.Wally MacDermid, Vice President of Strategic Alliances, Scality says, "We are excited to see what Somerville has accomplished for their clients and their own IT service offerings. They are a trusted source for bringing Australian customers into the modern era with a sovereign solution that keeps data protected. The continued growth rates around the world with both, Veeam and HPE GreenLake, keep us focused on our mission to provide customers with ultimate cyber resiliency and unbreakable data protection.”

Spirent brings the network edge into view with its new solution

Spirent Communications has announced the availability of its new over-the-air (OTA) performance-monitoring solution, designed to bring the network edge into the complete end-to-end test and monitoring landscape. The Spirent Mobile Test Platform (MTP) is a small form factor solution, that provides edge service monitoring and remote management. Supporting this handheld device and four SIMs in one functional box, the platform features a patent-pending management technology that enables unprecedented remote monitoring of the customer experience, whatever the chosen location. It also provides operators with central control of test devices at the edge, including software updates and device hardware reboots. “The ability to effectively test and monitor network performance end-to-end must fully embrace the edge,” says Spirent’s Charles Thompson, VP of Product Management. “Assurance solutions need to keep up with increasingly stringent thresholds to ensure performance and quality of experience at the edge during pre-deployment, verification, and ongoing service management. This is why we have developed the MTP.” The MTP enables systematic performance monitoring and ad hoc testing from the edge of the network that can be consumed and integrated for deeper network analytics at a larger scale and provide unrivalled network visibility and analysis. By combining the existing fixed and mobile network assurance solutions with the OTA capability of MTP, customers can now deploy and assure new 5G services to detect and isolate faults in the network.

Airtel to power Government of India’s Ed-Tech platform

Bharti Airtel has announced that it has won the Cloud and CDN mandate from the Digital India Corporation (DIC) to power DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing), a platform for open education digital content. DIC is under the aegis of the Ministry of Education (MoE), Government of India. With this mandate, Airtel becomes a trusted partner for end-to-end management of DIKSHA’s online platforms across its mobile application and website. The application and website will now be powered by Airtel Cloud and will be made accessible to students across the country for free educational content in their preferred Indian language. Students, particularly in far-flung and remote locations, will be able to easily enrol onto the platform. The company will also lead the migration of the platform to Oracle Cloud and offer its managed services along with CDN solutions. Praveen Agarwal, Head, Government Business, Airtel Business, adds, “DIKSHA offers 9,300+ courses in 35+ Indian languages, and has witnessed more than 50bn learning sessions and 60bn minutes of usage by students, making it a large free education platform. We are thrilled to partner with the Ministry of Education to bolster this crucial education infrastructure and advance its accessibility to millions of children across the country with our state-of-the-art cloud and CDN services.”