Node4 has announced the launch of its new Managed Azure Hybrid Cloud solution. The new offering is possible because of Node4’s significant and sustained data centre investment — and was developed with technical input from Microsoft, Intel and Lenovo. The result is a revolutionary managed service offering that addresses the complexity, compliance, latency, and legacy technology challenges faced by businesses when migrating to a hybrid IT environment.
Node4’s Managed Azure Hybrid Cloud solution delivers five key benefits. It allows customers to:
- Create their own Azure region in a Node4 data centre on dedicated infrastructure with similar APIs and multiple PaaS services.
- Use the same skills and tools to maintain consistency across the data centre and the Azure environment.
- Access cost-effective, high-performance Azure infrastructure via one of Node4’s data centres for performance-sensitive databases and workloads.
- Strengthen their business continuity proposition with logical separation and operator diversity.
- Unlock Azure benefits, including free security updates for EoL, Windows, and SQL Server versions across the hybrid environment.
The solution, which utilises Microsoft Azure Stack HCI and Microsoft Azure Arc, is hosted in Node4’s state-of-the-art data centres. The offering also includes hot-node scalability — allowing customers to scale on demand without the long lead times often associated with hybrid infrastructure expansion. Node4 has achieved this industry-first by investing upfront in additional nodes within its data centres. This enables the company to deliver the first truly scalable, agile, and flexible Azure-based hybrid offering as a managed service.
Andrew Slater, Technology Practice Director – Cloud at Node4, says: “Our new Managed Azure Hybrid Cloud solution is a logical, intuitive offering. It allows businesses to migrate substantially more of their legacy infrastructure into an Azure environment without the challenges that often frustrate their digital transformation process. We predict many organisations will use the solution as a stepping-stone while migrating legacy VM environments to Azure. Others, with precise performance or data sovereignty needs, will maintain it as a long-term infrastructure component.”
Node4’s Managed Azure Hybrid Cloud solution introduces modern Azure tooling across the entire hybrid environment. This includes Site Recovery, Backup, Update Management, File Sync, Monitor and Security Center. Furthermore, because it’s a managed service, Node4 handles all the Azure infrastructure setup and configuration — and maintains the hardware in its data centre. Customers simply select the servers, support package, architecture, and stack environment that are right for them. Then, using the Node4-developed Azure Landing Zone, they can quickly and easily configure a hybrid network architecture that meets Microsoft’s best practice guidelines. This, in turn, ensures hybrid environments reach maturity and full functionality at a much faster pace.
A Managed Azure Hybrid Cloud with general purpose nodes starts at £5000 per month. This includes a three-node Azure Stack HCI cluster (n+1) with an ExpressRoute Circuit and Azure Landing Zone support — the cluster is built using the latest compute and storage technologies, optimised for performance.
Apay Obang-Oyway, Territory Channel Sales Lead, Microsoft UK, concludes: “We congratulate Node4 on the launch of its Managed Azure Hybrid Cloud solution. This is an incredibly exciting new chapter for the business and the result of our extremely close ongoing working relationship. The solution’s ability to extend Azure functionality into hybrid environments and guide businesses at each stage of their digital transformation journey is ground-breaking. This kind of outside-the-box thinking demonstrates Node4’s steadfast commitment to helping businesses reap the full benefits of the Azure platform — and contributed to Node4 earning Microsoft Azure Expert MSP status.”
