• The move reinforces Claranet’s strategy and the ambition to become a recognised global player in the managed hybrid cloud hosting market
• With headquarters in São Paulo, CredibiliT is one of the major AWS partners in Latin America and is also a growing Azure partner
• With this acquisition Claranet continues its growth strategy and expands its reach into a new market that offers high growth potential in cloud services

Leading pan-European managed services provider (MSP) Claranet has acquired Brazilian cloud services provider CredibiliT Tecnologia Ltda, in a move that has expanded the company’s size and reach, opening it up to a new region with high growth potential.

The acquisition positions Claranet as one of the most ambitious and dynamic players in the global private, public and hybrid cloud hosting markets.

CredibiliT was founded in 2009 and quickly implemented a full public cloud adoption strategy, becoming a respected cloud player in Brazil, where it is one of only two providers with AWS Premier Consulting Partner status. It has also more recently created an Azure practice and quickly reached Silver Cloud Platform competency. With its multi-cloud approach, CredibiliT has positioned itself as the cloud service provider of choice for customers looking to create new applications or migrate to Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. Both providers have data centres in the São Paulo region, from which they serve Latin America.

Headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil, CredibiliT has an annual turnover of R$30 million (circa £7.5 million), employs 40 staff and serves 100 clients from a wide range of sectors, including Pepsico, Webmotors, Smiles, Editora Abril and TV Globo.

With an ambitious growth strategy, the Claranet Group has grown steadily in Europe, both organically and by acquisition. The Group has annual revenues of over £215 million, employs more than 1,250 staff and works with over 5,800 customers across the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands and Brazil.

Commenting on the acquisition Charles Nasser, founder and CEO of the Claranet Group, said:

This acquisition offers us the opportunity to become the leading cloud services provider in Brazil which is an exciting high growth market. Despite operating platforms for our clients globally for many years, this is our first acquisition outside of Europe. The combination of CredibiliT and Claranet, which already had the highest levels of competence in both AWS and Azure, will create a stronger competitor in the Brazilian market and establish new avenues for growth.”

Daniel Galante (CEO) and André Guerra (CFO), both founders of CredibiliT, will stay in the enlarged business as key senior executives of Claranet in Brazil. Claranet plans to reinforce its Brazilian operation by providing benefits of scale and a larger portfolio, accelerating growth in the region.

Daniel Galante commented:

We are delighted to join forces with Claranet. Being part of a larger group with a similar focus will allow us to be stronger, will reinforce our credibility and give us access to benefits of scale as well as more customers, opportunities and investment capacity. Having celebrated its 20th anniversary recently, Claranet is one of the most established Internet and cloud era services provider in the industry. Importantly, it has kept its agility which puts it in a strong position to adapt in a market that is growing consistently and under constant change.”

New service complements Claranet’s existing offering and opens new opportunities for enhanced communication and collaboration

Managed services provider Claranet has integrated Microsoft Office 365 into its portfolio. The new offering will see Claranet deliver Microsoft’s business-enabling tools through its enterprise-grade network and managed services provision, enabling the company to provide its customers with the full range of solutions they need to drive the necessary digital transformation to achieve business growth.

Office 365 provides organisations with tools that enable them to run their business more efficiently. By moving their office applications and data to the cloud and by supporting more effective collaboration, businesses are able to reduce capital expenditure and drive competitiveness. It also enables businesses to adopt more flexible and mobile working. Office 365 works across a wide range of devices such as laptops, tables and smartphones, so users can work whenever and wherever they choose, in a secure way.

Office 365, when used in conjunction with Claranet’s Hosted Voice service, which is powered by BT, forms the basis of a comprehensive and reliable unified communications service. Claranet’s customers will be able to upgrade entirely to Claranet’s enterprise-grade and network-integrated Hosted Voice service, while maintaining the look and feel they are used to by using Skype for Business as the front end tool.

Neil Thomas, Director of Communications Services, commented:

Office 365 is a core part of our communications portfolio strategy to help customers achieve greater levels of productivity and collaboration. As an addition to Claranet’s wider portfolio it is a natural fit for the modern business, complementing our existing service offerings and meaning customers can work with a single provider to help them maximise their technology investments. Our Hosted Voice service is particularly complementary with Office 365 and provides users with the Skype for Business front-end tool with an enterprise-grade voice platform from BT.

An important part of our Office 365 service model involves working with customers to analyse their business and users in order to propose the most suitable migration and adoption model. We also introduce newer Office 365 suite services such as Planner, Yammer, and Groups and consult on how these can deliver value to their business. The resulting information is then used to deliver a hassle-free migration, reducing pressure on the IT team from the beginning of the process. With in-life support from a team of experts, IT teams are further freed to focus on more valuable activities. The end result is that our customers are gaining competitive advantage as their IT teams are able to concentrate on core projects while all colleagues can collaborate and communicate more effectively,” Neil concluded.

MSP boosts disaster recovery capabilities to better protect customer data

Managed services provider Claranet has launched Enterprise Backup, an enterprise-grade cloud backup and recovery service, supported by backup and recovery software specialist Asigra. The Enterprise Backup service allows Claranet customers greater flexibility and control over their data management practices and in conjunction with Business Backup, a service aimed at smaller businesses, forms part of a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery portfolio.

Enterprise Backup is a remote backup and archiving service that supports a wide range of environments, including physical and virtual services, different operating systems, databases and public cloud services. The service is built on industry-leading Asigra software which, compresses, encrypts and transfers copies of selected data to a secure backup platform in Claranet’s UK-based data centres. The service is based on agent-less architecture and does not require the software to be installed on every target server on a customer’s network, keeping deployment, management and maintenance time to a minimum.

As part of the Enterprise Backup service Claranet recommends analysing which data sets are most important to the organisation and determining how often they should be backed up. Claranet then takes a central role in helping its customers configure their data backup policies. As customers are charged for the amount of data they store on the platform, this consultative approach ensures that they only store exactly what they need, delivering the best possible return on investment.

Martin Saunders, Claranet’s Technical Director, commented:

Increasingly the real value of a business doesn’t sit in its physical assets but in its data. It has become the foundation of every modern business, no matter the industry, so the need for a robust data protection strategy has never been more pressing. The challenge is that this data can be stored in multiple locations and the amount of data within organisations is increasing exponentially. Not all of this data is of equal importance, so deploying a one-size-fits-all data backup solution won’t achieve the desired results and would be unnecessarily costly. Also many organisations are still using expensive and unreliable tape technology for backup, and in some cases storing backups on site.

We’ve launched our Enterprise Backup service to give our customers greater choice, control, flexibility and confidence over how they protect their business critical data. As a company we’ve got years of expertise in a wide range of industry-leading backup technologies, as well as full ownership of a secure network and data centres, meaning that we are in a strong position to deliver tailored solutions that meet our customers’ requirements. Moreover, using the latest in data analytics tools, we play an active role in helping our customers sift through their data and determine backup configurations that deliver peace of mind for the best possible price,” Saunders continued.

New research shows that 54 per cent of retailers expect their industry to be significantly disrupted over the next two years

Retailers must review their approach to application development practices and IT infrastructure to achieve the business agility they need to address the threat of disruption in their industry. This is according to Ian Furness, Hosting Services Director at Claranet, who states that implementing a DevOps approach is critical if retailers are to keep up with the quickening pace of their sector and achieve competitive advantage.

According to a new report by Microsoft, ‘Digital Transformation: The Age of Innocence, Inertia or Innovation?’, 54 per cent of retailers expect their industry to be significantly disrupted over the next two years. Claranet believes that in order address the threat of disruption and fend off competitors, retailers need to be able to adapt quickly.
However, just 39 per cent of European retailers have implemented a DevOps approach, leaving a significant portion still to do so, and only 38 per cent host their ecommerce applications in public cloud, according to Claranet’s 2016 research report.

For Ian Furness, those retailers that haven’t yet adopted DevOps and/or public cloud will be placed at a distinct disadvantage, unable to keep up with their more agile competitors.

He commented:

The retail sector is ripe for disruption. As a result, it’s vital for retailers to be able to adapt quickly in order to contend with the disruptive players within their industry. Consumer behaviour is constantly changing and many will not use a retailer who lacks a good website or mobile application. Ultimately, the faster an organisation can improve its applications, the better chance they have of gaining a competitive advantage. However, this puts additional pressure on the IT department who must ensure they can keep up with these changes. Not doing so can have serious repercussions on the competitive advantage of companies and ultimately their bottom line, as what businesses can really afford to wait for new applications in the digital age?

“With software now at the centre of online retail businesses, applications are a key differentiating factor from the competition. The retailers who will be best placed to gain a significant edge and overcome issues and compete with agility are those who start to implement a DevOps approach. The benefits include a more streamlined and integrated environment that is able to facilitate an accelerated application lifecycle. Public cloud is also an important part of this story here. The potential for automation that comes with hyper-scale public cloud platforms is essential for supporting DevOps, while the scalability they bring enables retailers to cope with sudden and potentially huge spikes in traffic. It’s therefore surprising that so few retailers have yet gone down that route” he continued.

For retailers to truly win in their market and compete at the forefront of digital transformation, IT teams should be focusing their efforts on developing applications that deliver the optimal customer experience, while using a partner with deep expertise in designing, deploying and managing both public cloud and hosted platforms. By working with a trusted cloud provider with the specific skills and expertise needed to help organisations architect the best possible solution for their applications, they are able to focus their efforts where they are needed most,” Ian concluded.

The security industry has a bit of a boy-who-cried-wolf problem. Every potential threat is maximally hyped, to the point where no one knows what they should take seriously or dismiss as marketing spin or simple overreaction.

And if you’re a shepherd, everything that moves starts looking like a wolf. Particularly if you’re a shepherd that specialises in anti-wolf security suites, right?

But in the same way that locking your front door is always worth it – even if a full-blown, code-secured gate is overkill – basic email security is a no-brainer.

Leading managed services provider Claranet is the sole Platinum Sponsor the 2016 Amazon Web Service (AWS) Enterprise Summit in London. Claranet’s sponsorship of the event, being held at the ExCel Centre on 8 November, further establishes its position as a key European-wide provider of managed services on AWS.

The AWS Enterprise Summit in London is designed to educate attendees on how to accelerate adoption of the cloud and maximise the benefits it can deliver to an organisation.

Claranet achieved Premier Partner Status with AWS earlier this year. It is rapidly deepening its engagement and expertise with the cloud giant to enable customers to take advantage of the platform. John Allen, CTO of Claranet customer Missguided, will speak at the Summit on the company’s transformation following its recent migration to AWS with Claranet. Sam Bashton, a leader of Claranet’s Cloud Practice, will also be offering consultancy sessions to IT leaders who are looking to understand how they can get the best out of AWS infrastructure.

Michel Robert, Managing Director of Claranet UK, commented:

Enabling customers to take full advantage of the transformational benefits that Cloud-based services can bring, is a key focus for our business. The AWS Summits across the UK and Europe are therefore major events for us. Earlier this year we were the Platinum Sponsor of the 2016 European AWS Summit, and we take pride in lending our support for the AWS Enterprise Summit as well.

Our close ties to AWS means that we are in a strong position to provide the expertise a customer needs to migrate to and make best us of the AWS platform, resulting in better application performance, availability and security. Missguided’s success with AWS is a prime example of the potential of the cloud platform to transform the way a business operates for the better.”

Claranet has built a European-wide cloud practice, aiming to bring the significant benefits of managed AWS services to business across Europe. In 2016, Claranet acquired UK business Bashton to develop its DevOps and AWS expertise. It also acquired AWS specialists Morea in France and Celingest in Spain in 2015. Its customers today include ITV, BBC Worldwide, Missguided, Orange, Superdry, Liverpool Football Club, and Virgin Holidays.

Robert concluded:

Our heritage in both hosting and network services puts us in a strong position to take advantage of cloud platforms such as AWS on behalf of our customers. Our ability to draw on the wide range of AWS services and combine these with a range of tools for code release and automation into a single offering drives real value for our customers. Throughout our 20-year history, we’ve seen the ways in which innovative technologies can transform the way businesses operate and improve efficiencies; the advent of the cloud is no exception. The AWS Enterprise Summit offers an exceptional chance for more businesses to realise the benefits of AWS solutions, and we are delighted to play a part in that.”

Communication, awareness and flexibility key to reducing Shadow IT risk

European organisations are increasingly concerned about Shadow IT, research from managed services provider Claranet has found. Despite the much reported potential for innovation that working collaboratively with employees brings, many IT leaders are struggling to be more flexible. The result is that more people are adopting the technology that they need without the involvement or authorisation of the IT department.

Surveying 900 IT decision-makers across a variety of organisations in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and the Benelux, Claranet found that almost one in four respondents (24 per cent) named Shadow IT as one of the biggest IT challenges that their organisation is currently facing. Only 13 per cent reported Shadow IT as a major IT challenge last year, representing a significant 11 percentage point rise.

Andy Wilton, CIO of Claranet, explains: “The role of the IT leader is changing rapidly, and the successful ones will be those who can move away from clinging to shiny objects and managing infrastructure, and think more strategically about what their businesses really need to be successful. Part of this move involves doing more to build understanding between the wider business and the IT department and it is clear that there’s work to do on that front. According to our own research, 72 per cent of IT departments don’t fully understanding the needs of the business and 74 per cent of businesses don’t properly understand what their IT department does, or how it can help. IT teams should focus their efforts on innovation and understanding how to support the core business through applications and data rather than managing infrastructure, which should be left to a trusted partner. This shift in priorities will leave the IT department with more time to concentrate on building relationships, and working collaboratively throughout the business, to build effective processes for procuring modern applications and services.

“By developing closer relationships with business units IT leaders can negate Shadow IT: either through the business unit feeling close enough to request the IT team does the procurement, or through the IT team outlining a policy by which individuals can procure on their own but in a controlled and recorded way. The benefit of the latter approach means security is less of a risk, while there is more freedom for the individual, as well as adequate provision for technical assistance. Keeping a regularly updated inventory means the IT team have a good picture of the usable IT estate in the company, allowing them to understand risk and plan strategically.

“Employees are increasingly influenced by their personal lives in terms of what technology they want to use, and, ultimately, trying to fight against the tide of this consumerisation of IT won’t work. But more importantly, there are also more valuable activities that they should be focusing on, like growing their businesses. This being said, the potential risks of Shadow IT are too great for it to be ignored, so a flexible compromise, built around solid communication, relationships and monitoring must be reached. In effect the IT team needs to let go of its grasp on all technology procurement and learn to shadow the business back,” Wilton concluded.

The Economist’s first Middle Market Forum will examine how businesses can weather the Brexit storm whilst still trying to overcome the daily challenges of securing growth capital, recruiting and retaining skilled workers, keeping abreast of latest technology changes and perfecting internal management structures.

Claranet’s very own founder and CEO, Charles Nasser, will be speaking on one of the panels: ‘Breaking the vicious cycle: securing funding to finance growth’ at 15:15.

Information and registration

On June 23rd Britons voted to leave the European Union, creating shockwaves across the world. The months ahead are rife with uncertainty, from the value of the pound and the future of trade with the continent to the timeline of Brexit and whether the United Kingdom itself will hold together.

Middle-market companies, with a turnover between £25m and £500m, are the backbone of the UK economy, contributing over a third of private-sector GDP, revenues and employment while representing barely 2% of all UK firms. Business leaders must also overcome the daily challenges of securing growth capital, recruiting and retaining skilled workers, keeping abreast of latest technology changes, perfecting internal management structures and getting the tools to expand abroad.

The Economist’s first Middle Market Forum will gather the UK’s leading mid-market chief executive officers, managing directors, founders and owners to discuss what lies ahead for British businesses in the wake of the vote for Brexit. A cheaper pound will make imports more expensive, but could be a boon for exporting firms.

• Will the UK enter a new recession?
• What is the Brexit timeframe and is it indeed inevitable?
• Can business carry on as usual until the activation of the Lisbon Treaty’s article 50, which would officially launch Britain’s divorce from the EU?
• What happens during the difficult negotiations over the separation?

We’ll be asking, how well equipped is Britain’s middle market to plan for the UK’s uncertain future while keeping up revenue and employment? How can business leaders develop a strategy amid such uncertainty?

Speakers and agenda

• Rt Hon Michael Gove, MP: Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath
• William Sargent: Co-founder and CEO, Framestore
• Graham Cartledge, CBE: Chariman, Benoy
• Mottie Kessler: Chairman and CEO, 2m Holidays
• Guy Harwood: Chairman, Harwoods
• John Timpson: Chairman, Timpson Limited
• Spencer McCarthy: Chairman and CEO, Churchill Retirement Living
• Rob Donaldson: Head of Corporate Finance, RSM
• Stephen Fitzpatrick: Founder and CEO, OVO Energy
• Kenny Wilson: CEO, Cath Kidston
• Mark Wilson: Executive Vice-President and CFO of Aston Martin Lagonda
• Miriam Gonzalez: Partner, Co-chair International Trade Practice, Dechert
• Rami Ranger, CBE: Chairman, SunMark
• Anthony Fletcher: CEO, Graze
• Jon Reynolds: CEO and Co-founder, Swiftkey
• Annette Doyle: Managing Director, Trumpf
• Sian Keane: Vice-President Talent and People, Farfetch UK
• Edward Ungar: CCO, Onfido
• Charles Nasser: Founder and CEO, Claranet Group

Click here for the full agenda and schedule