Flexibility of Pay-As-You-Go does not always mean value for money; predictable usage requirements often better served by fixed-rate model, says Claranet

Over a third of large enterprises that are using cloud services have adopted multiple payment models for these services, particularly when supplied by more than one provider, according to research by Claranet. Michel Robert, Managing Director of Claranet UK, says that while this as a sign that organisations are adopting an incremental approach to cloud adoption, they are also inviting unnecessary complexity and may be leaving themselves open to paying over the odds.

Claranet’s third annual cloud adoption survey, which polled 300 IT decision-makers from a range of small and medium-sized businesses, and enterprises, found that 34 per cent of large organisations (those with more than 3,000 employees) that are using cloud-based services are taking these services from more than one provider and are tied to more than one payment model as a result. Payment models cited included flat-rate subscriptions and a variety of scalable and “Pay-As-You-Go” (PAYG) options.

The apparent flexibility offered by PAYG payment models may give the impression of value for money, but Robert counsels caution:

Flexibility has always been one of the key selling points of cloud computing and outsourced IT, and this extends to the models available when it comes to paying for services. Just as they need to ensure the service they take is suited to their needs, organisations must make sure the payment model they choose is appropriate to the way in which they will use their cloud services,” he said.

Our research revealed that 87 per cent of organisations surveyed cited flexibility of compute resources (ability to scale up or down) and access to applications as a key objective when migrating to the cloud. Yet 75 per cent said that their compute usage was predictable. A Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) model may provide value for money if you are frequently using the ‘burst’ facility of your cloud service. However, if a company’s particular workload is largely predictable it may end up paying more than it needs to. Yet in most circumstances, it should be possible to anticipate your requirements and put in place a payment model that reflects this level of productivity and delivers genuine value,” Robert continued.

Robert recommends an incremental approach to cloud adoption: “Many organisations and their IT chiefs face increased demand from the business to provide applications with high availability on a 24/7 basis. This high level of dependence on these applications, coupled with increased complexity, is a key driver to partner with proven outsourcing companies. In most cases, these organisations can leverage their scale and provide services to companies at a lower cost than the companies doing it in-house. This is especially true for mid-sized organisations. Against this backdrop, cloud computing can be an ideal option for those organisations looking to take a more agile and iterative approach to reduce the business risks associated with IT change,” he said.

“An incremental approach to cloud adoption does, however, increase the potential for complexity and over-payment, particularly when different services are procured from different providers,” Robert concluded.

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s hosting portfolio, visit hosting services.
• For more information about Claranet’s communications portfolio, visit communications services.
• For more information about Claranet’s networks portfolio, visit networks services.

• Claranet becomes one of the few service providers in France with the combined HADS, PCI-DSS and ISO 27001 accreditations, and extends its reach into a new market segment
• Deal confirms Claranet’s position as the leading independent provider of managed services to the mid-market in Western Europe
• Ambitious strategy of rapid expansion continues – with Grita as the latest in a series of key acquisitions (Star, Typhon, CGEST and Echiron)

Claranet, one of Europe’s leading independent managed services providers, has acquired Grita, a specialist provider of hosting services to the healthcare sector in France, and accredited with the French Ministry of Health’s HADS (Hébergeur Agrée de Données de Santé) certification for the hosting of private medical data. The acquisition is part of Claranet’s continued European growth strategy, and creates the region’s largest cloud services provider to the mid-market.

Since entering the healthcare and emerging e-pharmacy markets in 2010, Grita has become a leading player – with over 50 major customers in the sector, including Philips and Agfa. It was also one of the first companies in France to achieve the HADS standard. Its specialist product portfolio, complements Claranet’s existing market offering and further extends the company’s expertise in hosting and outsourced web applications.

The HADS accreditation, combined with Claranet’s existing ISO 27001 and PCI-DSS certifications, makes the company one of the few hosting providers in France to have this set of key industry accreditations, and extends its reach into this fast-growing market segment.

Claranet continues to be a success story in the European technology market, having grown steadily both organically and through acquisition. Adopting an ambitious growth strategy, Grita is the latest in a wave of acquisitions made by the company across Europe over the last 18 months – Star (UK, 2012), Typhon (France, 2012), CGEST (Portugal, 2012), and more recently Echiron (Portugal, 2014).

Olivier Beaudet, MD at Claranet France, says:

Grita’s specialist expertise in the healthcare sector makes it the perfect partner for Claranet. The hosting market in France is particularly vibrant and is evolving rapidly. Already a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for European Managed Hosting, the acquisition further consolidates Claranet’s position in France, and ensures we are well-placed to take advantage of new opportunities within existing and emerging markets in this region.”

“Becoming part of the Claranet Group will create new opportunities for our customers, our partners, and our employees,” said Jean-Pierre Denis, Sales Director at Grita. “They will all benefit from Claranet’s extensive pan-European operations, its strong financial footing, and an expanded services portfolio.”

MSP to present latest cloud adoption findings from the Claranet Research Programme

Claranet, one of Europe’s leading managed service providers, will today detail the latest cloud adoption trends from the Claranet Research Programme at Cloud Expo Europe 2014. The show is the company’s first UK event since it acquired Portuguese MSP Echiron in February 2014, confirming their position as the leading managed services provider in Western Europe.

The acquisition of Echiron, which is the latest in a string of recent acquisitions, cements Claranet’s position in Portugal as the leading provider of managed hosting and applications services in the region. It means that customers will benefit from an expanded services portfolio as well as greater capabilities in Portugal.

Visitors to the Claranet stand will receive an early preview of how Claranet is exploiting new technology to address the demand for increased agility, flexibility, and availability. Show attendees will have the opportunity to see how Claranet can take one version of a client/server application and deploy it to any device, anywhere, anytime.

Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK Managing Director, said:

From our research, it is clear that the majority of UK businesses have their sights firmly set on the appropriate adoption of cloud services. The large-scale IT projects of old are gradually being phased out to a more service-based approach to IT procurement. Rather than charging head-on towards one type of infrastructure, businesses are now able to pick-and-choose the types of IT that are most appropriate for their individual applications.”

“This application-centric approach gives businesses the flexibility to construct an IT estate that will support the needs of the organisation, evolving as-and-when required. It does, however, pose a challenge in terms of maintaining an integrated and functional approach given the likely hybrid mix of infrastructure required – some cloud based, some dedicated and potentially some on-site. With demand on IT set to continue to grow over the next 12-months, IT departments will need to work more closely with their service providers to migrate and integrate their services effectively.” Robert continued.

On the first day of the event (26th February), Mark Wilson, Claranet’s Senior Product Manager for Hosting, and Andrew Audsley, Product Manager for Business Applications, will be presenting on the topic of customer-focused innovation. The presentation will take place in the Cloud Management, Services and Applications theatre at 13:45, and they will be discussing the ways in which cloud is transforming the business IT estate.

Later that afternoon, Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK Managing Director, will present the latest cloud adoption trends from the Claranet Research Programme in the Keynote theatre at 16:15. Robert will discuss the ways in which cloud is facilitating business transformation and innovation, and will be joined by Richard Thomas, founder and CEO of NetEvidence, who will offer a first-hand account of their cloud migration, explaining why thinking application first matters.

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s hosting portfolio, visit hosting services.
• For more information about Claranet’s communications portfolio, visit communications services.
• For more information about Claranet’s networks portfolio, visit networks services.

This blog is used with permission from Sift, the digital agency, who are a customer of Claranet’s. The original blog can be found here.

A few years ago a venture capitalist told me the secret of success when growing a technology business was to sell the company within a single technology cycle. His reasoning was that you really didn’t want the hassle and risks of transitioning your platform from one paradigm to the next. This post is for those of us with longer term aspirations.

In our case, the project started in 2007 and culminated six years later with Sift’s CIO Chris Wood switching off our servers at Verizon just before Xmas last year (as evidenced by the empty racks and redundant servers below), consolidating everything with Claranet and Amazon.

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It seems with every week that passes there is another breach of data confidentiality. Recently customer data from 2,000 Barclays’ customers was presented to the Mail on Sunday on a memory stick by an anonymous source. Apparently another 25,000 people’s information was also available to purchase.

Clearly it is worrying when one of the world’s premier banking institutions cannot keep its customers personal data safe. This leaked data includes passport & national insurance numbers, money and health information, which in the wrong hands could have damaging ramifications.

The Information Commisioner’s Office (ICO) will now commence investigations into this data breach, with severe repercussions likely. The ICO have the power to levy fines up to £500,000 for organisations who don’t take appropriate measures to secure and protect data of this nature.

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• Deal confirms Claranet’s position as the largest provider of cloud services to the mid-market in Western Europe
• Echiron is the latest in a series of acquisitions in the UK and mainland Europe

Claranet, one of Europe’s leading independent managed services providers, acquires Portuguese managed hosting and applications provider Echiron, as part of its continued expansion into Europe, creating the largest cloud services provider to the mid-market in the region.

The acquisition of Echiron, which has annual revenues in the region of €5 million a year, cements Claranet’s position in Portugal as the leading provider of managed hosting and applications services in the region. It means that customers will benefit from the expertise of both companies and from an expanded services portfolio.

Founded in 2000 and based in Lisbon, Echiron is recognised for its expertise in cloud, database and Microsoft & Oracle application management services. With offerings that complement and broaden Claranet’s existing service portfolio, Echiron is a natural partner for Claranet. Echiron has 90 customers across all industry sectors, including BMW Portugal, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (one of the largest private foundations in Europe) and SPMS (Portugal’s centralised health system administration body).

A success story in the European technology market, Claranet has grown steadily since it was founded in 1996. Echiron is the latest in a wave of acquisitions made by the company in the last 18 months across Europe – with Star in the UK (November 2012) and Typhon in France (December 2012) – as the business undergoes a period of rapid growth.

António Miguel Ferreira, MD at Claranet Portugal, says:

The acquisition is part of Claranet’s overall growth strategy and allows us to expand our teams and our service offerings. It confirms our ambition to become the leading independent provider of managed services in Europe, and now positions Claranet as the leading provider for managed hosting and managed applications in Portugal.

“Becoming part of the Claranet Group will create new opportunities for our customers, our partners and our employees” said João Ribeiro da Costa, MD and founder of Echiron. “They will all benefit from Claranet’s pan-European operations, its strong financial footing, and an expanded services portfolio”, he added.

As a result of this acquisition, the Claranet Group will have annual revenues in excess of €155 million (£130m), circa 750 employees, over 4,500 customers and operations in 6 European countries (France, UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and Portugal.

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s hosting portfolio, visit hosting services.
• For more information about Claranet’s communications portfolio, visit communications services.
• For more information about Claranet’s networks portfolio, visit networks services.

• Financial results show circa 50% growth for leading MSP
• Acquisition strategy combined with strong customer wins sets Claranet up for continued growth in 2014

Claranet has released its financial figures and reported a growth of 47 per cent, with turnover across the European Group increasing to £103m (€124m) over the last year (2012/13). The financial results follow the first anniversary of two key acquisitions, Star (in the UK) and Typhon (in France), which the company made at the end of 2012, and reflect a year of strong performance across the business – with key customer wins and the successful integration of the new acquisitions into the Claranet Group.

Commenting on the last year, Charles Nasser, CEO of Claranet says:

Our rapid growth this year has positioned Claranet as one of the largest independent managed services providers to mid-sized companies in Western Europe. Our business approach ensures that we focus on the long-term future of the business, to benefit our customers and our staff over time. This means that we continue to invest in developing our services and processes as the company grows, and as the needs of our customers evolve.”

With the increasing consolidation of providers in the technology space across Europe, the acquisitions of Star (in the UK) and Typhon (in France) have ensured that Claranet is well-placed with a broader market offer, following the addition of communications services to its existing portfolio of network and hosting solutions. The latest financial results top off a year that has seen Claranet positioned as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for European Managed Hosting, and win two industry Awards – for Entrepreneur of the Year for Charles Nasser (Datacentre and Cloud Awards, in June) and for the Best Customer Service Strategy Award (SVC Awards, in November). These highlights are combined with several significant customer wins that include River Island, Veolia, Lyons Davidson, Total, Elior UK Ltd, N24, Action For Children, Warner Brothers, Radley, Airbus and Peugeot/Citroen, to name just a few.

Commenting on the financial results, Nigel Fairhurst, Chief Financial Officer, Claranet Group says:

We have achieved what we set out to in these acquisitions, expanding the portfolio with a wider offering for customers, yet ensuring that we took advantage of synergies when bringing the businesses together. This has led to recurring EBITDA on a like-for-like basis, increasing by 95% year-on-year. In addition, the strength of the wider business is reflected in the contracted future revenue for the Group, which was in excess of £167m (€195m) at the end of the FY13, an increase of almost 100% on the previous year. This reflects both the size of the new contracts and the continued trend towards longer contracts.”

Charles concludes:

We are seeing a rapidly maturing cloud services market that is consolidating towards a smaller number of regional players at the mid-market level. Our strong growth last year was underpinned by the successful integration of our acquisitions into the business. Our plans are ambitious and as we look ahead into 2014, we expect the year to be one of further rapid growth and expansion for us across our Western European market.”

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s hosting portfolio, visit hosting services.
• For more information about Claranet’s communications portfolio, visit communications services.
• For more information about Claranet’s networks portfolio, visit networks services.

Service providers are continually reviewing their data centre estate so they can offer the best possible service to their customers. This may lead to the expansion, migration or closure of certain data centres.

With the acquisition of Star Technology in late 2012, Claranet more-or-less doubled the number of its data centres. While this certainly enhanced our ability to offer leading edge services the rethink meant it was also right to close down two of our older data centres.

Closing or moving a data centre or IT room is a significant undertaking. Making sure it is carried out effectively is vital as the impact of downtime for many customers can have a massive impact on their business and any of their customers who rely on them.

One of the two data centres we recently closed was a 180 rack suite that Claranet occupied for the last 15 years and which serviced a significant number of customers.

Due to the broad array of services we offered from this facility, relocating represented a significant challenge. Services taken varied from co-location to Ethernet connectivity, from internal cross-connects, to fully outsourced and managed IT solutions so tailored approaches were vital.

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One of the biggest barriers to managed services adoption according to the Claranet Research Programme is data security, with seventy-one per cent of respondents saying it was an important concern to consider before migrating to a cloud provider.

For businesses reliant on e-commerce, the safeguarding of customer financial data is crucial in retaining customer trust. Without it nobody will buy from you, and it doesn’t matter who it is in the e-commerce transactional chain who messes up; if a customer bought from your site, any problems will be blamed on you.

Consequently the thinking amongst many IT managers seems to be that the closer data and process is to their chests, the safer it is, so they try to keep as much in-house as possible.

However, this logic isn’t necessarily sound. While everyone in a the e-commerce transaction chain (below) must be PCI DSS compliant in their own right, the burden of actually making sure all the key tenets of PCI DSS compliancy are enforced all the time, along with the management of internal infrastructure produces more pressure on in-house IT departments, ultimately leading to data security issues.

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With the festive period all but upon us, many people will be putting plans in place between now and the New Year. But the best laid plans can change when our weather and transport infrastructure combine to create: the perfect storm…

The Daily Express and other quality publications have predicted 100 days of snow, which could have a very detrimental effect on the British economy.

However, even if you can’t get into the office this perfect storm shouldn’t affect your IT infrastructure and your ability to work.

Smart businesses will be able to rest easy when blizzards are blowing as they will have deployed VPN connections for remote workers. Put simply, this is an extension of your corporate network allowing users to send and receive data as if they’re locally connected to the private network.

This means that their users don’t necessarily need to be in the office to carry on working as normal, in spite of extreme weather conditions and the associated disruption or indeed, being on the move as part of your Christmas and New Year travels.

Extreme weather can also result in localised flooding. Again some kind of contingency must be put in place for a situation like this. Moving the server environment from a traditional on-premise model to hosting off-site in a secure data centre which is both secure in itself and able to transfer data to other secure sites at a moment’s notice is a vital part of any company’s disaster recovery plan.

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