Superfast mobile internet will enable affordable, high-performance back-up connectivity for business premises

As the UK stands on the cusp of the next revolution in mobile connectivity, Claranet is arguing that 4G will bring more immediate benefits to businesses than to consumers.

With a major mobile network recently announcing that it will begin rollout of 4G services this year and the latest mobile device releases boasting LTE / 4G connectivity, the media has concentrated almost exclusively on what superfast mobile internet will bring to consumers.

Claranet’s UK Managing Director, Michel Robert, says that patchy coverage and short battery life means that 4G may not prove the immediate boon that many are hoping for, and that 4G is instead more relevant to businesses in the short term.

“The UK has been lagging behind other major economies in rolling out 4G, so it is no surprise that there is a lot of excitement being generated about the initial rollout by EE, as well as the coming auction of the rest of the spectrum,” said Robert. “However, 4G on consumer mobile devices is a bit of a red herring – at least until battery life improves. As the New York Times recently pointed out, 4G absolutely kills mobile batteries: a combination of the increased processing power required for data-intensive communications, and the need to switch between 4G and 3G networks in areas of patchy coverage.

“Until this issue is resolved, 4G will be most relevant to businesses, not consumers,” he continued. “Businesses will be able to use a 4G enabled router to access cheap, fast and effective backup connectivity in the event of any disruption to their main network. Rather than invest in redundant physical networks, businesses will instead be able to connect via a superfast mobile connection.

“The implications for businesses could be immediate, by enabling them to switch seamlessly to a service delivered over the mobile spectrum at a fraction of the cost of a redundant cable connection, making it especially attractive to smaller businesses,” said Robert. “And because this would predominantly involve mains powered devices, the issue of battery life doesn’t arise.”

Claranet already provides a similar service over a high performance 3G network, aimed at businesses that depend on ‘always-on’ connectivity such as retailers. Claranet’s 3G service is based on private networking technology which keeps data within an organisation’s firewall, removing the need for virtual private network technology to encrypt data on the public internet, constraining bandwidth and data flows.

I’m looking forward as much as anyone to getting broadband-level speeds on my mobile devices,” said Robert. “In the short-term, I expect that 4G will be a curious novelty for consumers, enabling them to claim a bit of one-upmanship over their friends. However if service providers partner with mobile network operators, then the benefits for businesses will be real and immediate,” he concluded.

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s new 3G service, visit wireless services
• For more information about Claranet’s managed network services, visit managed networks
• For more information about Claranet’s hosting services, visit hosting services

Claranet’s Virtual Data Centre (VDC), the first truly integrated Infrastructure as a Service offering available to the European market, was named the Cloud / SaaS Product of the Year at last night’s annual TechWorld Awards.

Launched in late 2011, Claranet’s VDC enables users to self-provision their own infrastructure resources at the click-of-a-mouse and is designed to meet the demands of the modern enterprise and mid-sized businesses. Award organisers were particularly impressed by the service’s hypervisor agnosticism, which has been key to its appeal with analysts and customers alike.

Claranet believes that the hypervisor market will become increasingly competitive over the coming months and years, with more challengers to VMware’s current dominance. To address worries about ease of migration from one virtualised environment to another, VDC features a software orchestration layer, which makes the service hypervisor-agnostic.

Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK Managing Director, said: “This latest win is a significant achievement for Claranet, and comes as solid recognition of the skill and expertise of our product and technical teams. The TechWorld Awards are held in high esteem by the industry, for the pedigree of the judging panel, which consists of journalists, analysts and our industry peers..

“We needed a service that offered real differentiation from other players. VDC was designed in response to rigorous independent research commissioned by Claranet into the adoption and concerns held by IT decision makers about migrating to a cloud service. The research found that the top three barriers to adoption were the reliability of the service, data security / data sovereignty, and ease of migration.

“By listening to the market’s concerns, we decided to build a service that featured integrated networking, a hypervisor-agnostic platform, hosted exclusively in-country data centres – addressing the three key concerns amongst users, of reliability, data sovereignty and ease of migration.”

One of the VDC service’s key differentiators, and one that addresses the core issue of reliability, is that it is integrated with Claranet’s own MPLS network said Robert: “Users don’t need to touch the public internet when connecting to the service, making it significantly more secure than other services that lack network integration. This also ensures end-to-end accountability for the availability of the service as a whole, and a single point-of-contact for all service queries.

“It’s a very busy marketplace and a hotly contested category, so to be named best Cloud / SaaS Product of the Year is an enormous achievement and a huge vote of confidence in the service,” he concluded.

For more information on the Awards visit http://awards.techworld.com/, and for further information on Claranet and its Virtual Data Centre service, visit www.claranet.co.uk.

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s hosting portfolio, visit hosting services.
• For more information about Claranet’s cloud services, visit cloud services.
• For more information about Claranet’s award-winning Virtual Data Centre, visit Virtual Data Centre.

By Martin Saunders

The recent high-profile closure of a US cloud vendor’s UK service is a reminder for end users to clarify what contractual rights their providers sew into their service agreements.

While Doyenz’ actions have been contractually sound, the case casts light on the important questions end users need to be asking of their Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), if they are to protect themselves from losing critical business information, or unknowingly having their data transported to, and stored in, undesirable jurisdictions.

US-based disaster recovery vendor Doyenz launched its rCloud service in the UK in November 2011, based in a data centre in London. In early August, the vendor announced that it would no longer be supporting the rCloud backup and recovery service, giving notice that it would stop the service, offering to move customers’ data to a US facility.

Cloud users should be looking for contractual clarity and reassurance from cloud providers to understand how the service is delivered, where data is stored and ultimately who is accountable and liable for service delivery.

Cloud is a relatively new delivery model, so instances when cloud providers have stopped trading have so far been rare occurrences. However, end-users must take precautionary steps to ensure business continuity for any situation as they must assume ultimate responsibility for their data. It’s important to remember that CSPs, like all external suppliers, will not act as insurers of a customer’s business, so it’s important that the risks are adequately accounted for.

Market messaging today tends to over-play vendor specific messages about platforms or, too often, paints cloud as a panacea. Whilst neither approach is necessarily incorrect, they downplay or risk ignoring the practical considerations facing organisations adopting cloud services and may be damaging the public perception of cloud.

Although customers have been given the choice of transferring their data to Doyenz’ US-based data centres, I express doubt over the viability of this option, owing to users’ legitimate concerns about data location.

My company’s own research into end user concerns about cloud services found that data sovereignty is one of the key concerns for organisations when moving to the cloud. Moving data to a cloud service can often mean it is hosted in another country and therefore subject to different data laws. If users have no visibility or control over where their data resides, they are risking the security of their data, their customers and even their own business’ survival.

Find out more:

• To read the original comment, visit Cloud closure highlights data sovereignty risk…
• For more information about Claranet’s cloud services, visit cloud services.
• For more information about Claranet’s award-winning Virtual Data Centre, visit Virtual Data Centre.

The recent high-profile closure of a US cloud vendor’s UK service is a reminder for end users to clarify what contractual rights their providers sew into their service agreements. According to Product Director Martin Saunders, while Doyenz’ actions have been contractually sound, the case casts light on the important questions end users need to be asking of their Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), if they are to protect themselves from losing critical business information, or unknowingly having their data transported to, and stored in, undesirable jurisdictions.

US-based disaster recovery vendor Doyenz launched its rCloud service in the UK in November 2011, based in a data centre in London. In early August, the vendor announced that it would no longer be supporting the rCloud backup and recovery service, giving notice that it would stop the service, offering to move customers’ data to a US facility.

Commenting on the case, Saunders said that cloud users should be looking for contractual clarity and reassurance from cloud providers to understand how the service is delivered, where data is stored and ultimately who is accountable and liable for service delivery.

“Cloud is a relatively new delivery model, so instances when cloud providers have stopped trading have so far been rare occurrences. However, end-users must take precautionary steps to ensure business continuity for any situation as they must assume ultimate responsibility for their data,” said Saunders. “It’s important to remember that CSPs, like all external suppliers, will not act as insurers of a customer’s business, so it’s important that the risks are adequately accounted for.

“Market messaging today tends to over-play vendor specific messages about platforms or, too often, paints cloud as a panacea. Whilst neither approach is necessarily incorrect, they downplay or risk ignoring the practical considerations facing organisations adopting cloud services and may be damaging the public perception of cloud.”

Although customers have been given the choice of transferring their data to Doyenz’ US-based data centres, Saunders expressed doubt over the viability of this option, owing to users’ legitimate concerns about data location.

“Claranet’s own research into end user concerns about cloud services found that data sovereignty is one of the key concerns for organisations when moving to the cloud,” continued Saunders. “Moving data to a cloud service can often mean it is hosted in another country and therefore subject to different data laws. If users have no visibility or control over where their data resides, they are risking the security of their data, their customers and even their own business’ survival.”

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s hosting portfolio, visit hosting services.
• For more information about Claranet’s cloud services, visit cloud services.
• For more information about Claranet’s award-winning Virtual Data Centre, visit Virtual Data Centre.

Customers must be aware of data sovereignty issues when moving to the cloud according to product director.

Managed services provider Claranet has said Doyenz’s decision to close its UK data centre highlights risks over data sovereignty and the need for users to clarify their contractual rights.

US-based disaster recovery specialist Doyenz launched its UK rCloud service in 2011, with a data centre in London. However, only nine months later, the company decided to close its UK cloud service. Users were given the option either to move their data to Doyenz’s US facility or retrieve it by 31 August.

However, while the company’s actions may have been contractually sound, the case casts light on the important questions end users need to be asking of their cloud service providers (CSPs), claims Claranet product director, Martin Saunders.

“Cloud is a relatively new delivery model, so instances when cloud providers have stopped trading have, so far, been rare occurrences. However, end-users must take precautionary steps to ensure business continuity for any situation as they must assume ultimate responsibility for their data,” said Saunders. “It is important to remember that CSPs, like all external suppliers, will not act as insurers of a customer’s business, so it is important that the risks are adequately accounted for.”

Saunders also expressed doubt over the viability of moving UK customers’ data to the US.

“Claranet’s own research into end user concerns about cloud services found that data sovereignty is one of the key concerns for organisations when moving to the cloud. Moving data to a cloud service can often mean it is hosted in another country and therefore subject to different data laws. If users have no visibility or control over where their data resides, they are risking the security of their data, their customers and even their own business’s survival.”

Find out more:

• To read the original comment, visit Cloud closure highlights data sovereignty risk…
• For more information about Claranet’s cloud services, visit cloud services.
• For more information about Claranet’s award-winning Virtual Data Centre, visit Virtual Data Centre.

The recent high-profile closure of a US cloud vendor’s UK service is a reminder for end users to clarify what contractual rights their providers sew into their service agreements. According to Product Director Martin Saunders, while Doyenz’ actions have been contractually sound, the case casts light on the important questions end users need to be asking of their Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), if they are to protect themselves from losing critical business information, or unknowingly having their data transported to, and stored in, undesirable jurisdictions.

US-based disaster recovery vendor Doyenz launched its rCloud service in the UK in November 2011, based in a data centre in London. In early August, the vendor announced that it would no longer be supporting the rCloud backup and recovery service, giving notice that it would stop the service, offering to move customers’ data to a US facility.

Commenting on the case, Saunders said that cloud users should be looking for contractual clarity and reassurance from cloud providers to understand how the service is delivered, where data is stored and ultimately who is accountable and liable for service delivery.

“Cloud is a relatively new delivery model, so instances when cloud providers have stopped trading have so far been rare occurrences. However, end-users must take precautionary steps to ensure business continuity for any situation as they must assume ultimate responsibility for their data,” said Saunders. “It’s important to remember that CSPs, like all external suppliers, will not act as insurers of a customer’s business, so it’s important that the risks are adequately accounted for.

“Market messaging today tends to over-play vendor specific messages about platforms or, too often, paints cloud as a panacea. Whilst neither approach is necessarily incorrect, they downplay or risk ignoring the practical considerations facing organisations adopting cloud services and may be damaging the public perception of cloud.”

Although customers have been given the choice of transferring their data to Doyenz’ US-based data centres, Saunders expressed doubt over the viability of this option, owing to users’ legitimate concerns about data location.

“Claranet’s own research into end user concerns about cloud services found that data sovereignty is one of the key concerns for organisations when moving to the cloud,” continued Saunders. “Moving data to a cloud service can often mean it is hosted in another country and therefore subject to different data laws. If users have no visibility or control over where their data resides, they are risking the security of their data, their customers and even their own business’ survival.”

Find out more:

• To read the original comment, visit Cloud closure highlights data sovereignty risk…
• For more information about Claranet’s cloud services, visit cloud services.
• For more information about Claranet’s award-winning Virtual Data Centre, visit Virtual Data Centre.

Managed Services Provider says concerns over cloud predates Gartner’s latest ‘Hype Cycle’ report

Public disillusionment with the cloud, as expressed by Gartner’s analysts in the firm’s latest Hype Cycle Special Report, is not new and dates back at least a year, Claranet says.

Gartner’s Hype Cycle gauges public expectations about emerging and maturing technologies, and charts their progress towards acceptance. In its latest report, Gartner placed cloud computing on the downward slope named the “trough of disillusionment” that traditionally follows the initial hype and inflated expectations that new technologies invariably generate.

Claranet’s Managing Director, Michel Robert, said that public disillusionment with cloud is at least a year old, referencing independent research that his own company undertook in 2011 about users’ concerns over cloud computing.

“The Gartner report is correct to place cloud in its picturesquely-named ‘trough of disillusionment’, but it’s hardly news that the initial burst of expectation in cloud has subsided,” said Robert. “Before we launched our Virtual Data Centre service in 2011, we conducted extensive research into users’ concerns about the cloud. The poll of 300 senior IT decision makers found that there were still substantial worries about data sovereignty, security and reliability issues with the cloud computing.

“The first rush of enthusiasm for cloud seemed to peak early in 2011. By that stage, roughly half of the market was using some form of cloud service; however there remained a stubborn proportion of organisations that remained unconvinced of the benefits, or wary of the risks. Our research found that a third of respondents were delaying procurement of cloud services for an average of twelve months, and the list of concerns about the cloud showed why,” he continued.

“People were getting disillusioned with the ubiquity of the word ‘cloud’, which tends to obscure the nature of the actual services. On top of that, the cloud industry as a whole was failing to reassure potential customers over some fundamental questions: where is my data held; how is it protected; how can you guarantee maximum uptime; and who is responsible for overall availability?”

Robert said the industry as a whole was improving, but that it needed more hard work to drag the name of cloud out of the ‘trough of disillusionment’ and into the ‘slope of enlightenment’.

“Increasingly, service providers are realising that it is not enough to tag the name ‘cloud’ onto their services. Our industry needs to answer users’ legitimate concerns directly: for example, we need to be completely transparent over where and how their data is stored, and ideally offer in-country data centres to allay data sovereignty concerns. Providers also need to start taking responsibility for overall service availability, including network uptime. For those providers that lack their own network, this will require closer partnerships with network operators so that they can provide a completely integrated service, from desk to data centre.

“Gartner’s report will, we hope, spur the industry on to improve their services and, just as importantly, to communicate them to the public. With this report, Gartner may well have marked the ‘end of the beginning’ for the cloud,” said Robert. “In fact, we hope that it marks the beginning of the end for the very phrase ‘cloud computing’, a vague term that fails to differentiate between different types of service, while preventing providers from communicating on actual business benefits,” he concluded.

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s Award-winning service, visit Virtual Data Centre
• For more information about Claranet’s Cloud services, visit Cloud services.
• To see a demonstration of Claranet’s Award-winning service at Virtual Data Centre

Extract taken from MicroScope

Cloud computing has passed the peak of inflated expectations and is heading for the trough of disillusionment with BYOD a little bit behind still at the top of the hype cycle.

The phrases and the positioning come from Gartner which has issued its latest hype cycle for emerging technologies with the peak and trough then followed by the slope of enlightenment and then the plateau of productivity.

Right at the bottom of the trough is hosted virtual desktops and cloud computing has some way to go until it has passed out of the bottom dip on the hype cycle.

But the channel is already aware of the changing reaction to the cloud on the ground with some no longer using that phrase when pitching hosting services.

“The Gartner report is correct to place cloud in its picturesquely-named ‘trough of disillusionment’, but it’s hardly news that the initial burst of expectation in cloud has subsided,” said Michel Robert, managing director of Claranet.

“Before we launched our Virtual Data Centre service in 2011, we conducted extensive research into users’ concerns about the cloud. The poll of 300 senior IT decision makers found that there were still substantial worries about data sovereignty, security and reliability issues with the cloud computing,” he added.

He said the hope of Gartner placing cloud in the rough of disillusionment was that it would spur some activity by the industry: “to improve their services and, just as importantly, to communicate them to the public”.

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s Award-winning service, visit Virtual Data Centre
• For more information about Claranet’s Cloud services, visit Cloud services.
• To read the entire press comment visit “Trough of Disillusionment” over cloud not new…

With cloud skills in short supply, opinion is divided about the merit of qualifications and accreditations when choosing a supplier. Cloud Pro puts 7 questions to different providers in the cloud industry market on this topic. Martin Saunders, Product Director at Claranet UK comments on how to evaluate accreditation bodies.

Extract taken from Cloud Pro

Question 7: Evaluate the accreditation bodies

…On this question, we have to go back to basics says Martin Saunders, product director at Claranet.

“What does ‘accreditation’ mean? On the one hand, you have organisations that put themselves through the stress of ensuring that their infrastructure, technology and processes are up to scratch and submitting documents and evidence to standards bodies,” he says. All so that they can get their ISO:27001, PCI-DSS or Public Sector Network (PSN) accreditation.

On the other end of the scale are the self accredited. “There’s a whole host of groups who have spotted a gap in the market to provide their own cloud accreditations, which give a fig leaf of respectability,” says Saunders.

Look at the basis for the accreditation – are they based on existing, well-known standards, or are they woolly in their wording or their origins? That should be the litmus test of any accreditation that is dangled before end users.”

Find out more:

• To read the full article, go to Cloud Pro
• For more information about Claranet’s hosting portfolio, visit Claranet’s hosting services.
• For more information about Claranet’s Award-winning cloud service, visit Virtual Data Centre.

Article taken from Euro Investor

The world of wealth management is changing fast. Like other spheres of business, it has had to come rapidly to terms with the challenges of today’s fast-changing legal and technological environment. A new breed of young, wealthy and technology-literate individuals now expect to do business on their mobile devices – including managing their money. Meanwhile, a flood of new compliance regulations governing the use and transmittal of sensitive financial information means that wealth managers have had to change with the times.

Third Financial is at the forefront of this evolution. The firm has created a suite of software, known as tercero, which enables wealth managers and private banks to deliver real-time investment management, reporting, wealth CRM, compliance oversight and mobile capabilities to their clients, delivered to the internet-connected device of their choice.

Driven by its comprehensive tercero wealth management platform, Third Financial has enjoyed spectacular growth in the four years since its founding. As it grew, however, the company found itself facing the same problem: potential clients loved the software and the capabilities it offered, but many did not have the technical ability, infrastructure or willingness to host it themselves.

“Our customers are experts in money management but tend not to be particularly proficient in IT,” explained Third Financial’s CEO Stewart Foster. “If they wanted to deploy the tercero suite they used to have two choices: either host it on their own premises, or put it into a dedicated hosted environment in a data centre. For many of our customers, both options added another layer of expense and management. Few of our clients want to spend time and money buying licences or hardware, and then managing the resulting IT issues. All of this distracts them from their core business of managing their clients’ money.

“The whole point of the tercero platform is that it provides everything our clients need – reporting, compliance, customer relations and portfolio management – in a single package. The additional investment in hosting that many of our prospective clients required, typically costing tens of thousands of pounds, threatened to become an obstacle to our expansion,” said Foster.

Third Financial decided to find a technology partner that could provide a secure and resilient hosting service for its application suite, and that could enable it to deliver tercero as a Cloud service, rather than one that the clients hosted and managed themselves. After putting out a tender, the Third Financial chose Claranet to deliver the hosting platform that would best support its software, and its future success.

Claranet proposed that Third Financial migrate the tercero suite onto its Managed Application Hosting platform. The service enables organisations to place its software into one of Claranet’s enterprise-grade, Tier 3 data centres, where it is monitored and managed by Claranet’s expert staff to optimise application performance and availability.

Third Financial migrated its software to Claranet’s Managed Application Hosting service, placing it in a secure, fully-virtualised environment based on best-of-breed hosting infrastructure. The service went live in December 2011. Claranet takes responsibility for every aspect of the live application environment, including the security of the data held within the tercero applications – a crucial consideration for any financial services firm or end user.

“Compliance is the big issue that wealth managers worry about, especially when they entrust their data to a third party,” said Foster. “We need to be able to assure our clients that their sensitive data would be safe with Claranet, for two important reasons: so that they can reassure their own customers, and also to satisfy compliance regulations from the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

“A key criterion for choosing Claranet was that they are an ISO:27001- and ISO:9000-accredited provider. What is more, our service is based solely in UK data centres, which protects us from the headache of data sovereignty issues.

“What this means for our customers is that they have the assurance that their data is looked after by an organisation that takes security and quality assurance seriously. In fact, the data is far more secure than it would be if our clients hosted it on their premises. The whole architecture of Claranet’s Managed Application Hosting is designed around security; this makes the service a much easier sell to our clients, and also reassures the regulator,” said Foster.

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s hosting portfolio, visit Claranet’s hosting services.
• For more information about Claranet’s Award-winning Virtual Data Centre service, visit Virtual Data Centre.
• Article taken from Euro Investor