Extract taken from The Practical Cloud

Background

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.

The Problem

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 datacentre. 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.

The Solution

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 datacentres, where it is monitored and managed by Claranet’s 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 datacentres, 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.

The Benefits

“The partnership with Claranet underpins a key element of business strategy,” said Foster. “The old sticking point that we used to have with prospective clients – their lack of infrastructure to support tercero – has been removed. Without that obstacle, the software once again sells itself.

“In fact, Claranet enables us to provide a much more stable, reliable and high-performance platform for tercero. It has never run faster or better than it has on Claranet’s platform, which is much more robust than anything our clients could realistically achieve on their own infrastructure.”

Third Financial’s customers no longer have to worry about buying expensive third party software licences or hardware, nor do they have the problem of managing and optimising the software, as this is all performed by Claranet. The software can now be provided through a simple log-in to a secure environment that has been pre-loaded with the tercero suite.

The service also features a pre-production environment where Third Financial can deploy and test upgrades to tercero before they are rolled out to customers.

“We projected that half of our new business revenue would come from the hosted platform within a year of implementation, and the reaction from our prospective customers leads us to believe that we will more than match that prediction,” said Foster.

“The new generation of wealthy people expect state-of-the-art tools on their mobile devices. With Claranet’s platform, we can ensure that wherever the end user is, as long as they can access the internet, they will be able to access their wealth management tools,” he concluded.

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.
• Extract taken from The Practical Cloud

Extract taken from Data Chain

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.

The challenge

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.

The solution

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.

The results

“The partnership with Claranet underpins a key element of business strategy,” said Foster. “The old sticking point that we used to have with prospective clients – their lack of infrastructure to support tercero – has been removed. Without that obstacle, the software once again sells itself.

“In fact, Claranet enables us to provide a much more stable, reliable and high-performance platform for tercero. It has never run faster or better than it has on Claranet’s platform, which is much more robust than anything our clients could realistically achieve on their own infrastructure.”

Third Financial’s customers no longer have to worry about buying expensive third party software licences or hardware, nor do they have the problem of managing and optimising the software, as this is all performed by Claranet. The software can now be provided through a simple log-in to a secure environment that has been pre-loaded with the tercero suite.

The service also features a pre-production environment where Third Financial can deploy and test upgrades to tercero before they are rolled out to customers.

“We projected that half of our new business revenue would come from the hosted platform within a year of implementation, and the reaction from our prospective customers leads us to believe that we will more than match that prediction,” said Foster.

“The new generation of wealthy people expect state-of-the-art tools on their mobile devices. With Claranet’s platform, we can ensure that wherever the end user is, as long as they can access the internet, they will be able to access their wealth management tools,” he concluded.

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.
• Extract taken from Data Chain

Extract taken from The Data Chain

Claranet has launched a new 3G service integrating mobile working and back-up connectivity, which links directly to its private network. The new service avoids the need for its customers and their end-users in turn, to use the public internet for any flow of data.

Using either a SIM card for mobile users or a 3G router to provide extra connectivity for office locations, the service provides a new level of flexibility and simplicity to connect with Claranet’s private network.

While most mobile carriers price their private 3G offerings to discourage small and mid-market businesses through excessive set-up charges, Claranet doesn’t charge to enable its private network, so customers can start small and grow as they need. This drastically reduces the cost of entry for companies wanting to create secure remote working access for their employees. It also allows for greater flexibility to meet changing demand as the trend for bring your own device (BYOD) develops.

The service will keep data within an organisation’s firewall, removing costly and bureaucratic authentication processes from IT departments and the need for virtual private networks to encrypt data on the public internet, constraining bandwidth and data flows.

According to the latest research 35 percent of CIOs, IT Managers and business decision-makers believe that their mobile workforce will grow over the next year. A quarter of those questioned in the recent IDC EMEA Enterprise Mobility CIO Survey[1] also stated that they would spend more on mobile technology over the next 12 months.

Michel Robert, Managing Director at Claranet UK says:

Our new 3G service is an important part of our offering to a market that is adjusting to the rise of BYOD. CIOs need to be confident that this new mobile way of working will reduce complexity while maintaining the integrity and security of their data. If mobile working or back-up connectivity are not fully integrated with the private network, then IT departments effectively have to run 3G as a separate system. Different levels of security and specific authentication processes are then needed for the rest of their IT platform.

Find out more:

• To read the full article, visit The Data Chain.
• To see the press release, visit Claranet launches integrated 3G service
• For more information about Claranet’s new 3G service, visit Claranet Wireless Services
• For more information about Claranet’s hosting services, visit Hosting Services

Extract taken from Inside Networks’ August issue

Claranet has announced its Virtual Data Centre (VDC) is now live in Germany and France.

The award winning service was launched in the UK in late 2011 and enables users to build their own data centre in the cloud and provision it with compute, storage and networking resources with a few clicks of a mouse. The Claranet VDC also provides a burst capability for periods of unexpectedly high demand, so users pay only for the assets that they use.

The French and German version are based on the successful UK model, including the groundbreaking software orchestration layer that makes it compatible with every type of hypervisor, and the portal-based ‘drag-and –drop’ interface. Early positive feedback from the French and German markets has focused on VDC’s use of in-country data centres and integration with Claranet’s own European MPLS network.

Find out more:

• For more information about Claranet’s Award-winning service, visit Virtual Data Centre
• To see a demonstration of Claranet’s Award-winning service at Virtual Data Centre
• For more information about Claranet’s new 3G service, visit Claranet Wireless Services
• For more information about Claranet’s hosting services, visit Hosting Services

Extract taken from The Data Chain

Claranet has launched a new 3G service integrating mobile working and back-up connectivity, which links directly to its private network. The new service avoids the need for its customers and their end-users in turn, to use the public internet for any flow of data.

Using either a SIM card for mobile users or a 3G router to provide extra connectivity for office locations, the service provides a new level of flexibility and simplicity to connect with Claranet’s private network.

While most mobile carriers price their private 3G offerings to discourage small and mid-market businesses through excessive set-up charges, Claranet doesn’t charge to enable its private network, so customers can start small and grow as they need. This drastically reduces the cost of entry for companies wanting to create secure remote working access for their employees. It also allows for greater flexibility to meet changing demand as the trend for bring your own device (BYOD) develops.

The service will keep data within an organisation’s firewall, removing costly and bureaucratic authentication processes from IT departments and the need for virtual private networks to encrypt data on the public internet, constraining bandwidth and data flows.

According to the latest research 35 percent of CIOs, IT Managers and business decision-makers believe that their mobile workforce will grow over the next year. A quarter of those questioned in the recent IDC EMEA Enterprise Mobility CIO Survey[1] also stated that they would spend more on mobile technology over the next 12 months.

Michel Robert, Managing Director at Claranet UK says:

Our new 3G service is an important part of our offering to a market that is adjusting to the rise of BYOD. CIOs need to be confident that this new mobile way of working will reduce complexity while maintaining the integrity and security of their data. If mobile working or back-up connectivity are not fully integrated with the private network, then IT departments effectively have to run 3G as a separate system. Different levels of security and specific authentication processes are then needed for the rest of their IT platform.

Find out more:

• To read the full article, visit The Data Chain.
• To see the press release, visit Claranet launches integrated 3G service
• For more information about Claranet’s new 3G service, visit Claranet Wireless Services
• For more information about Claranet’s hosting services, visit Hosting Services

Extract taken from The Data Chain

Claranet has launched a new 3G service integrating mobile working and back-up connectivity, which links directly to its private network. The new service avoids the need for its customers and their end-users in turn, to use the public internet for any flow of data.

Using either a SIM card for mobile users or a 3G router to provide extra connectivity for office locations, the service provides a new level of flexibility and simplicity to connect with Claranet’s private network.

While most mobile carriers price their private 3G offerings to discourage small and mid-market businesses through excessive set-up charges, Claranet doesn’t charge to enable its private network, so customers can start small and grow as they need. This drastically reduces the cost of entry for companies wanting to create secure remote working access for their employees. It also allows for greater flexibility to meet changing demand as the trend for bring your own device (BYOD) develops.

The service will keep data within an organisation’s firewall, removing costly and bureaucratic authentication processes from IT departments and the need for virtual private networks to encrypt data on the public internet, constraining bandwidth and data flows.

According to the latest research 35 percent of CIOs, IT Managers and business decision-makers believe that their mobile workforce will grow over the next year. A quarter of those questioned in the recent IDC EMEA Enterprise Mobility CIO Survey[1] also stated that they would spend more on mobile technology over the next 12 months.

Michel Robert, Managing Director at Claranet UK says:

Our new 3G service is an important part of our offering to a market that is adjusting to the rise of BYOD. CIOs need to be confident that this new mobile way of working will reduce complexity while maintaining the integrity and security of their data. If mobile working or back-up connectivity are not fully integrated with the private network, then IT departments effectively have to run 3G as a separate system. Different levels of security and specific authentication processes are then needed for the rest of their IT platform.

Find out more:

• To read the full article, visit The Data Chain.
• To see the press release, visit Claranet launches integrated 3G service
• For more information about Claranet’s new 3G service, visit Claranet Wireless Services
• For more information about Claranet’s hosting services, visit Hosting Services

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Extract taken from Computer Weekly

Space NK apothecary is one of a number of retailers using 3G as a replacement for ISDN to back up store IT systems.

The retailer is using the service, supplied by Claranet, to reduce the risk of “copper theft”,which can take out all connectivity, preventing stores from taking card payments.

“In the face of repeated incidents with copper lines and long repair times, we decided to implement a ‘no wires’ solution rather than a second line or ISDN back-up,” said Anthony Baldwin, IT manager at Space NK.

The Claranet service uses an multiprotocol layer switching (MPLS) based private network that can be accessed over 3G. It is being run across 60 UK Space NK stores.

A new offering from Claranet, the service supplies 3G SIMs that run a secure connection over mobile operator 3’s network to allow businesses to connect mobile devices into the Claranet datacentre.

“We designed the service to allow people to plug mobile devices into the network,” said Martin Saunders, product director at Claranet.

While companies can use overlay virtual private networks (VPNs), based on IPsec, or secure socket layer (SSL) VPNs to create secure network connections, Saunders said that these generally only work well on sophisticated devices.

“Typically, iPad devices don’t work well due to browser compatibility issues,” he said.

The MPLS approach from Claranet replaces the generic log-in credentials that mobile networks normally use, with customer-specific username and password pairs to provide secure authentication.
Along with branch network applications, Saunders said Claranet was also seeing interest in the mobile workforce.

The Claranet service is an alternative to private APNs (access point names), which, according to Saunders, are designed for large deployments costing upwards of £10,000 to set up.

“We can scale from a small number of SIMs upwards, making it suitable for small numbers of workers,” he said. “If you are an organisation with 50 SIMs, the Claranet service can save £10,000 on the set-up costs of a private APN.”

Find out more:

• To read the full article, visit Computer Weekly.
• To see the press release, visit Claranet launches integrated 3G service
• For more information about Claranet’s new 3G service, visit Claranet Wireless Services
• For more information about Claranet’s hosting services, visit Hosting Services

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Private network connectivity solution for companies adjusting to BYOD revolution
Large reduction in costs for small and mid-sized enterprises

Claranet has launched a new 3G service integrating mobile working and back-up connectivity, which links directly to its private network. The new service avoids the need for its customers and their end-users in turn, to use the public internet for any flow of data.

Using either a SIM card for mobile users or a 3G router to provide extra connectivity for office locations, the service provides a new level of flexibility and simplicity to connect with Claranet’s private network.

While most mobile carriers price their private 3G offerings to discourage small and mid-market businesses through excessive set-up charges, Claranet doesn’t charge to enable its private network, so customers can start small and grow as they need. This drastically reduces the cost of entry for companies wanting to create secure remote working access for their employees. It also allows for greater flexibility to meet changing demand as the trend for bring your own device (BYOD) develops.

The service will keep data within an organisation’s firewall, removing costly and bureaucratic authentication processes from IT departments and the need for virtual private networks to encrypt data on the public internet, constraining bandwidth and data flows.

According to the latest research, 35 percent of CIOs, IT Managers and business decision-makers believe that their mobile workforce will grow over the next year. A quarter of those questioned in the recent IDC EMEA Enterprise Mobility CIO Survey* also stated that they would spend more on mobile technology over the next 12 months.

Our new 3G service is an important part of our offering to a market that is adjusting to the rise of BYOD. CIOs need to be confident that this new mobile way of working will reduce complexity while maintaining the integrity and security of their data. If mobile working or back-up connectivity are not fully integrated with the private network, then IT departments effectively have to run 3G as a separate system. Different levels of security and specific authentication processes are then needed for the rest of their IT platform. For many businesses, it is now a given that their workforce will to some degree need to work remotely. Poorly integrated 3G is therefore a big issue for many.”

Michel Robert, Managing Director at Claranet UK

As well as having a direct connection to the private network for the mobile workforce, Claranet’s 3G solution also enables businesses to transact more reliably by acting as a resilient secondary connection supporting a primary Broadband line.

Retailer, Space NK, is using 3G in this way. Claranet is already supplying its 60 UK stores with its MPLS private network using Broadband backed up by 3G.

Connectivity in our retail estate is an essential commodity. In the face of repeated incidents with copper lines and long repair times, we decided to implement a ‘no wires’ solution rather than a second line or ISDN back-up.

A key issue for us is the robustness of the equipment in the store – a one box solution is critical, without any USB dongles or other similar hardware that can get easily knocked, and then disrupt the service. We also need to have automatic failover, where 3G picks up the slack when it is needed, without the need for our intervention.”

Anthony Baldwin, IT Manager at Space NK

Critically, having 3G supplied by the same organisation that provides Space NK’s network ensures a more integrated service with a single line of accountability. There can be no argument as to who is responsible in the event of an issue with service.

Robert concluded:

3G is a tried-and-tested technology, but one that has mainly had to rely on the public internet. So by providing improved integration to Claranet’s private network, we are adding an important and valuable improvement – security – to our service.”

Find out more:

• For more information about our new wireless service, visit Claranet’s Wireless Services
• For more information about our network services, visit Claranet’s Network Services
• For more information about our hosting services, visit Claranet’s Hosting Services

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Cloud dismissed by one in four IT directors, new research shows

The IT industry has made little progress during 2012 to reassure end users about their legitimate concerns about migrating to the cloud, Claranet’s UK managing director today warns.

The comments came in response to new research from IT recruiters Robert Half which found that a quarter of CIOs and IT directors in the UK have no plans to move to the cloud because of concerns about data security, service continuity and ease of management.

Late in 2011, Claranet itself conducted extensive research into the barriers to cloud adoption which yielded remarkably similar results. Claranet’s poll of 300 senior IT decision-makers found that data security was the biggest concern, with 46 per cent of respondents saying they were afraid of losing in-house control over their systems and data. The same proportion in the Robert Half survey cited security as the biggest barrier to cloud adoption.

This new research found that 36 per cent of users saw service continuity as the main barrier, while 32 per cent cited data integrity. In Claranet’s research, 35 per cent said service reliability and 28 per cent said ‘confidence over where data is stored’ were their biggest concerns.

“The similarity between the two sets of research, conducted some nine months apart, shows how difficult the cloud industry is finding it to answers customers’ concerns about cloud computing,” said Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK managing director.

“End users are continuing to cite these same areas of concern, which suggests either that there are too few services out there in the market that provide solutions to these problems, or that there has been a collective communications failure by the industry,” continued Robert.

“In truth, the answers to these legitimate concerns are simple to understand and to communicate. To solve the issue of data sovereignty or integrity, providers must show that customers’ data is not stored in facilities and jurisdictions lacking rigorous safeguards. Service providers, therefore, need to guarantee that their customers’ applications and information is only stored in local, in-country data centres.”

Robert pointed to the issue of reliability as another commonly cited barrier that can be easily overcome.

“Users are worried that moving to the cloud will mean they suddenly have two things that could go wrong – the cloud service and the network connectivity – and two providers who can pass the buck in the case of service downtime,” said Robert. “Again, the answer is simple: cloud providers either need to invest in their own network and integrate it into the service, or else they should partner with network providers to offer an holistic service where network provision forms an integral part.

“While cloud computing is never going to be perfectly suited to every organisation, a quarter of IT directors dismissing it out of hand is surely too great a proportion for the industry to ignore.” concluded Robert.

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.
• To see a demonstration of Claranet’s Award-winning service at Virtual Data Centre.

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