Claranet VDC honoured at 5th annual Datacentre Awards

Claranet’s Virtual Data Centre (VDC), the first truly integrated Infrastructure as a Service offering available to the European market, won the European Award for Cloud Infrastructure at the 5th annual Datacentre Awards last night (13th June 2012).

The service, which enables users to self-provision their own virtual data centre at the click-of-a-mouse, was launched in late 2011, when it received an extremely warm and enthusiastic response from customers, analysts and journalists.

Presenting the Award, organisers praised the service’s integrated networking component as a key differentiator in the European cloud market.

Claranet’s Virtual Data Centre is built on best-of-breed technologies and provides a single, easy-to-use portal where users can provision and manage their cloud compute, storage and networking resources. Unlike the vast majority of cloud services, VDC is integrated with Claranet’s own MPLS network, ensuring greater accountability, reliability and ease of management.

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

“Although Claranet has a long pedigree in hosting and networking, we did not want to jump on the cloud bandwagon without ensuring that we could bring a genuinely useful service to market. To ensure we did that, late last year we conducted extensive research among end users about their key concerns about cloud computing; and the Virtual Data Centre service was designed to reflect this feedback.

“In a competitive market, we needed a truly innovative service that offered real differentiation from other players,” continued Robert. “By listening to our potential customers’ concerns, we decided to build a service that featured integrated networking, exclusively in-country data centres and a hypervisor-agnostic platform – addressing the three key concerns amongst users, of reliability, data sovereignty and ease of migration.

“This Award for Claranet’s Virtual Data Centre, the first pan-European competition we’ve entered the service, is testament to the solid groundwork that we did, and the skill and expertise of our product and technical teams. The Datacentre Awards are judged by a panel of our peers in the datacentre industry, so this Award is a huge vote of confidence in the service,” he concluded.

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 the Awards, visit the European Data Centre Awards website.

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Award-winning “click-and-provision” cloud infrastructure service goes live in Germany and France

Claranet announces that its Virtual Data Centre, the first truly integrated Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering available to the European market, 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 Virtual Data Centre (VDC) also provides a burst capability for periods of unexpectedly high demand, so users pay only for the assets that they use. Since its launch, VDC has received praise from analysts, journalists and customers, and this month won the European Award for Cloud Infrastructure at the 5th Annual Datacentre Awards.

The French and German versions are based on the successful UK model, including the ground-breaking software orchestration layer which 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 Virtual Data Centre’s use of in-country data centres and integration with Claranet’s own European MPLS network.

The roll-out in Germany comes on the heels of a report by Germany’s top cloud computing research firm Experton which, in an analysis of 350 cloud vendors, placed Claranet as one of only 11 leaders in the field. The report praised Claranet’s integrated network as a key strength, along with its commitment to high-quality infrastructure components and standard certifications such as ISO 27001- and BDSG (German Data Protection and Privacy Act).

Olaf Fischer, Managing Director of Claranet Germany, said,

“Germany has some of the strictest data protection laws in Europe, so it’s very important for German companies to know that their data resides solely in local facilities. Claranet’s use of in-country data centres and its investment in enterprise-class infrastructure technology have been cited by analysts as key differentiators in the market, as has the integration with Claranet’s European MPLS network. Feedback from our customers and prospects has been extremely positive, with organisations expressing their surprise at how easy it can be to set up their own virtual data centre in the cloud.”

The French launch has also met with an enthusiastic response, as Claranet France’s Managing Director, Olivier Beaudet explains.

“Plenty of people here are talking about the cloud, but journalists to whom we’ve demonstrated the service have been unanimous in saying that it is the most mature, advanced offering that they have seen,” said Beaudet.

“There is a real buzz, a ‘wow effect’, around Virtual Data Centre, especially among small- and medium-sized enterprises that we’re talking to. We already have 15 leads for the service, and two signed customers, all of whom have pointed to the advantages of having 24/7 contact with local account managers and helpdesk staff in France.”

Claranet’s Virtual Data Centre was designed following extensive research that the company undertook into customers’ concerns about cloud services; this found that data sovereignty, reliability and ease of migration were the key concerns for organisations that had yet to move into the cloud. Having identified these concerns, Claranet designed a service so that data always resides in local jurisdictions, that is integrated with Claranet’s network and that it is compatible with multiple hypervisor technologies.

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.

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With the Olympics and the Paralympics fast approaching, London prepares for the biggest sporting event in the city’s long history. An anticipated 11 million people are expected to visit the city, putting enormous pressure on the capital’s transport and communications infrastructure. What has Claranet done to ensure business continuity of operations and services?

Claranet’s preparations for the Games

In preparation for London 2012, late last year Claranet set up its Olympics 2012 Project Team. Working with parties such as Transport for London (TFL) and the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), they reviewed the issues likely to affect business continuity for both Claranet and its customers. Amongst key issues identified were the impact of congestion on staff travelling times; the effect of extra traffic around Claranet’s central London office and data centre facilities; and delays in a Claranet supplier’s ability to attend premises to address faults.

Initiatives implemented for business continuity

Claranet has undertaken a number of key initiatives to maintain business continuity and to minimise the impact of for customers.

1. To ensure the reliable delivery of equipment and services, Claranet is working closely with its suppliers to plan projects around the current embargo (1st March – 30th September 2012) on street works in London.
2. To minimise the risk of disruption and to free up resources for any incidents or emergencies, we are implementing a ‘change freeze’ during this period for all (except the most urgent) maintenance projects.
3. To maintain business continuity under these conditions, we have ensured that Claranet employees have the tools they need to work from home, enabled flexible working, and undertaken a comprehensive review of our networks to ensure they can cope with the extra ‘homeworking’ traffic.

For more information

• For a comprehensive outline of Claranet’s preparations, see Claranet’s Olympic Plan.
• For Claranet’s recommendations to customers over this period, see Claranet’s Olympic Plan.
• For enquiries specific to your Claranet service, please contact your Account Manager.

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Claranet are pleased to announce that we are extending our relationship with Dell following the launch of our Virtual Data Centre cloud offering. The new service, developed to meet the needs of companies looking to migrate their internal IT infrastructure to the cloud, is based on Dell servers, the compute element of the infrastructure supporting the Virtual Data Centre service.

With cloud set to change the business IT landscape, Dell has invested over $1bn globally to deliver solutions, services and cloud-based options to help customers capture the benefits from new compute and information delivery advances. Dell has been active in the cloud market for some time, offering open, capable and affordable solutions across hardware and services.

The new cloud computing service from Claranet – Virtual Data Centre – is based on the delivery of enterprise-class services, fully integrating computing and network provisioning, addressing the key proposition of cloud deployments: the ability to control costs, scalability and speed of implementation.

Michel Robert, managing director, Claranet UK, stated:

Cloud computing offers scalability and flexibility, and because of this, it is becoming a central part of business IT strategy for companies and organisations of all sizes. Having a major technology player like Dell commit to supporting our cloud strategy not only reinforces our existing relationship, but helps guarantee our customers high-performance cloud services based on enterprise-class technology. We are delighted to be extending our relationship with Dell and believe that their continued support will help Claranet deliver a reliable and business relevant service for our end-users.

Thomas Volk, VP EMEA for Large Enterprises, Dell, added:

At Dell, we deliver compute infrastructures that enable control, manageability and security balanced with high performance, allowing cloud service providers such as Claranet to operate efficiently and reliably. Our relationship with Claranet is one that we will both work closely on to ensure that it succeeds and this is just the first step in what we hope will be a long-term partnership both here in the UK and across Europe.

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Extract taken from Tier1 Research

Analyst: Daniel Beazer

Claranet has unveiled its long-awaited IaaS product, Virtual Data Centre. The pan-European hosting and network provider came to the market last year with Managed Virtual Hosting, a tiered (dedicated, shared, etc.) offering. That suite was well received by Claranet’s SMB and mid-tier enterprise customers and prospects, and building on that success, Claranet is bringing out an even cloudier product with Virtual Data Centre (VDC).

A self-service portal enables enterprises to set up and configure their virtual machines or resources within minutes. The familiar features of scalability, usage billing and the like are all there. So far, so cloud, but what makes the launch more interesting (if a little less cloudy) are the features that make VDC different from what is offered elsewhere in the market.

To start with, Claranet VDC is not as hardware agnostic as a true public cloud offering is, such as Amazon Web Service’s EC2 or S3. VDC is aimed at enterprises from small to mid-tier, and Claranet wanted to give its customers and prospects the comfort of an environment that was populated by familiar, trusted vendors. So we are pointed to Dell and NetApp, along with Cisco on the network side and VMware and Microsoft.

Then there is the local aspect of the Claranet cloud. Claranet carried out an extensive survey of its target customer base and found out that while SMEs to mid-tier are interested in migrating data and applications to the cloud, most want to keep the data and applications geographically close by. Consequently, Claranet is building out country by country in Europe, and adding local language support to local infrastructure. Similarly, on the network side, Claranet’s customers were looking at moving workloads to the cloud but needed to do that in a way that did not punch holes in their existing infrastructure, creating security and compliance risks. So Claranet has closely integrated VDC to its network, making it easy for users to connect to the pan-European carrier’s MPLS network.

Finally, Claranet’s intention is to keep its cloud platform open, facilitating migration to and from VDC. So while the company has been long associated with VMware, it has adopted a hypervisor-agnostic stance, with the platform shortly to be opened up to Microsoft’s Hyper-V. It’s an approach T1R believes we will see more and more in the service provider world in 2012.

T1R take

T1R welcomes Claranet’s Virtual Data Centre, and particularly the solid preparation and thinking that have gone into the final product. Tier1 Research’s Daniel Beazer was present and spoke at the launch and there was a strong level of interest from the customers and prospects in the room.

It is refreshing to see a service provider taking the approach of ascertaining needs and building a product around them. Lastly, service providers should notice the similar level of care Claranet takes with its language and nomenclature. There is hardly a mention of the word ‘cloud’ in the collateral, and as with Managed Virtual Hosting suite, the products’ titles give everyone a good idea of what the product actually does. Quite a contrast to some of the ‘cloudwashing’ out in the market, and one that will make life easier for Claranet’s customers and prospects. If it becomes a trend – who knows – it might even put us analysts out of a job.

Reproduced by permission of 451 Research; copyright 2011. This report was originally published within 451 Research’s Daily T1R service.

Find out more

• To see the full article, go to: Tier 1 Research: Claranet opens Virtual Data Centre
• To see the Press Release, go to Claranet launches next generation cloud service
• For more information about Claranet’s new cloud service, or to see a Video Demo, see Virtual Data Centre

Extract taken from ZDNet

Managed services provider Claranet has announced a hypervisor-agnostic rentable cloud service.

The Claranet Virtual Data Centre launched on Wednesday with one data centre in the UK and plans for five further facilities across Europe. The infrastructure-as-a-service cloud allows companies to rent and control storage, servers and networking.

Our offering brings together computing and network provisioning, which delivers lower connectivity costs and increased choice. Claranet’s Virtual Data Centre is built on four key principles: security and reliability… ease of network integration and a platform that is hypervisor-agnostic to facilitate migration.

said Michel Robert, Managing Director, Claranet UK

The cloud has a software orchestration layer that lets the infrastructure-as-a-service cloud host hypervisors of different types, Martin Saunders, Claranet’s Marketing Director, told ZDNet UK. Full technical details were not available.

It’s only reasonable to think that the hypervisor market will become more competitive as time goes by, so building hypervisor agnosticism into the platform is vital to ensure that we can give customers as much flexibility as possible in the future.

said Martin Saunders, Marketing Director, Claranet UK

The service presents customers with a management console that shows their overall cloud infrastructure and how it connects through to other parts of their IT stack. When all six datacentres are running customers will be able to set policies that keep data in any of the host countries, which will be London, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands

Companies ranging from Amazon through to IBM operate clouds with similar characteristics to Claranet. The London-based company hopes to differentiate itself with its hypervisor technology.

The cloud is priced according to use of IT assets — virtual CPUs (vCPUs), RAM and storage, rather than bandwidth — and changes according to the various bundles and deals you can select. A single server running Windows Server 2008 R2 with two vCPUs, 100GB of disk-based storage, 2GB of RAM and one public IP address would cost £80 per month or £0.18 per hour, if being used in a burst capacity, Saunders said.

Find out more

• To see the full article, go to: Claranet launches hypervisor-agnostic cloud
• To see the Press Release, go to Claranet launches next generation cloud service
• For more information about Claranet’s new cloud service, or to see a Video Demo, see Virtual Data Centre

Extract taken from Computer Business Review

Users are provided with resilient hosting, guaranteed resources and persistent storage, says the company.

Managed services provider Claranet has launched Claranet Virtual Data Centre, a new cloud computing service based on the delivery of enterprise-class services, fully integrating computing and network provisioning.

The new service is hosted in tier-3 equivalent data centres and it delivers guaranteed service levels ensuring high availability, low network latency, 24×7 local language support and addresses the key proposition of cloud deployments: the ability to control costs, scalability and speed of implementation, said the company.

With Claranet Virtual Data Centre, users are provided with resilient hosting, guaranteed resources (vCPU, vRAM and vStorage), and persistent storage and organisations can migrate to the cloud via its self-service portal.

With the single portal, end-users can manage both dedicated and shared cloud platforms from a single-pane-of-glass.

The cloud portal also delivers server and resource provisioning on-the-fly, as well as an ability to migrate from an existing virtual server platform into the Claranet Virtual Data Centre.

Claranet UK managing director Michel Robert said Claranet is delivering to a solution that is built entirely around the needs of the user.

Claranet¹s Virtual Data Centre is built on four key principles: security and reliability, based in the country of the customer’s choice all with access to the first of up to six European nodes, with ease of network integration and a platform that is hypervisor-agnostic to facilitate migration,

said Michel Robert.

Find out more

• To see the full article, go to: Claranet launches new cloud computing service for enterprise class hosting
• To see the Press Release, go to Claranet launches next generation cloud service
• For more information about Claranet’s new cloud service, or to see a Video Demo, see Virtual Data Centre

Extract taken from Cloud Pro

Managed service provider offers a new cloud service with location in mind.

Claranet today launched a new cloud service, with a strong focus on keeping your data in the location you want.

Companies are increasingly under pressure from regulators to keep their data in specific regions or countries, whilst the fear of not knowing where data is being held has stopped many from adopting cloud services.

Claranet is using this to sell its product – Virtual Data Centre – telling users it can store both its applications and data in its chosen countries, running on hosted enterprise level IT infrastructure.

Its own survey showed 85 per cent of businesses citing data security as the “biggest risk factor” of moving to the cloud. Rather than accessing the cloud services over the internet, the former ISP is offering companies the option of connecting to its infrastructure using their own private wide area network, removing fears of latency and even more security issues.

Although some would say this detracts from Virtual Data Centre being a ‘cloud’ service, the firm is keen to promote its other aspects synonymous with cloud computing – a self-service portal to manage IT, instant access to infinite resources and 24/7 support.

“Many businesses start out by just using the cloud for web hosting a mass-market service provides everything they need,” said Michel Robert, managing director of Claranet UK. “But as these businesses become more comfortable with the cloud, they often want to reap some of the other benefits – and place business applications in the cloud.”

“However, these may need much higher availability and have specific data protection requirements that the mass-market cloud may not meet.”

“On the other hand, enterprise cloud is designed to work with enterprise-grade IT systems, which means it is more resilient, and compatible with a wider range of IT components” he added.

“The Claranet Virtual Data Centre is a different proposition, delivering a network-integrated cloud – so that users can connect to their cloud solution with their private wide area network without using the public internet for connectivity.”

Find out more

• To see the full article, go to: Cloud Pro: Claranet goes cloud with Virtual Data Centre
• To see the Press Release, go to Claranet launches next generation cloud service
• For more information about or to see a Video Demo of Claranet’s new cloud service, see Virtual Data Centre

Three year relationship signed with the charity’s Internet and Media Leadership Group

Claranet, the managed services provider, has joined The Prince’s Trust Internet and Media Leadership Group (IMLG) which brings together broadcasting, publishing, internet and media firms who want to give disadvantaged young people a new start in life.

Claranet has joined firms such as Microsoft, Google and Facebook in the IMLG to help tackle record youth unemployment levels in the UK.

The fundraising and networking forum has raised more than £730,000 for The Prince’s Trust in just over a year, helping young people into jobs across the UK.

Michel Robert, managing director, Claranet UK, stated:

We are delighted to be able to support The Prince’s Trust by actively participating in its Internet and Media Leadership Group. Claranet has a strong history of supporting charities, which have included Childline and more recently SOS Children’s Villages. The Prince’s Trust therefore was an ideal partner for Claranet, given our historic support for young people as they rebuild their lives,”

“With one in five young people in the UK not in work, education or training, youth unemployment costs the UK economy an estimated £155 million a week in Jobseeker’s Allowance and lost productivity.

We hope our support will address this by playing an active role in fundraising. The Prince’s Trust itself gives practical and financial support to the young people who need it most by developing key skills, confidence and motivation, enabling young people to move into work, education or training,” he added.

Sarah Hertzog, Head of Business Development at The Prince’s Trust, added: “The Internet and Media Leadership Group (IMLG) has seen its membership rapidly grow since its inception in 2010, and now welcomes one of the most dynamic brands in the UK market.”

Having Claranet’s support is a fantastic coup for the IMLG and it is hoped that a dynamic and innovative relationship can be formed so that we can help even more young people into jobs across the country.”

Youth charity The Prince’s Trust helps change young lives. It helps 50,000 vulnerable young people each year, giving them the skills and confidence to find a job. The Prince’s Trust needs to raise almost £1 a week to continue its vital work. Last year, more than three in four young people on Prince’s Trust schemes moved into work, education or training.