• Rely is the leading IT provider for the Dutch notarial sector
• With the new acquisition, Claranet continues its growth strategy and doubles its size in The Netherlands

Leading pan-European managed services provider Claranet has acquired Dutch IT services provider Rely, in a move that has significantly expanded the company’s size and reach. The company, which has a leading position within the Dutch notarial sector, offers its clients a wide range of IT infrastructure services, including public and private cloud solutions and application management services.

Founded in 2012 and with offices in Barneveld and Hilversum, Rely has 50 staff and an annual turnover of € 6M. It has a long-term partnership with software company Van Brug Software and recently partnered with notary services and products company Dirict, enabling it to integrate private cloud infrastructure with specialised notarial software.

As well as being the primary IT partner for notary organisations, with more than 2,000 notary seats, it also manages more than 3,500 seats in other types of organisations, including those in the media, cultural, and financial services sectors. Before being acquired by Claranet, Rely was partly owned by the DaVinci Group, which remains an important partner for the organisation, particularly in the fields of office automation and public cloud.

Wiebe Nauta, Managing Director Claranet Benelux, commented:

“The acquisition of Rely is a real opportunity for Claranet to strengthen its leading position in The Netherlands. We now have over 100 employees in The Netherlands, a turnover of €16 million, and one of the broadest IT portfolios in the country. We are now in a great position to further accelerate our growth. This is great news for all of our customers, who will benefit from our expanded service offering, and is a great opportunity for our employees who will be able to benefit from new career opportunities.”

Rely will be absorbed in full into Claranet and the company’s founder, René Fouraschen, will remain in the enlarged business as Business Development Director in the region.

Commenting on the acquisition, René said:

“We are delighted to join forces with Claranet. Being part of a larger organisation with a similar focus on providing the total IT package gives us several advantages. It gives us the opportunity to grow quicker and gain more customers, enabling us to develop effective economies of scale. We can now make far-reaching steps to achieve maximum security and flexibility in our services. Claranet is one of the best-established cloud service providers in the industry, both nationally and internationally. In a market that is growing consistently and is subject to constant change, it is important that we are in the right position to maintain a strong position and to grow.”

With an ambitious growth strategy, the Claranet Group has grown steadily in Europe, both organically and by acquisition. The Group has annual revenues of over €252 million, employs more than 1,250 staff and works with over 6,000 customers across the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands and Brazil.

The move marks Claranet’s entry into two new markets in recent months following the acquisition of CredibilIT in Brazil

Claranet, a leading European managed services provider, has today announced the launch of a new legal and operational entity, Claranet Italy. Claranet Italy has been established in response to a growing demand for managed public cloud solutions in the Italian market and will be focused solely on public cloud services.

The opening of Claranet Italy comes shortly after Claranet’s expansion into the Brazilian market with the purchase of public cloud services provider CredibilIT in December 2016. Claranet Italy is the first organic expansion for Claranet Group since the launch of Claranet France in 1998 and Claranet Germany in 2000. This new expansion positions Claranet as one of the most ambitious and dynamic players in the European hosting market following 17 acquisitions across the continent in the last five years.

The new entity will be based in Milan, meaning it is strategically positioned near major economic centres and the bases of major partners such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Like the six other existing European entities, Claranet Italy will have its own senior management team and its own operational and commercial teams. Fabrice Tetu, former CEO of French managed services provider Diademys, which Claranet acquired last year, has been tasked with the set-up of Claranet Italy and will work to grow its footprint in the country.

Charles Nasser, CEO and Founder of the Claranet Group, commented:

We are very excited to announce the formation of Claranet Italy. This move underscores Claranet’s intent to accelerate our geographic expansion and reinforces Claranet’s leading position in the European hosting market. The opening of Claranet Italy will help us further support the needs of our customers who have a foothold in Italy and allow us to generate new business in the country more effectively. Fabrice possesses a great deal of experience in the sector and in growing companies from his time at Diademys and I have every confidence that he will make a great success of Claranet Italy.”

Fabrice Tetu, Managing Director of Claranet Italy, added:

“Claranet has over a hundred engineers with the highest levels of certification in public cloud. We have developed expertise, tools and methodologies to help companies migrate to the cloud and transform their businesses. We are pleased to be able to bring this expertise to Italy and I am delighted to be developing the business in a new market. By building our own team of Italian public cloud experts, we will ensure a closer understanding with our Italian customers, which will, in turn, help them do amazing things.”

With an ambitious strategy and strong organic and acquisitive growth the Group now reports annualised sales of over £215million/€250million, more than 1,250 employees and 5,800 customers in Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the UK and Italy.

AWS and Claranet will discuss retail optimisation at a joint event at the AWS Auditorium, London, on 9 February

With ecommerce and mobile both acting as a significant driving force for retailers over 2016 and especially during the Christmas period, it is apparent that the capacity to continually optimise IT operations is now a key competitive differentiator in the retail sector. This is according to Claranet, which is hosting a joint event with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on 9 February to discuss how retailers can gain competitive advantage in this fast-paced environment.

The need for continual optimisation will only continue to grow in importance as technological developments such as the Internet of Things, predictive analytics, and machine learning all shape an increasingly personalised experience for consumers.

Online spending rose by 16 per cent in 2016, reaching £133billion, according to research from IMRG and Capgemini. Of this total, a significant proportion was spent in the weeks leading up to Christmas – £25billion. The Christmas period also saw mobile continue its rapid growth as a shopping tool, with mobile purchases up 47 per cent year-on-year.

Sam Bashton, Head of the Claranet Cloud Practice, commented on the significance of these trends:

There is now unparalleled convenience for consumers, allowing them to make purchases at any time from any place – and growing ecommerce sales indicates how well this offer is resonating. However, it is this very promise of convenience that puts such pressure on retailers – as consumers become more accustomed to the ease of shopping like this, their tolerance for technical issues and delays will decrease. This puts a competitive premium on ensuring that IT systems are agile and scalable enough to deliver a seamless experience.

Referring to Claranet’s own work with fast-fashion brand Missguided, Bashton spoke of the strategic importance of continuously optimising IT operations:

For disruptive brands such as Missguided, to be competitive you need to be ready to constantly sharpen IT performance in order to deliver the seamless experience that consumers expect.

In its own research, Claranet found that 48 per cent of retailers consider optimisation to be their biggest IT challenge over the next 5 years, as opposed to 39 per cent of other organisations. Bashton commented on why this might be the case: “As a result of technological developments the future of retail looks increasingly personalised, continuous, and immersive. Augmented and Virtual Reality and the Internet of Things will all be deployed to enhance the in-store experience and to make home shopping more enjoyable and more seamless.

Bashton concluded: “Retailers should begin developing this approach of continuous optimisation now, so that they can better take advantage of ecommerce’s current benefits and future developments. I look forward to discussing the topic further at the retail event with AWS on Thursday 9th February.”

To register for Claranet’s event – Relentless optimisation: the new normal – and for the full agenda, visit: http://landing.claranet.co.uk/aws-retail-event-relentless-optimisation-t…

Research finds 57 per cent rank security and compliance as biggest IT challenge

Research has found that UK IT departments are some of the most likely in Europe to identify security and compliance as the biggest challenge they are currently facing and, as a result, they are also some of the most likely to host their applications internally. For Claranet, as security fears inhibit risk taking and, by extension innovation, organisations must work to alleviate their concerns if they wish to remain competitive in their market and innovate in a controlled way.

Vanson Bourne surveyed 900 end user IT leaders from mid-market businesses in the six markets in which Claranet operates (Germany, Benelux, France, Spain, Portugal, and the UK) and found that 57 per cent of UK organisations rank security and compliance as the biggest IT challenge, joint highest with security conscious Germany. This concern is reflected by the fact that 50 per cent of applications managed by UK businesses are hosted on internal infrastructure, which can be attributed to prevailing attitudes towards cloud security and data ownership. Additionally, authentication and security are the applications that are most likely to be hosted internally, with 63 per cent of UK organisations doing so, due to the fact that these are often associated with highly secure data.

For Ian Furness, Hosting Services Director at Claranet, it’s critical that British businesses address these security concerns and maintain the integrity of their data so they can facilitate innovation and respond to changing market pressures.

He explains:

Security concerns amongst UK organisations are justified as businesses come under increasing pressure to keep up with the constantly evolving threat landscape, especially as more data is analysed and stored online. However, these security concerns make organisations a lot more risk adverse, which ultimately stifles innovation. Considering that today’s businesses are becoming much more software driven and the gate to competitiveness comes down to adapting applications that respond to increasing market pressures, security concerns, if left unaddressed, present a major stumbling block to the prosperity of businesses in the UK.

Organisations often equate security to having perceived control, which indicates why British businesses are more likely to host their applications internally. It’s understandable that organisations may want to take this approach for their applications, particularly those that are associated with high risk information. But just because your servers are under your roof, this doesn’t necessarily make them more secure. In fact, if managed and maintained correctly, alternative delivery models, such as public cloud, are suitable for even the most sensitive data and can bring massive transformational benefits to organisations.

Though security is not likely to change as the number one IT priority any time soon, the specific threats, and the ways businesses manage and respond to them, most certainly will. Businesses will need to stay alert to changes to legislation and the nature of prevailing threats as more and more data is stored and analysed. IT services provider (ITSPs) have a critical role to play here. A well-staffed ITSP with years of security expertise is likely to be in a better position to maintain the integrity of data, compared to an under-resourced in-house IT team. By working with trusted ITSP, businesses can benefit from transformational benefits and highly compliant security protocols in tandem,” concludes Furness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daniel Galante commented:

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

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

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

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

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

Neil Thomas, Director of Communications Services, commented:

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

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

MSP boosts disaster recovery capabilities to better protect customer data

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

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

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

Martin Saunders, Claranet’s Technical Director, commented:

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

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

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

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

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

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

He commented:

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

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

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

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

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

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