Virtual Internet Chosen to Deliver Cloud Services to UK Government on G-Cloud
Virtual Internet has been selected to join the UK Government’s G-Cloud Framework following the completion of the formal bid process. Our Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions are now listed in the Government’s CloudStore for purchase by public sector bodies.
CloudStore offers UK Government organisations to purchase cloud services from suppliers that have already undergone the demanding approval process. The initiative will increase the flexibility of procurement contracts and facilitate more engagement with Small to Medium Enterprise technology service providers.
“This marks a new era in IT for government, allowing the public sector to take better advantage of the cost savings, efficiency, and agility of cloud computing. The UK Government’s G-Cloud initiative is a testament to the importance of cloud-based technologies and the departure from the old on-premise hardware model,” says Virtual Internet Managing Director, Patrick McCarthy.
Virtual Internet operates top tier UK datacentres and are ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified for security management and quality management. Our customers have the peace of mind that their cloud servers are housed in secure, state-of-the-art facilities and monitored and maintained by a skilled team of engineers, 24/7/365.
To see our service offerings listed in the UK Government's CloudStore click here.
Office 365: The pinnacle of collaborative cloud Enterprise IT
Picture an online command center which threads your key Enterprise apps including Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint Server, through the eye of a cloud delivery platform reducing cost, complexity and helping staff focus on revenue, not technology.
This is precisely the end goal of Software-as-a-Service Office 365, Microsoft’s latest business productivity suite which mitigates the need to tether software to expensive legacy hardware in your IT department.
Access your email, important documents, contacts and calendars from anywhere and any device, making you completely self-sufficient using a remote cloud hosting platform from Virtual Internet.
Every best seller from the Microsoft suite of packages is available within this hosted software including Exchange and SharePoint, which are becoming standard features in any serious IT department.
Just take a look at the massive growth in search demand for this business tool on Google Insights. Searches for Office 365 are surging almost VERTICALLY upwards and this will accelerate further in 2012.
One reason for this is because, Office 365 is geared to work on all Smart devices which is in itself experiencing massive growth. The combination of cloud scaling coupled with horizontal reach on all physical devices, is making the Microsoft suite of productivity tools invaluable to high-demand Enterprise IT.
Strong SLAs and uptime guarantees from providers such as Virtual Internet are also helping to fuel this growth in hosted productivity infrastructure.
“Because you can use your mobile device to access e-mail and documents, you won’t have to hurry back to the office (or look for a Wi-Fi hot spot if you are using your computer). When traveling, you can access your e-mail and even edit online documents from most popular Web browsers,” said Microsoft.
Plus, because Enterprise employees are familiar with nearly all MS products (Excel, Word), learning Office 365 is ridiculously easy.
“With Office 365, you can create a password-protected portal to share large, hard-to-e-mail files both inside and outside your organization, giving you a single location to find the very latest versions of files or documents, no matter how many people are working on them,” said Microsoft.
By leveraging Exchange through Office 365 users can access all email, contacts and calendars anytime, anywhere using desktops, laptops or mobile devices.
Enterprise level AV and spam filters protect business employees at all times. They can also create sites to share documents through hosted SaaS SharePoint, which allows further ability to track project milestones and ensure everyone has the latest version.
If you have not yet investigated Office 365, start now. It has a high approval rating and will become a standard feature in Enterprise IT over the coming years.
A few tips to consider when migrating to a Virtual Data Centre
According to a recent VMware whitepaper, there are a few key considerations and pitfalls to heed when automating data centres with virtualization:
RECOMMENDED STEPS
Proceed incrementally: Examine all manual tasks and consider whether these workloads can be migrated to a Virtual Data Centre.
Think cross-silo: Virtualization rollout works across server storage, desktop and application teams. Cutting costs by as much as 50% is possible if automation is pursued simultaneously across all these areas.
Budget and planning: If you decided to move to a Virtual Data Centre, factor in automation immediately and budget for solutions and training purchases that work towards this goal.
Analyze, monitor and measure: Tactically, measure cost savings and ROI while bringing teams and stakeholders together to utilize automation over the long-term as part of your broader strategy.
AVOID THESE PITFALLS
When pursuing an on-demand data centre these general pitfalls should be avoided while automating virtual infrastructure:
Solution Selection: Distinguish between key vendor and product features that can be automated immediately and those that should be on the vendor roadmap. Generally speaking, automation should be considered a long-term trend and requires a fundamental change in thinking.
Process standardization: If IT has not adopted a process standard, it should start by looking at ITIL and adopt it in the IT operations team. Other maturity models include CMM and CoBIT, which should also be considered by the respective IT group.
Cross-silo features: Automation impacts different buying centres and require flexibility in what can be automated and the integration points among the workflows and products. Buyers must consider the interface, functionality, and short- and long-term automation strategies within their IT silo and across teams.
Underlying virtualization architecture: Automation at the hypervisor layer must gather data (and sometimes act on this data) at very granular levels. Not all automation solutions are equal, and integration across broad virtualization architectures is required to drive workflows and trigger dynamic actions.
CONCLUSION
Larger enterprises are moving to Virtual Data Centres because they offer shared utility infrastructure and powerful automation features. These allow IT executives to focus on business objectives without getting mired in daily operational issues. VMware reports a number of customers who have cut costs by as much as 50% using this approach.
Centralized management processes and disaster recovery capabilities also make these remote Virtual Data Centres attractive to legacy on-premise IT departments. Also consider the benefits of self-service provisioning of virtual machines for use in application and test labs.
A worlwide review of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) growth
Two of the top challenges customers face when implementing SaaS services in Europe are customization and limited flexibility, according to a recent Gartner Press Release.
But, despite these challenges SaaS revenue jumped 23% in 2011 from 2010, to reach $2.7 billion. By 2015 this figure is expected to reach nearly $5 billion.
The biggest market penetration is taking place in the U.K., Ireland and Netherlands. The Nordic countries are not far behind. One of the reasons for this, is the fact that English is the dominant language. This allows North American vendors to spread their wings in Western Europe with less localization efforts. Further, a solid Internet Infrastructure underpins this high adoption rate.
Worldwide, SaaS revenue edged over the $12 billion mark representing an increase of $2 billion from 2010 levels. North America continues to dominate Cloud IT spend, accounting for nearly 64% of all SaaS revenue in 2011. This will dip slightly to 60% in 2015.
"In North America, ease and speed of deployment are primary reasons for SaaS adoption, followed by lower TCO," said Gartner.
"Limited capital expense is also considered more important in North America than in the other regions. Consistent with the other regions, CRM shows the highest use of SaaS among enterprise applications while use of Web conferencing, e-learning and travel booking is higher in North America than in the other regions."
Meanwhile, Asian Tigers like Japan are also eating up SaaS services. By 2015, SaaS revenue is expected to reach nearly $700 million.
Sales force automation and solutions for B2B call centers are expected to be key drivers in the Japanese SaaS sectors.
According to Gartner, SaaS revenue in Asia/Pacific is forecast to total $768.3 million in 2011, a 27.7 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $601.8 million. By the end of 2015, SaaS revenue in Asia/Pacific will reach $1.7 billion.
Established infrastructure, stable networks and a high availability of vendor sales, marketing and support services structures provide fertile ground for SaaS adoption.
“SaaS is no longer considered a fad and it is making traction despite some of the concern over security issues and the difficulty of managing change in a shared environment,” said Gartner.
“Because of faster implementations that fit lower operational costs, SaaS and BPM seem to be gaining traction together. This is one kind of agility besides business rules that seem to have momentum these days.”
Does Europe really need these new data laws?
"17 years ago less than 1% of Europeans used the internet. Today, vast amounts of personal data are transferred and exchanged, across continents and around the globe in fractions of seconds," ~ EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, the Commission’s Vice-President
Just as Internet giants, Wikipedia and Google recently helped stall and cripple the highly controversial Stop Online Privacy Online (SOPA) bill, European regulators are seeking to impose their own modified version on business with a new round of EU Data Bills.
The EU commission moved to propose a new bill that reforms 1995 Data protection rules, that it hopes will save businesses up to €2.3 billion a year. It also hopes to simplify fragmented operating procedures and re-enforce consumer privacy when transacting online.
For instance, the proposed bill states:
Organisations will only have to deal with a single national data protection authority in the EU country where they have their main establishment. Likewise, people can refer to the data protection authority in their country, even when a company based outside the EU processes their data. Wherever consent is required for data to be processed, it is clarified that it has to be given explicitly, rather than assumed.
However, others call it burdensome to business and probably more expensive to implement.
“Organizations that fail to issue notifications about a personal data breach in a timely or complete fashion to the supervisory authority will face fines of up to 2 percent of their current revenues,” said PC Mag.
This means penalties as high as €1 million could be imposed on providers who fail to secure customer data.
According to a EU press release, proposals will be passed on to the European Parliament and EU Member States for discussion. It will take roughly 2 years to pass.
“In the digital age, the collection and storage of personal information are essential. Data is used by all businesses – from insurance firms and banks to social media sites and search engines,” said the EU.
“In a globalized world, the transfer of data to third countries has become an important factor in daily life. There are no borders online and cloud computing means data may be sent from Berlin to be processed in Boston and stored in Bangalore.”
The new bill thus aims to rectify this by complementing the bill with other legal instruments, such as the e-Privacy Directive for the communications sector. There are also specific rules for the protection of personal data in police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters
The PC Mag article featured an interview with a leading IT Security company who “remained unconvinced that legislating around the disclosure of breaches actually provides any real incentive for organizations to employ best practices when it comes to data security. Let's face it, imposing a fine or a time limit is just like putting a plaster over a gaping wound -- it only goes so far.”
Other observers do say the bill may have some value to consumers and the cost of not complying exceeds the damage done by an actual breach.
“However many companies will have to perform privacy impact assessments at a cost of around €14,000 (US$18,163). Companies with more than 250 people will also have to appoint a data protection officer,” said PC Mag.
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