Storage Focus on Cloud Computing

Thanks to Hammer PLC for their invitation and hospitality at last week’s fifth Storage Focus event. David Hardwick (Technical Director) and I were treated to a very informative and entertaining couple of days at Hinkley Island Hotel and Mallory Park race circuit.

Seminars were headed by Intel, Dell, Dot Hill and QLogic as well as a very interesting speech from industry guru John Chapman of IT Reality outlining the future of Cloud Computing Technology and specifically the need for IT Solution providers to wake up to the new demands of their customers and radically change the way they operate, concentrating on offering Solutions as a Service (SoaS) with flexible, mobile and agile solutions. He says:

“The impact of a whole series of cultural, economic and social changes have combined over recent years to put pressure on organisations to demand that their ICT suppliers start delivering more than just technology and basic business and office productivity applications. What these organisations are really looking for are IT solutions that will help them transform their operations, processes and business models and make them more competitive, agile and profitable.”

At Genmar we fully agree with this ethos and strive to deliver bespoke managed services to all our clients.

More information can be found on out What is Cloud pages.

Garry Moore

IFAs go hosted

Our Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) client base been very wide spread from Estate Agents to accountants; recently we have taken on three new IFA’s (Independent Financial Advisor’s) in as many weeks. Reasons for them moving from typical in house solutions to Managed VDI’s vary; but the general feel is that they have heard from sources in their industry that a managed cloud solution is the way forward.  An example of this can be found on www.ifaonline.co.uk by Rahul Odedra; who says:

“The main advantage of cloud computing is that it relegates the need to invest capital in software and hardware as this is taken care of by the provider.

Instead, most cloud solutions are provided on a pay-as-you-go basis, with monthly or annual fees the most common model for delivery.

For businesses with ambitions for growth, this can be particularly advantageous as increased capabilities can be sought as the need arises.”

Read more: http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/ifaonline/feature/1729253/the-possibilities-cloud-computing#ixzz1VC4vM8Ue

Some of our cloud desktop resellers also report that they are seeing increased interest and awareness for this market sector.

Very clean and green.

We are currently in the process of moving our new infrastructure into a new data centre.  This will increase our capacity for High Availability with live replication between our two primary data centers and also allow us to start provisioning again as currently our full cloud…is full.

We selected this particular data center on location, security, redundancy and efficiency.  The data center is of a new breed that has a lower power overhead per amp delivered to the racks, giving Genmar the opportunity to do its bit for the green movement.

We have launched a range of whitelabel advertising materials for cloud resellers of hosted exchange, remote desktop services and remote backup.  All copy is made available via the reseller portal.  We can even organise the printing!

Hosted desktop reseller page