Zynstra, the pioneer in cloud managed server appliances, today announces the launch of two new products, SMB IT Appliance and Education IT Appliance.
Developed specifically to address the evolving needs of SMBs and educational establishments, the latest developments in Zynstra's product suite have been crafted in association with Microsoft and HP to meet the looming end-of-life technology dilemma that requires an infrastructure refresh for Windows Server 2003.
"We estimate that there are well over a quarter of a million organisations in the UK still running Windows Server 2003 and a large number also based on Small Business Server 2003, both of which are approaching end-of-life and in just over one year will no longer be supported by Microsoft," said Nick East, CEO at Zynstra. "Organisations affected by this need to be considering how best to refresh their infrastructure without incurring huge costs or overhauling their way of working. With this in mind we have launched two new solutions in our range of Cloud Managed Server Appliances to support the Microsoft partner base in managing the transition with their customers and provide a practical on-ramp to cloud services whilst preserving on-premise capability where required."
The SMB IT Appliance caters for organisations with five to 250 IT users at a site. Users get all the comfort and control of on-premise IT but with the economics and service levels typically associated with public cloud services. This enables SMB's to securely run both local Windows and Linux workloads in virtualised containers, whilst also seamlessly connecting them to public cloud services though Single Sign On to applications such as Microsoft Office 365. SMB IT Appliance is delivered as a managed IT service for a monthly subscription by the growing base of Zynstra partners, making it completely hassle free for SMBs.
Targeted at schools and academies, the Education IT Appliance benefits from all the flexible features which make the SMB IT Appliance appealing and features an age specific content filtering capability from E2BN Protex which ensures pupils are protected from inappropriate content whilst accessing schools systems. Education IT Appliance is fully integrated with Office 365 which enables educational establishments to make the most of Microsoft's campaign offering free student access under its Student Advantage programme.
Mark Devereux, CTO at Concorde Solutions, was one of the first businesses to sign up to the new SMB IT Appliance and managed service. Commenting on the solution, Devereux said: "Like many businesses, our internal IT had grown incrementally with our business over the years but its underlying design had become dated, temperamental and was facing end-of-support. We had been looking for a platform built for our size and with a capability to grow with us but remove the mundane administration and management. Zynstra's SMB IT Appliance provides that solution. We can now focus our efforts purely on building our business and have the peace of mind that our internal and development IT platforms are being managed for us by a local and trusted partner for a predictable and, frankly, more affordable cost."
All of Zynstra's cloud managed server appliances are built on the HP ProLiant server range with the unique Zynstra software that enables local IT workloads to be run as a service in virtualised Windows and/or Linux environments. SMB IT Appliance and Education IT Appliance offer seamless integration to Microsoft Office 365 and offer a backup and disaster recovery service on Microsoft Azure and SSO to Azure hosted applications via ADFS. Users of both IT Appliances are also able to benefit from Zynstra's patent pending keep current and keep consistent technology which is "built in" so that organisations need not worry about having to update systems. With Zynstra's extensive software IP, each appliance is also provisioned, updated and managed from the cloud at a scale not previously possible.
Zynstra's SMB and Education IT Appliances are available with immediate effect.
