UKCloud – Formerly Skyscape Cloud Services – Announces Expansion Of Cloud Services And Increase In Options On G-Cloud 8
Assured cloud services provider announces the expansion of choice with new OpenStack and Oracle platforms and further price reductions
London – August 4, 2016 – UKCloud, the new name for Skyscape Cloud Services, the easy to adopt, easy to use and easy to leave assured cloud services company, today announced that an expanded range of assured cloud services, including new OpenStack and Oracle powered offerings, are now available on the latest iteration of the G-Cloud Framework – G-Cloud 8. These new features and service options provide genuine choice to meet the different requirements of contrasting public sector workloads. In addition, further price reductions demonstrate that UKCloud remains committed to providing best value. This combination of solutions focused on UK Public Sector requirements and unbeatable pricing combined with its exceptional compliance, service performance and support credentials confirm UKCloud’s unique position to support public sector digital transformation and its customers who deliver critical services to citizens.
“As a firm supporter of the development of G-Cloud, we welcome the latest iteration and are pleased to confirm that our full range of accredited services will be available via G-Cloud 8,” said Simon Hansford, CEO of UKCloud. “In addition to a number of major enhancements to our services, we’re adding OpenStack and Oracle platforms in order to support our public sector customers in delivering cost-effective and secure transactional services to citizens. We have developed these in line with our customers’ feedback, which demonstrates our continued and exclusive commitment to the UK public sector.”
As with previous G-Cloud iterations, UKCloud continues to make significant improvements to its VMware vCloud platform, which includes an upgrade to vCloud 8, NSX software defined networking and next generation workload protection. This ensures a mature and proven platform for workloads based on traditional enterprise technologies such as IBM, Microsoft and SAP. New connectivity options now offered by UKCloud include free access via the high-speed Janet network to research and education communities. Furthermore, UKCloud’s platform is now connected to RLI for the military and defence community. The provider’s ninth round of price reductions mean that customers will see improved value with a 30 percent reduction in Tier 1 (optimised) Compute storage from 35p to 25p and free internet bandwidth for both inbound and outbound traffic.
“Four years on from the launch of our first platform on the G-Cloud Framework’s debut iteration, the public sector is maturing and we’re seeing more complex requirements for big data projects and multi-cloud deployments. As demand for cloud computing and technical support for these more complicated solutions grows, our broad range of offerings remain easily accessible via G-Cloud, providing public sector organisations with compliant and cost-efficient services,” continued Hansford.
UKCloud’s newest platform, Assured Oracle Cloud, which is based on Oracle Virtual Machine (OVM) technology, will now be available on G-Cloud 8. This new platform will mean customers can host their Oracle-based services with UKCloud and therefore realise the benefits of true cloud hosting – increased agility and consumption-based pricing as well as significantly reduced costs, all whilst complying with the stringent licencing and hardware requirements specified by Oracle’s software solutions. Its new Oracle platform extends the unique assurance, sovereignty and connectivity capabilities of the UKCloud platform to an environment that is specifically optimised for citizen-facing applications and back office systems based on Oracle’s technology, such as the E-business Suite and Oracle Fusion Applications.
In addition to Oracle, UKCloud’s new Cloud Native Infrastructure (powered by OpenStack) will also be available on G-Cloud 8 and is designed to provide a rich, scalable API and close alignment with agile DevOps/WebOps culture commonly used to develop cloud native applications, which improve public services, increase agility, drive innovation and reduce costs. UKCloud’s assured OpenStack capability will accelerate digital transformation across the UK public sector by providing a truly open source platform that is familiar to developers and meets government requirements for open standards.
