Company To Design, Deploy, And Manage Private, Public And ‘As A Service’ Cloud Solutions; Building £7.5m High Density Data Centre To Bolster Services Portfolio

Slough, 5th November – International solutions provider, Logicalis, today announces the launch of a dedicated cloud consulting, deployment and managed services group, to engage with commercial and public sector organisations in the development of private, community and ‘co-operative hybrid’ cloud infrastructures.  The group will leverage Logicalis’ expertise in the design and implementation of highly virtualised computing, storage and networking infrastructures, and its investments in enterprise class managed services and in-house data centre facilities, to offer a range of private, public, and ‘as a service’ cloud offerings.

“Cloud may well have ascended the hype curve in the last 12 months, but the implications of its emergence are a challenging reality to those setting strategy for architecting and acquiring IT in the coming years.  You cannot build or procure hype, and so cloud must become commercially and operationally viable if it is to benefit private and public sector organisations,” commented Tom Kelly, managing director of Logicalis UK, adding;

“In forming this group, customers can exploit the vision and consultancy bred from our expertise in advanced data centre virtualisation and managed services, to develop an independent strategy that builds and integrates private and public cloud services and solutions into the structure of their businesses,” added Kelly. 

To fulfil demand for its cloud services group, Logicalis recently began development of a new £7.5million data centre adjoining its UK headquarters.  The facility will bolster Logicalis’ capability to deliver a range of cloud ‘infrastructure and platform as a service’ and ‘software as a service’ offerings upon its completion in May 2010.

Says Kelly; “During the past three years we have been making significant investments in managed services and wholly owned private data centre facilities and, combined with key partners such as Cisco, HP, IBM, VMware, Microsoft, NetApp, EMC, CA, and BMC, we are in the prime position to help customers build their own private clouds, augmented by our own specialist cloud services.”

Cloud infrastructure and software services are now becoming commercially, architecturally and operationally significant to private and public sector organisations, and the global market is predicted to reach some $42billion[1] by 2012.

Logicalis’ cloud group will offer a range of solutions and services to the UK market, including;

Consult – develop cloud strategy
Design – vendor independent private, community and ‘co-operative hybrid’ cloud design
Build – private, community and ‘co-operative hybrid’ cloud building
Host – fully managed private and cooperative community cloud hosting from its own data centres
Manage – customer site private and community cloud managed services
Operate – deliver a range of ‘as a service’ offerings including IaaS, PaaS, SaaS.

Chris Gabriel, head of solutions for Logicalis, concludes; “The public sector sees cloud as a fast-track route to delivering co-operative or shared ICT services.  These will not be whole-scale G-Clouds, but regional or local community clouds, delivering secure and robust services. Our experience in operating complex community public sector networks such as the PSBA (Public Sector Broadband Aggregation) in Wales, combined with our strength in highly virtualised data centre infrastructure and services, enables us to work with individual or public sector communities to deliver a cloud architecture and operational model that meets their individual or group needs.”