South Africa’s Datacentrix, a provider of high performing and secure ICT solutions, has officially introduced its cloud computing offering aimed at assisting enterprise-level customers in meeting their off-premise outsourcing needs.
Between 2006 and 2010, the CIO Index conducted a study comparing cloud and on-premise business solutions that found that the total cost of ownership for cloud-based solutions is 55 percent lower, IT infrastructure costs are non-existent for cloud computing, and spending for application implementation and support is 3.5 times more for on-premise deployment.
Jan Dry, CTO and head of consulting at Datacentrix said: “Cloud computing isn’t a ‘silver bullet’ that will address all of a business’ IT challenges. However, it can certainly solve a host of problems if delivered in a strategically and technologically sound manner.”
According to him, the main issues that cloud computing can help solve include the inefficient use of internal computing resources, which is linked to wasted IT investments, the operational overheads associated with managing applications and related platforms, the spiralling costs of power and space, the sometimes paralysing effect of strategic decisions and lastly lack of the agility needed to modify technology to support changing organisational needs.”
Dry explains that Datacentrix has developed a complete set of mature services that deliver value at each stage of the cloud computing life cycle.
“These services are delivered by skilled resources that utilise dynamic tools while applying a proven transition management methodology. Our broad footprint of technology services has positioned us to satisfy every aspect of an organisation’s cloud computing requirements, including end-user devices, connectivity, hosting and support services,” he said.
The tangible and measurable benefits of Datacentrix’s cloud service offering include:
* A structured costing model, which allows different service types to be billed out on a “pay as you use” type basis;
* The stringent monitoring of all cloud services to allow for reporting on utilisation, availability, performance, capacity and demand;
* Simpler strategic planning through detailed analyses of current and future requirements;
* Customised service level agreements (SLAs), which are managed in accordance with service catalogues, service levels and performance indicators; and
* An advanced service delivery framework that provides for end-to-end support, including a contact centre, mature service desk, advanced IT service management system, monitoring tools, certified and experienced skills and proven processes.
“Datacentrix’s highly customisable offering can be delivered via the three primary cloud service platforms – infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) – and any combination thereof,” Dry said, adding that, “we have made a serious investment in our Tier 3 data centre and will continue to improve on its redundancy, fault tolerance, high availability and performance capabilities.”
Also, Datacentrix caters for both types of cloud service models, “private” and “public” clouds. The organisation’s security operations centre (SOC), one of the first of its type deployed within the southern hemisphere, provides clients with access to a host of dynamic security services deliverable via its specialised IT security division.
“Companies looking to solve a simple security challenge, or striving to improve management, governance and control of security, would do well to consider the cloud route,” Dry added.
