Amongst hundreds of nominations, our collaboration with IBM to develop and deliver versatile cloud infrastructure services to clients has been recognised with the award for Outstanding Services Solution with Global Technology Services at the 2012 IBM Beacon Award . One of only 27 partners worldwide to achieve such an accolade, you can get the lowdown of our services and partnership in this short video, produced in conjunction with the award ceremony.
As part of our ongoing evolution of cloud strategy, niu has been trialling a number of different public cloud services to determine how each can best integrate into our broader portfolio of services. Working with best of breed vendors as well as more local, niche, providers, key findings so far demonstrate huge variances around ease of contracting, provisioning, service levels, cost and service options. With a number of our clients willing to lead the charge, we are working on integrating the best cloud solutions for each one, based on each of these factors, creating tailor made end to end services for their requirement. More to come on this in June, as we head to exhibit at Cloud Computing World Forum.
Finally, as part of the continued expansion of services offered by our Compliance and Security Practice, we are pleased to announce our partnership with Airtight Networks, a market leader in wireless intrusion prevention.
Given increasing regulations such as PCI DSS which demand any company that processes credit cards to adopt such a control, wireless security services, delivered via the cloud or on site, have become increasingly important in the retail industry. In addition to establishing the partnership, a number of our staff have successfully certified as AirTight Certified Wireless Security Administrator (ACWSA).
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niu has announced the planned opening of two new Data Centres in the United States to support customer workloads that need to be located within country. The facilities, due to come on-stream in April 2012, provide niu with the capability to provide fully managed services from their UK data centre operations, with data physically residing within the US borders.
“A number of clients had approached us looking for a good hybrid solution which allows for local delivery of services to US users, but with a UK governed managed services wrap” says Steve Bedford, Group Technical Director. “Having a capability such as this allows clients to navigate some of the complexities of multi-country data protection and compliance regulation, without having to compromise on items such as Patriot Act, Sarbanes Oxley or other compliance requirements.”
The services are provided in partnership with Orange Business Services, who will be providing colocation services at their network points of presence in these locations. This model allows for services to be quickly delivered “on-net” to niu’s UK operations, meaning transatlantic connectivity can be delivered quickly and in a highly scalable model.
Once launched, this model is easily replicable to allow niu to open other international sites and provide clients a true global infrastructure, managed from a single set of service management principles and tools.
This is just one example of our partnership with OBS; we’re also pleased to announce that niu has been chosen as the Orange Business Services Partner of the Year for 2011. This is the 7th consecutive year we’ve received this accolade, and we’re proud to be recognised for the innovative use of OBS services in the market, something we believe this latest colocation model will further replicate.
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We have a new London HQ! In doing so, we have had to overcome the same business IT challenges as many of our customers. So, in a bid to ‘practice what we preach’ we’ve implemented our very own end-to-end integrated “cloud office” solution, incorporating Hosted VDI, Hosted IPT and integration with Hosted Microsoft Lync to name a few.
Better still, pop in and see the technology in action first-hand.
On the virtualisation front - our partnership with VMware has been going from strength to strength and we’ve recently been awarded vCloud Powered status. Having our cloud and virtualisation backbone underpinned by VMware allows us to rapidly scale server capacity for customers and accelerate time-to-market for new applications.
We also launched our Mobile Management as a Service (MMaaS). Powered by Symantec, MMaaS enables organisations to better secure and manage a growing mobile device estate. We’ll help you improve user access to corporate resources, facilitate BYOD initiatives, and say yes to mobile apps, all the while giving greater visibility, control and security of devices and data to the IT department. Contact Simon Mitchinson for more information – Simon.Mitchinson@niu-solutions.com
Finally, to round off 2011 we held a successful ‘beyond boundaries: managing enterprise security, inside and out’ seminar. The event offered delegates an afternoon of insightful talks on best practice smart and managed security from IBM, Symantec, CyberArk and industry expert, Steve Gold. You can hear from Steve in our Industry View section.
