Organisations demonstrate production hybrid cloud,
mobilising entire enterprise applications between private and
hosted clouds
Slough, UK, 1st August 2011 –
International solutions provider, Logicalis UK, today announced that in conjunction with
Loughborough University it
has successfully moved a complete enterprise application stack -
including both virtualised and non-virtualised workloads – back and
forth between an on-campus private cloud and Logicalis’ hosted
cloud, via JANET (Joint Academic
Network). The exercise has validated Loughborough’s conviction that
hybrid cloud is a viable IT service delivery platform, and
demonstrates the true capabilities of cloud as far more than just a
hypervisor workload enabler.
Leveraging Logicalis’ industry leading innovation in cloud
infrastructure and its connection into JANET, Loughborough
automated a total infrastructure move between data centres located
over 200 miles apart, within minutes.
Phil Richards, Director of IT Services at Loughborough
University, comments, “If it sounds groundbreaking it should do. We
have just demonstrated that Loughborough’s strategy of leveraging
JANET-connected cloud services can transform the way we deploy ICT
infrastructure forever. Very simply, we picked a number of virtual
and physical servers running key applications, along with the
associated networking, storage and security elements, and moved
them to Logicalis’ data centre in Slough. The applications had no
understanding they had changed hardware platform or that they had
been moved or modified in anyway, and we did it within five
minutes.”
The exercise demonstrates the real potential
of cloud to organisations that traditionally only perceived it as
suitable for hypervisor enabled workloads. Simon Daykin, CTO at
Logicalis UK, explains; “What we have achieved in this exercise
rips up the rule book on what cloud means to customers. The
industry has been so inwardly focussed on hypervisor-based clouds
that it has forgotten that real organisations, like Loughborough,
have a myriad of operating systems and workloads.
“In successfully automating the move of an
entire infrastructure and application stack in this way, we have
proven that cloud is more than a vanilla slice of hypervisor paid
for with a credit card. This is not an engineering
experiment; this is a real, live, demonstrable and adoptable
approach for secure enterprise application cloud deployment.”
In 2010, Loughborough University adopted
Logicalis’ Cooperative Cloud as its strategic ICT platform,
leveraging Logicalis’ JANET-connected hosted cloud as the
institution needs new capacity in the future. This enables
Loughborough to move real IT services between on-site private and
off-site shared hosted clouds rapidly, reliably and without
application or infrastructure changes. Moreover, the
University’s use of private cloud has enabled it to save over
£2million in data centre regeneration costs.
The cloud solutions are based on Cisco’s
unique Unified Computing System (UCS), NetApp Storage platforms,
and CA Technologies’ automation and orchestration tools.
Richards comments, “This test is a key
milestone in validating our decision not to spend money
regenerating our old data centre, and that Logicalis’ hybrid
Cooperative Cloud offers a unique road ahead. The fact that
this is backed by Cisco, NetApp and CA Technologies, assures us
that we are using industry standard technologies in a very
compelling way. The vision and hard work of Loughborough and
Logicalis, and the willingness of JANET to support and encourage
innovation in the sector, has created a totally new IT provisioning
model. Loughborough is proud to be at the forefront of ICT
transformation in the Higher Education sector and beyond.”
Tom Kelly, MD of Logicalis UK, concludes,
“This is a significant achievement. Loughborough, with their
foresight and innovative spirit, have just changed thinking around
cloud forever, and proven that enterprise cloud has come of
age.”
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of
integrated information and communications technology (ICT)
solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge
and expertise in communications & collaboration; data centre;
and professional and managed services.
Logicalis Group employs over 1,900 people
worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design,
specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the
needs of over 5,000 corporate and public sector customers. To
achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with
technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft.
The Logicalis Group has annualised revenues of
$1 billion, from operations in the UK, US, Germany, South America
and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of the
leading IT and Communications solution integrators, specialising in
the areas of advanced technologies and services.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec
Limited, a $3.7 billion revenue business listed on the Johannesburg
and London AIM Stock Exchanges.
For further information please
contact:
Andrew Parker/Jennifer Manning/Charlotte
Sandy
Cohesive Communications
T: +44 (0) 1291 626200
E: logicalis@cohesive.uk.com