Datacentre Solutions: European roll-out for Claranet Virtual Data Centre

Award-winning “click-and-provision” cloud infrastructure service goes live in Germany and France.

Claranet announces that its Virtual Data Centre, the first truly integrated Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering available to the European market, is now live in Germany and France.

The award-winning service was launched in the UK in late 2011 and enables users to build their own data centre in the cloud and provision it with compute, storage and networking resources with a few clicks of a mouse. The Claranet Virtual Data Centre (VDC) also provides a burst capability for periods of unexpectedly high demand, so users pay only for the assets that they use. Since its launch, VDC has received praise from analysts, journalists and customers, and this month won the European Award for Cloud Infrastructure at the 5th Annual Datacentre Awards.

The French and German versions are based on the successful UK model, including the ground-breaking software orchestration layer which makes it compatible with every type of hypervisor, and the portal-based “drag-and-drop” interface. Early positive feedback from the French and German markets has focused on Virtual Data Centre’s use of in-country data centres and integration with Claranet’s own European MPLS network.

The rollout in Germany comes on the heels of a report by Germany’s top cloud computing research firm Experton which, in an analysis of 350 cloud vendors, placed Claranet as one of only 11 leaders in the field. The report praised Claranet’s integrated network as a key strength, along with its commitment to high-quality infrastructure components and standard certifications such as ISO 27001- and BDSG (German Data Protection and Privacy Act).

Olaf Fischer, Managing Director of Claranet Germany, said, “Germany has some of the strictest data protection laws in Europe, so it’s very important for German companies to know that their data resides solely in local facilities. Claranet’s use of in-country data centres and its investment in enterprise-class infrastructure technology have been cited by analysts as key differentiators in the market, as has the integration with Claranet’s European MPLS network. Feedback from our customers and prospects has been extremely positive, with organisations expressing their surprise at how easy it can be to set up their own virtual data centre in the cloud.”

The French launch has also met with an enthusiastic response, as Claranet France’s Managing Director, Olivier Beaudet explains. “Plenty of people here are talking about the cloud, but journalists to whom we’ve demonstrated the service have been unanimous in saying that it is the most mature, advanced offering that they have seen,” said Beaudet.

“There is a real buzz, a ‘wow effect’, around Virtual Data Centre, especially among small- and medium-sized enterprises that we’re talking to. We already have 15 leads for the service, and two signed customers, all of whom have pointed to the advantages of having 24/7 contact with local account managers and helpdesk staff in France.”

Claranet’s Virtual Data Centre was designed following extensive research that the company undertook into customers’ concerns about cloud services; this found that data sovereignty, reliability and ease of migration were the key concerns for organisations that had yet to move into the cloud. Having identified these concerns, Claranet designed a service so that data always resides in local jurisdictions, that is integrated with Claranet’s network and that it is compatible with multiple hypervisor technologies.

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