Easynet turns to Abiquo to create hybrid cloud service offering

Leading managed service provider selects Abiquo’s cloud management platform to enhance hybrid cloud strategy

London, December 2014 – Easynet has enlisted the help of hybrid cloud software provider Abiquo to form the foundation of its global cloud strategy: ‘hybrid by design’. The global managed services provider has selected Abiquo’s cloud management platform in order to create a unified cloud platform and deliver a comprehensive hybrid cloud solution to its customers.

With fully integrated cloud solutions across private, private-shared and public cloud environments, Easynet needed a cloud management platform that could simplify control and management of all virtual environments. After looking at a number of providers within the cloud management market, Easynet chose Abiquo due to its level of support for multiple hypervisors, extensive range of support for public cloud providers, its simple and clear user interface, and comprehensive integration options.

The deployment spans seven nodes across five key regions; UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Two further regions – APAC and the Americas – will be added in the first half of 2015. By providing a unified cloud management platform across multiple regions, Easynet has been able to further standardise its cloud portfolio and deliver non-bespoke, repeatable, high quality solutions to its customers.

Philip Grannum, MD UC, Hosting & Cloud Services, Easynet, commented:
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“We wanted to provide our customers with immediate access to a unified management solution for multiple cloud environments. Abiquo offered us the perfect solution – providing complete visibility, control and rapid provisioning in a single online application.

“We have seen multiple benefits since implementing the Abiquo cloud management platform, including increased customer satisfaction, compliance and employee productivity. From day one, the way in which Abiquo engaged with our business was fantastic. The team worked closely with us to provide input and advice to help us evolve our proposition, and moving forward we’re confident that they are wholly committed to supporting us as their solution continues to develop,”

Grannum concludes.

Ian Finlay, Vice President of Abiquo added: “We’re delighted to be able to support Easynet on its cloud journey, and continue to work closely to help the company to streamline management and control as its cloud portfolio develops. The fact that Easynet plans to extend the use of the Abiquo cloud management platform across more regions and is using it to form the basis of its cloud offering, really demonstrates the value that the solution can bring to organisations. Although we predominantly aim to provide an unbeatable hybrid cloud solution, many of our customers have found that by using Abiquo they see other business benefits. Some of these include increased efficiency and improved enablement.”

Easynet initially deployed version 2.6 of Abiquo’s hybrid cloud management platform, recently upgrading to the latest version 3.2 with its enhanved hybrid cloud support and integrated monitoring.

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Notes to editors:
Please contact Berkeley PR on 0118 9090 909 / [email protected]

About Abiquo
Abiquo is a provider of hybrid cloud management software that has been specifically architected to be hardware and hypervisor independent. Founded in 2006, Abiquo’s hybrid cloud management software, enables both service providers and enterprise organisations to easily manage multiple public and private cloud environments from one central platform.

Abiquo is privately held, and operates from headquarters in the UK with offices in Europe, and through its extensive global partner network. The company operates globally, with over 3,000 enterprises using the software daily. For more information, visit abiquo.com, email [email protected], or follow us on Twitter @abiquo.

Bring Shadow IT into the Light

According to recent research, many CIOs are struggling to control the rise of shadow IT within their organisation, with over two thirds of business decision makers now commissioning and sourcing IT products from outside the IT department.

This means the IT division can no longer regulate all IT solutions implemented within the organisation; they have little to no control. A shadow IT ecosystem has emerged where every single employee has the potential to act independently from the IT department, implementing cloud applications that may be convenient to them, but could pose a significant threat to their organisation’s information security and availability, potentially impacting its customers and in turn its revenue.

Shadow IT presents significant threats to enterprise information security and availability that can impact your customers, and in turn affect your revenue. In some cases, customers may leave if you have a sustained outage or loss of client data. Similarly, if end-users who’ve deployed their own cloud apps leave, taking passwords with them, the enterprise can become locked out of their account. If this were to happen, the loss of client data, or more importantly the loss of enterprise data presents a real risk to both reputation and security.

With this problem only set to get worse over the next two years, enterprises need to accept the fact that shadow IT is here to stay. Rather than the traditional combat approach of ‘shut it down’, CIOs should instead focus on future proofing their organisation by embracing shadow IT. Offering access to flexible, on-demand resources with a hybrid cloud portal gives employees the flexibility they desire, but in a structured and secure manner, providing CIOs with the opportunity to regain control over the entire IT environment.

Customers need to know where their data is being held and will expect the holder to be compliant with the appropriate data protection legislations. The unintentional exporting of data via unauthorised shadow IT applications can impact a provider’s reputation and credibility. By adopting a hybrid cloud infrastructure, enterprises can mitigate this risk by providing flexibility and options for each business unit to select a provider of choice – whether via public or private cloud – which can be managed centrally via a cloud management platform.

This provides more control, flexibility and assures data governance, whilst also being structured and secure. As enterprise IT evaluates the best technical approach for hybrid IT management, it’s vital that the speed, flexibility and agility drawing end users to public clouds is preserved in the hybrid model. The most successful models involve enterprise IT as a service provider for public cloud resources, delivering effective on boarding, training, management tools and guidance. If end users feel that these new IT processes are heavy-handed and restrictive, the IT department will be ignored or rejected altogether – driving shadow IT deeper underground.