Daily Archives: March 9, 2011

Managed video conferencing service added to Interoute’s Unified Communications portfolio

Interoute Communications Ltd, owner operator of Europe’s largest next-generation network, has acquired the Visual Conference Group (VCG), the leading provider of managed telepresence services in Scandinavia. This acquisition adds fully managed video conferencing and telepresence services to Interoute’s Unified ICT portfolio, complete with high capacity low latency connectivity from Interoute’s pan-European next–generation network.

With nine years experience of delivering video conferencing to organisations in over fifty countries, VCG’s expertise lies in helping multi-national organisations set up high-definition Video Conference and telepresence meetings, including services such as virtual video conference receptions. By adding VCG’s video conferencing services to Interoute’s Unified Communications portfolio, organisations that had previously been deterred from video conferencing by the challenge of having to self-manage them, can now realise the full benefits that video conferencing brings.

Gareth Williams, Interoute CEO, commented, “The addition of a high quality managed video conferencing service is a very exciting addition to our portfolio, as it supports our ongoing strategy to make more and more enterprise services available from within the cloud. As organisations look for ways to benefit from new technologies to enhance their competitive edge and drive flexibility, we are committed to taking the technology pain out of these decisions by providing them with the option to push large parts of their IT infrastructure into our private cloud.”

Interoute’s Unified ICT Strategy is focused on creating and managing all enterprise ICT infrastructure-as-a-service; delivered from a secure networking platform and integrated for optimal cost, performance and efficiency. VCG’s video conferencing services will be added to Interoute’s Unified Communication portfolio enabling organisations to purchase them on a video-as-as-service model.

Commenting on the deal, VCG’s CEO, Patrik Christiansen said: “We are at the tipping point in the adoption of video conferencing, as enterprises are looking for ways to improve communication, speed up decision making, reduce travel costs and CO2 emissions. Now that telepresence is entering the mainstream adoption phase, it made sense for us accelerate the expansion of our services across Europe. Joining forces with Interoute was a perfect fit for our video conferencing services, as its network scale and expertise provide us with the required high capacity, low latency to ensure a high quality high definition experience across Europe.

www.interoute.com

Organizations deploying OpenStack™, the open source cloud operating system, can now receive formal service and support offerings from Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the world’s leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry.

Rackspace today announced Rackspace Cloud Builders, a new business that will offer training and certification, deployment services, and ongoing support to enterprises and service providers through its team of OpenStack experts and its network of technology industry leaders. For the first time, Rackspace will extend its commitment to customer service, known as Fanatical Support®, beyond the company’s datacenters to stand behind any OpenStack cloud deployment.

“Customers want to realize the benefits of cloud computing in many locations depending on their requirements and needs. The promise of being open, flexible and compatible makes OpenStack the ideal platform; however, they also want the assurance that a partner like Rackspace is standing behind them when deploying it in their own datacenters,” said Jim Curry, General Manager of Rackspace Cloud Builders. “We are ready to support OpenStack deployments anywhere starting today.”

Rackspace Cloud Builders brings together the foremost OpenStack experts from the team who built and operate the Rackspace Cloud and from the recent acquisition of Anso Labs, a professional services company that has helped large business and government organizations deploy and operate OpenStack Clouds. The launch of Rackspace Cloud Builders and the acquisition of Anso Labs reinforces Rackspace’s investment in the success of OpenStack by driving adoption of the emerging open cloud standard.

“Our team of OpenStack core contributors are excited to become part of the Rackspace Cloud Builder’s mission, where we will continue our commitment to advancing the OpenStack technology and spreading adoption,” said Jesse Andrews, co-founder of Anso Labs and Director of Development for Rackspace Cloud Builders. “We look forward to helping others adopt the emerging open cloud standard with our experience deploying and operating a large-scale OpenStack cloud.”

Rackspace Cloud Builders will provide training, deployment services and ongoing support and management to enterprises and service providers via the team of OpenStack experts and its network of technology industry leaders:

Training & Certification – Rackspace Cloud Builders will provide training classes and certification testing for designing, developing and administering OpenStack Clouds. Rackspace also plans to empower a network of training and certification experts.
Deployment Services – Rackspace Cloud Builders, in conjunction with other experts from the OpenStack community, will help customers design and deploy OpenStack Clouds.
Support & Management – Customers will have ongoing access to remote support and escalation assistance from the OpenStack experts, including proactive monitoring and fixes.
One of the first clients in this new Rackspace program is a collaborative project led by Cybera Inc. and Compute/Calcul Canada, where OpenStack is being used to support a new program that reaches out to Canadian small and medium-sized tech companies. CANARIE, Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network, recently launched the DAIR (Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research) Program, which leverages CANARIE’s high-speed network and adds compute and storage capabilities to deliver a shared R&D environment. To support the DAIR Program, Cybera and Compute/Calcul Canada are supplying and managing two large-scale compute and storage nodes using OpenStack as the cloud service platform. “The ICT entrepreneurs and researchers participating in CANARIE’s DAIR Program need access to responsive and flexible software to create products and demonstrate them without building a costly R&D infrastructure themselves,” said John Shillington, the project architect and VP Technology with Cybera. “We are working with Rackspace Cloud Builders to optimize our cloud deployment and quickly ramp up OpenStack, so we can ensure a successful pilot for CANARIE.”

Rackspace is working closely with many other experts in the OpenStack ecosystem, including Autonomic Resources, Canonical, Citrix, Cloudscaling, Cybera, Dell, Equinix, Intel, Grid Dynamics, Microsoft and Opscode, to deliver training, system integrations and deployment services. Rackspace and Dell are encouraging customers interested in OpenStack to engage in proofs of concept (POCs) with them now, and Dell also built a new OpenStack installer to turn bare metal servers into clouds, which they are expected to contribute to the open source community after completion of field tests.

“Dell has always been committed to developing and promoting open standards, which is why we proudly support Rackspace in this initiative,” said John Igoe, Executive Director of Cloud Software Solutions, Dell. “By deploying OpenStack based solutions quickly, customers can migrate workloads and applications to cloud based infrastructures more easily. We’ve been a strong supporter of OpenStack since its inception and believe a de-facto open source cloud standard is the right solution for deploying cloud technology.”

About Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, and the founder of OpenStack, an open source cloud platform. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support® to its customers, across a portfolio of IT services, including Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company and was featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. The company was also positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc. in the “2010 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting.” For more information, visit www.rackspace.com