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VMware vCloud – The Virtual Data Centre has arrived

Times are changing, and so is technology. From the way we access our desktops to our data, cloud computing has ushered in a IT revolution that is constantly changing the way infrastructure is managed and consumed. The Cloud has brought a new level of flexibility to how organisations can manage and provision their data centre services. Last summer VMware launched their much anticipated public cloud offering ‘vCloud’ which IT departments can access and manage via vCloud Director.

vCloud has been a serious game changer for many of our customers who have previously been running their systems on dedicated hardware, but are now reaping the benefits of a more powerful, efficient, scalable and cost effective data centre solution. In a nutshell vCloud allows us to pool computing resources i.e CPU, RAM & Disk Space and allocate them to our customers ‘Virtual Data Centres’.

Our customers can then login to their virtual data centre through vCloud Director and with a few clicks deploy virtual machines inside ‘virtual containers’ called vApps. Their is no ‘limit’ to the number of virtual machines you can deploy inside your virtual data centre providing you have enough computing resources to support them.

As I always say ‘Seeing is Believing’ and once you get a taste of vCloud and how easy it is to use, you’ll never look back. If your interested in a demo of vCloud Director email sales@netplan.co.uk or call 0207 1000 424.

Watch out Dropbox here comes VMware Octopus

I think it’s safe to say that spring has finally sprung which normally means BRACE yourself for all kinds of crazy weather. I feel sorry for the weather man/woman most days as they have quite the job trying to come up with some kind of logical explanation as to why it was snowing yesterday and sunny and 23 degrees today while managing to keep a straight face at the same time. I guess that’s why I’m not a weather man as I probably wouldn’t be able to hold it together.

With every new season comes new and exciting improvements in technology, and last year VMware announced that it was releasing an enterprise cloud file-sharing service called Project Octopus. Project Octopus enables secure, anywhere access to files from any device. Users can share and collaborate on their files with anyone inside or outside the company.

I personally have been using services like Dropbox and box.net, but as we all know they were designed with the consumer in mind and not for businesses wishing to have enterprise level controls on how their corporate information is being accessed and shared.

Project Octopus is still in the Beta stage and we have been told it will be fully released later this year, but the Good News is you might not have to wait that long to start using it.

This past week VMware quietly released the app for Octopus in Apple’s App Store and if you currently have a Hosted VMware Zimbra email account with us, then you can instantly connect the app to your VMware Zimbra briefcase and start sharing and accessing you files straight from your mobile device.

If you don’t have a hosted Zimbra email account and would like more information about Zimbra, watch the VMware Zimbra introduction video here and give us a call.

The Answer to your Email Management Headaches – Netplan’s VMware Zimbra

I’ve been speaking to many of our customers over the past few weeks about their email management headaches, and what I’m hearing is that it is becoming increasingly harder and harder to manage data growth on their email servers. Let me also add that this is not just limited to large email environments, but also those that are still using POP3 accounts. One of our clients recently said to me that email is taking over his life as it is growing at such a rate that he is spending the majority of his time trying to resolve disk space and account lock-out issues as a result of their users email and hefty attachments growing at exponential rates. Speaking of POP3, keep in mind POP3 was never designed to be used with both mobile devices and desktops as it lacks the ability to sync between devices.

Unfortunately in the day and age that we live in, email is just one of those critical information streams that we all receive at such a fast rate that many times we don’t have the time to manage it properly until it becomes a problem. So what is the answer? Well let me get to point. We have just launched our very own Hosted Email service featuring VMware’s amazing email and collaboration platform Zimbra.

I personally have been using Zimbra for the last month and find refreshingly different and easy to use in contrast to others that I have used in the past. If your a die-hard MS outlook fan, don’t worry Zimbra integrates nicely. For those of you who are hardcore mobile email users we’ve got you covered as Zimbra seamlessly syncs across all your mobile devices keeping you instantly informed and up to date.

The big game changer for me is Zimbra’s desktop and web client. I find it very ‘intelligent’ and intuitive. How? One example I would use is if you would send me an email asking me if I was available for a meeting today at 15:30. When I receive the email and move my cursor over the word ‘today’ a window automatically pops up showing me a snapshot of what is in my diary for today. Another interesting feature worth mentioning is ‘briefcase’. Briefcase is basically a place for you to store files and email attachments for easy access within the zimbra email client without having to download them and store them on your desktop.

If you thought that was clever check this out. Zimbra intelligently indexes and tags each and every incoming email for near instantaneous inbox search capabilities.

Social Integration: Zimbra allows you to stay up to date with all tweets, Facebook posts, Digg articles, and many more right from inside the desktop or web client.

Setup and migration is seamless with zero interruption to your current email service.

Have I peaked your interest yet? If you want more information about Zimbra and how you can be rid of your email headaches watch this short introduction video here and give us a call on 0207-424-1000 as we will be more than glad to answer any questions you may have regarding Zimbra.

We’re Now VMware vCloud Powered

We’re proud to announce that our public cloud service is now officially VMware vCloud Powered. As a member of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP), the vCloud Powered status means we offer the leading virtualization solutions using VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director.

Stuart Gibson, our Managing Director had this to say about becoming vCloud Powered:

“Achieving VMware’s vCloud Powered status is a great milestone for the team here at Netplan, which clearly demonstrates Netplan’s forward thinking and commitment to providing best-in-class public cloud solutions to our customers.”

Our customers now have on-demand flexible, agile, and performance options for utilising public or hybrid clouds. On-demand cloud hosting allows customers to move workloads from their VMware vSphere-based virtualized or private cloud, to the VMware vCloud Powered public cloud as needed and then back again. A simple process of importing and exporting of VM images in the OVF format provides complete application portability. Traditional in-house IT solutions take many months of planning, purchasing, integration and implementation before becoming operational. Customers that use our on-demand public clouds benefit from reduced IT costs, as well as improved response time and agility when responding to changing business needs.

The ability to move application workloads around also means the ability to respond to changing business requirements relating to security. Data that needs to be processed or stored locally can use the infrastructure freed-up by migrating other applications and data to the public cloud.

The graphic above illustrates how VMware vCloud Powered services use the same VMware-based architecture as your internal datacentre. This enables us to ensure performance, security, and application portability to meet your business requirements on the public cloud.

To read more about Netplan’s recent achievement of VMware vCloud Powered status see the full press release here.

You can also contact us to discuss how our new VMware vCloud Powered public cloud services can help you realise your business goals.

Five advantages of the hybrid cloud model that you may not have thought about

Many companies have looked at their choice in cloud computing as a decision between a public and private cloud. This is no longer the case. The decision does not need to be either one or the other; it can also include both types of cloud as a valid option.

The hybrid cloud, as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is, “a combination of public and private clouds bound together by either standardization or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability,” and a hybrid cloud can provide the best of both private and public clouds for many users.

Although it is by no means an exhaustive list, below are five benefits of the hybrid cloud model that may not have been recognised by companies exploring cloud computing for their business.

1. Hybrid clouds do not require complete replacement of existing IT infrastructure. The building of a private cloud can require months of effort from a company’s IT department with a significant investment of both time and money. In contrast, the hybrid option allows the use of public clouds immediately for any increases in capacity and scalability that are required while you accomplish any needed changes to your infrastructure.

2. Hybrid clouds offer the advantage of added security over a public cloud, by allowing sensitive IT resources to remain outside of the public cloud, safe and sound behind your own firewall and on-premises gateway. Plus, should you eventually decide to migrate your data from your private cloud to the public cloud, that data movement is much easier than it is from a traditional server based environment.

3. Improved scalability and provisioning at decreased cost are another benefit of the hybrid cloud. Resources can be allocated to the cloud for short term projects at much lower cost when compared to the need for additional resources that would otherwise require immediate capital expenditure on local IT infrastructure in order to complete a resource intensive project.

4. The hybrid cloud can be used to buttress an argument for cloud computing when faced with reluctance from management. It can help raise the comfort level of those individuals with little or no experience with the cloud. Application stretching, for example, can allow the company to store data locally while utilizing analytical processing in the cloud.

5. For some industries, migration to a full public cloud is not an option due to regulatory compliance issues. In these situations a hybrid cloud may be the only option that will provide the cost and flexibility offered by the cloud while retaining compliance data behind a company’s firewall.

Businesses that connect to our VMware vCloud infrastructure and extend the capacity and increase the scalability of their existing VMware estate is really the perfect example of the hybrid cloud model in action and it helps address concerns some companies have about moving fully to a public cloud model, while at the same time providing a path to cloud computing that does not require a massive commitment of resources or a complete surrender of control over one’s data to an outside entity.

Sign up today and Test Drive vCloud now free for 7 days and receive an in-depth demonstration of the vCloud Director in action.

Is 2012 the year of the Hybrid Cloud? We think so

Let me just start by welcoming you to Netplan’s newly launched blog. We are all very excited about what this year holds, as we continue to deliver the highest quality and most reliable cloud based infrastructure services in Europe.

There seems to be much discussion amongst the IT community about what is next in terms of how cloud computing is going to develop in 2012. In a recent VMware vCloud blog they asked their Twitter followers to send in their cloud predictions for 2012. (see the results in the graph below)

As you can see from the above graph ‘Security Controls’ received the highest number of votes, but for many of us no real surprise there. Protection of data, security of networks will remain high on every CIO’s agenda for the foreseeable future as any breach of any kind has severe consequences. One great advantage of hosting all or part of your server infrastructure with a managed service provider is that the investment we make into security systems can go way beyond the budgetary constraints of your local IT department.

Mathew Lodge the Senior Director in VMware’s Cloud Services group recently wrote an article for Forbes entitled ’5 ways the cloud will change in 2012′. One of his major predictions in this article was that there is going to be a major focus on the ‘hybrid cloud’. And considering that over the past five years businesses of all shapes and sizes have been implementing and successfully running on-premise virtualisation solutions, many of those businesses may not be ready to fully outsource their entire infrastructure. But will be looking leverage the cloud, through a mix of on-premise and cloud based infrastructure.

Stuart Gibson, our Managing Director, explained it this way. “It makes perfect sense for end users who are already using VMware within their business to simply ‘connect’ their
existing VMware environment to our VMware vCloud infrastructure. And have all the benefits of a public cloud environment at their finger tips whilst only paying for the computing resources that they use which is the true ‘essence’ of cloud.”

Don’t forget to follow us on twitter@netplan for all the latest blog posts, cloud news and updates from the team here at Netplan.