CHLATEST

Cloudhosting 

Feb/March 2017 l www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk l £8.50 Where Sold 

Safe and sound: 

Fintech goes virtual 

What's on the 

cards?: 

Predicting the year 

ahead 

Data centre 

resiliency: 

Too much pressure? 

Scared to innovate: 

Security concerns hold IT back 

Cashing in: 

Metro Bank moves into the Cloud 

Protection 

mechanism: 

Collaboration in the pharma sector 

INDUSTRY NEWS - USER STORIES - OPINIONS - INTERVIEWS - ANALYSIS

COMMENT 

From the Editor 

This issue of Cloud Hosting will land on reader's desks and inboxes just a week or 

two after Cloud Expo, an event which has grown into the biggest and best 

attended trade show of its type in the whole of Europe. The multi-strand expo - 

now encompassing Smart IoT, Cloud Security, Data Centre World and Big Data World 

as well as Cloud Expo itself - was spread across almost the entire floor-space of the 

voluminous ExCel in London's docklands. 

The presentation theatres were hugely popular, with large queues outside in advance 

of talks from the likes of BT, Google and Microsoft alongside industry specialists such 

as Pulsant, Navisite and OVH. Cloud Hosting magazine had staff at the show 

throughout both days, and as well as visiting stand and attending seminars we also 

managed to sign up a healthy batch of new readers - so if this is your first time of 

reading, welcome aboard! 

Elsewhere in this issue Claranet unveil new research which suggests that UK IT 

departments are more likely than many European counterparts to have concerns about 

cloud security - which in turn may be making such organisations 'scared to innovate'. 

Ian Furness of Claranet says it's understandable that organisations may prefer to host 

applications internally, particularly those associated with high risk information: "But just 

because your servers are under your roof, this doesn't necessarily make them more 

secure. In fact, if managed and maintained correctly, alternative delivery models - such 

as public cloud - are suitable for even the most sensitive data and can bring massive 

transformational benefits to organisations." 

We also look at the issue of data centre resiliency, something increasingly impacted 

by the growth of cloud. Operators face a constant battle of balancing workloads 

against available budgets. Many data centre owners choose to over-provision 

resources and servers 'just in case' a disaster situation occurs, however this can be 

immensely costly. There are other strategies available, as RF Code's Adrian Barker 

comments: "It is all about understanding and managing your environment to ensure 

reliability. Operational management solutions can provide real-time insight, control and 

predictability so data centre managers can solve environmental and operational 

challenges with valuable insight, rather than guesswork. Data centre assets need to be 

monitored and tracked to maintain performance and guard against technical failure. 

Environmental conditions need to be dynamically adjusted with changes in demand." 

EDITOR: David Tyler 

(david.tyler@cloudhostingmag.co.uk) 

NEWS EDITOR: Mark Lyward 

(mark.lyward@cloudhostingmag.co.uk) 

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(ian.collis@cloudhostingmag.co.uk) 

COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR: Josh Boulton 

(josh.boulton@cloudhostingmag.co.uk) 

MANAGING DIRECTOR: John Jageurs 

(john.jageurs@cloudhostingmag.co.uk) 

DISTRIBUTION/SUBSCRIPTIONS: 

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(christina.willis@cloudhostingmag.co.uk) 

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With the likes of Cisco claiming that around 83% of data centre traffic in the next three 

years will be generated through cloud computing, these issues need addressing, and 

sooner rather than later. 

David Tyler 

david.tyler@cloudhostingmag.co.uk 

www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk Feb/March 2017 

@CHMagAndAwards 

Cloudhosting 

3

CONTENTS 

Contents 

Industry predictions...............................................................................................8 

A little later than usual - due to unforeseen circumstances! - we ask leading industry names 

to look ahead: what flavour of Cloud will we prefer, is file sync and share on its way out, 

and even the future of the data centre itself are all under discussion 

Case study: AstraZeneca..............................................................................14 

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is leveraging Cloud collaboration technologies while 

keeping users and data secure 

Automating the IT production line........................................................22 

David Grimes, CTO at Navisite, discusses the growing role of APIs in reducing costs 

and developing tomorrow's businesses 

The main event.......................................................................................................24 

Cloud Expo, Europe's biggest and best attended Cloud and digital transformation show 

took place recently in London's ExCel: Cloud Hosting magazine was there to report back 

Editor’s comment.........................................................3 

News.......................................................................................6 

 

 

88% adopting Cloud 

Red Hat & IBM in new deal 

Performance anxiety............................................12 

Jonathan Arnold, Managing Director at Volta Data 

Centres, explains how high performance computing can 

change your business for the better 

Scared to innovate?.............................................16 

New research from Claranet suggests that UK IT 

departments are among the most likely in Europe to 

identify security/compliance as their biggest challenge 

Technology: ECM....................................................17 

Advantages of the Cloud reach to the core of most 

businesses - but executives must choose their partners 

carefully, argues Tim Rushent, Account Manager for 

industry and commerce at Hyland 

Pressure sensitive...........................................19 

The growth in Cloud services is putting increased 

pressure on data centre resiliency, suggests Adrian 

Barker, General Manager EMEA at RF Code 

Case study: FISCAL Technologies........21 

Fintech specialist FISCAL Technologies is securing 

customer data and winning new business thanks to The 

Bunker's virtual hosting infrastructure 

4 

Cloudhosting 

Feb/March 2017 


www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk

26-27 April 2017, Manchester Central 

NETWORKS & 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

26-27 April 2017, 

Manchester Central 

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& IOT 

CLOUD 

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NETWORKS AI, ANALYTICS & & IOTAI, DEVOPS ANALYTICS & IOT DEVOPS OPEN 

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INFRASTRUCTURE SOURCE SO

NEWS 

HEAVENLY CLOUD 

Navisite has partnered with PMGC to 

provide its Infrastructure-as-a- 

Service (IaaS) and Desktop-as-a-Service 

(DaaS) solutions to multi-discipline, notfor-profit 

organisation, BCHA 

(Bournemouth Churches Housing 

Association). PMGC and Navisite were 

selected following a formal tender 

process for their strong value-for-money 

proposition, as well as the flexibility and 

scalability of their solution. Nearly 500 

users were migrated to the Cloud environments, 

including roles, access rights 

and over 1 Terabyte (TB) of data. 

BCHA develops services that help bring 

together housing, health and social care 

in order to deliver support to society's 

most in-need. Prior to reviewing its IT systems, 

the organisation was using legacy 

versions of software and carrying out their 

important work through on-premise 

servers. After a careful review process, 

BCHA selected PMGC and Navisite's 

Cloud hosting, IaaS and DaaS solutions 

to meet the key objectives of reducing 

system downtime and increasing the reliability 

and speed of access to IT services. 

With PMGC's help, BCHA's network 

infrastructure was moved to an environment 

that supports roaming use with centralised 

profiles and file redirection. Since 

moving to the Cloud, system downtime 

has been vastly reduced and BCHA 

employees are able to quickly connect to 

applications and data - achieving a 

reduction in access rate time of approximately 

80 per cent, compared to the previous 

system. 

This reduction in time, facilitated by having 

both their Cloud hosting and DaaS 

environments in the same high quality 

Navisite data centre facility, allows staff to 

spend more of their working day to help 

address real client needs. The migration 

also involved upgrading and re-implementing 

BCHA's full suite of both traditional 

and bespoke applications. 

www.navisite.co.uk 

TIME TO DESIGN FOR FAILURE ON PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICES? 

The recent Amazon Web Services (AWS) 

outage, which impacted a number of 

high-profile websites and service providers, 

has highlighted the importance of specific 

skillsets to support public Cloud services. 

This is according to Radek Dymacz, head 

of R&D at disaster recovery and AWS consulting 

partner Databarracks, who states 

that organisations should adopt a 'design 

for failure' approach to prevent outages. 

Radek explains: "The growth of hyperscale 

Cloud services has led to an 

increase in managed services for these 

Clouds. We have seen telecoms providers, 

data centre owners and managed service 

providers launch their own Cloud services 

and, in many cases, pull out of the market. 

Many of these businesses are now focusing 

their efforts on providing managed 

services for the hyperscale public Clouds 

of AWS, Azure and Google. However, platforms 

like AWS need a different approach 

to traditional hosting. 

"The ability to design for failure is essential 

to the value proposition of public Cloud 

UK CLOUD ADOPTION RATE REACHES 88% 

The latest research from the Cloud 

Industry Forum (CIF) reveals that the 

overall Cloud adoption rate in the UK now 

stands at 88 per cent, with 67 per cent of 

users expecting to increase their adoption of 

Cloud services over the coming year. 

However, while organisations are clearly taking 

a Cloud-first approach, the industry body 

predicts that the vast majority of companies 

will be maintaining hybrid IT estates for 

some time to come. Conducted in Feb 

2017, the research, polled 250 IT and business 

decision-makers in large enterprises, 

SMBs and public sector organisations. 

The results reveal that since the first 

research was conducted in 2010, the overall 

Cloud adoption rate has increased by 83 

per cent, with an increase of 5 per cent 

since last year. There has been a more significant 

increase in Cloud adoption amongst 

platforms, and yet organisations are still 

consuming AWS services as though 

they're building a traditional hosting environment. 

The great strength of platforms 

like AWS is that you can build in resiliency 

in a way that scales depending on your 

budget. At the larger end of the spectrum, 

this might involve using object storage 

across multiple Availability Zones and even 

Regions to provide an extra layer of 

resilience. This is expensive but, for large 

organisations, so is downtime. 

"We recommend that all organisations 

adopt a 'design for failure' approach. This 

means that if any single element fails then 

there is an easily-identifiable specific 

cause, with a known resolution. 

Radek concludes, "What we're seeing in 

customer demand agrees with this trend as 

businesses are now more mature in their 

use of Cloud services. They have gone 

beyond testing, so they are now seeking 

help to increase resilience, optimise cost 

and support it round-the-clock." 

www.databarracks.com 

small and public sector organisations, who 

have previously trailed behind overall adoption, 

with adoption rates now standing at 82 

per cent for both, up from 54 per cent and 

62 per cent, respectively, a year ago. 

Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF, commented: "This 

research highlights how far the IT landscape 

has come since we first conducted this 

research in 2010. We are entering an 

unprecedented time of change as digital 

technologies disrupt entire industries and 

customer expectations. Cloud is critical in 

enabling companies to cope with this 

change and this research highlights how 

organisations are increasingly and consistently 

warming to the Cloud delivery model, 

especially as they begin the realise the benefits 

to be had from migrating their apps and 

infrastructure to the Cloud." 

www.cloudindustryforum.org 

6 

Cloudhosting 




NEWS 

NOVOSCO SECURES SEVEN-FIGURE CLOUD CONTRACT 

A3,500-room hotel group has chosen 

managed Cloud provider Novosco to 

upgrade and managed its entire IT infrastructure. 

The seven-figure deal will see 

Novosco work in partnership with Village 

Hotel Club, which has 28 hotels, to manage 

its migration to the Cloud. 

Founded in 1995, Village Hotel Group 

employs over 4,000 people and has a presence 

in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, and 

other major cities across England, Scotland 

and Wales. It is one of the major hotel 

groups in the UK, and has been continuing 

to expand its presence, with plans in place 

for a new 153-bedroom hotel at Lakeside 

Business Park in Portsmouth. 

Novosco is a managed Cloud provider 

with clients in the public, private and voluntary 

sectors across the UK and Ireland, 

including Premiership football teams, some 

of the UK's largest health trusts and many 

top companies. Novosco employs almost 

150 people and has offices in Belfast, 

Manchester, Dublin and Cork. Last year it 

acquired English specialist IT security solutions 

and managed services expert NetDef. 

Novosco Managing Director, Patrick 

McAliskey, said: "Village Hotel Club is a 

highly dynamic and growing company, and 

we are delighted to work with them to add 

value to their business and help facilitate 

their on-going expansion. As a result of the 

investment being made, we will be able to 

scale the company's IT infrastructure as it 

continues to grow." 

www.novosco.com 

SOFA SO GOOD FOR RACKSPACE AND DFS CLOUD DEAL 

Retail giant DFS handled a 34 per cent 

increase in transactions per day during 

its most recent busy sales periods by utilising 

a Rackspace managed Cloud solution. 

By undertaking "peak planning", DFS has 

managed spikes in website traffic around 

Christmas, and has been able to grow the 

business through new digital services. 

DFS is the UK's leading upholsterer, with 

more than 110 stores nationwide as well 

as additional outlets in Ireland, Holland 

and Spain. The company has experienced 

a huge increase in mobile and online 

shoppers, with the platforms especially 

popular amongst customers researching 

new purchases. 

Undertaking a process of digital transformation, 

DFS has introduced in store functionality 

on staff tablets allowing them to 

show customers the products they are 

interested in on the video walls and 

screens, really bringing the product to life. 

The business experiences two peak 

shopping periods throughout the year, one 

being the 'Guaranteed by Christmas' ordering 

period in September, and the other 

around the Boxing Day sales that filters 

through to the New Year. Traffic to the website 

during these times spikes by 68 percent 

compared to average levels during 

the rest of the year. 

Employing a VMware Managed 

Virtualisation offering, Rackspace worked 

with DFS to carry out peak period planning 

to help ensure the retailer is prepared to 

deal with traffic surges and help ensure 

online channels work effectively for customers. 

In addition, through a working relationship 

with ecommerce specialists 

Salmon who rebuilt DFS's websites, 

Rackspace is able to provide DFS with the 

reassurance that it has some of the top 

technology minds supporting its business. 

www.rackspace.co.uk 

IBM, RED HAT COLLABORATE 

IBM and Red Hat have announced a 

strategic collaboration designed to help 

enterprises benefit from the OpenStack 

platform's speed and economics while 

more easily extending their existing Red 

Hat virtualised and cloud workloads to the 

IBM Private Cloud. As part of this new 

collaboration, IBM has become a Red Hat 

Certified Cloud and Service Provider, giving 

clients greater confidence that they 

can use Red Hat OpenStack Platform and 

Red Hat Ceph Storage on IBM Private 

Cloud when the offering launches for general 

availability at the end of March 2017. 

Additionally, Red Hat Cloud Access will 

be available for IBM Cloud by the end of 

Q2 2017, allowing Red Hat customers to 

move eligible, unused Red Hat Enterprise 

Linux subscriptions from their data centre 

to a public, virtualised cloud environment. 

www.ibm.com/cloud-computing 

GOOGLE CLOUD PARTNER 

Claranet is now part of the Google 

Cloud Partner Program and has 

achieved Premier status and the Partner 

Specialisation in Infrastructure The Google 

Cloud Partner Program is designed to 

help partners build their practices or products 

on the Google Cloud Platform in 

order to help them reach higher levels of 

success. The Partner Specialisation 

recognises strong customer success and 

technical proficiency. 

Charles Nasser, Founder & CEO, at 

Claranet, said: "Achieving Google Cloud 

Premier Partner and Infrastructure 

Specialisation status is an important step 

forward for Claranet. Google Cloud provides 

opportunities for significant business 

transformation by allowing customers to 

rapidly develop high-performance applications 

and leverage data assets. Helping 

customers improve through effective use 

of platforms such as Google Cloud is central 

to Claranet's proposition and reinforces 

our commitment to customers." 

www.claranet.co.uk 

www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk @CHMagAndAwards 


Cloudhosting 

7

2017 PREDICTIONS 

What's on the cards this year? 

A little later than usual - due to unforeseen circumstances! - we ask leading 

industry names to look ahead to what 2017 might bring: what flavour of 

Cloud will we prefer, is file sync and share on its way out, and even the 

future of the data centre itself are all under discussion 

Noone would argue that 2016 proved 

to be a year of extraordinary events 

and changes, politically and socially 

as well as in terms of the Cloud industry 

and the wider IT sector. Many of us are 

eagerly looking forward to a new start and 

hopefully some positive news. But as 

always happens when we invite vendors 

and analysts to submit their best guesses 

for the sector in the coming 12 months, 

there is a wide variety of opinion on offer. 

WHITHER THE CLOUD? 

The debate around what form Cloud 

computing will most likely take in the future 

continues, and as you'd expect, different 

vendors have their own views on what 

approach is likely to win out. 

Jon Lucas, Director at Hyve Managed 

Hosting comments: "Cloud computing has 

been one of the biggest tech topics of last 

year. Given the levels of hype, people could 

be forgiven for thinking that it's already 

established a winning position in the 

technology industry. Yet, according to IDC, 

Cloud spending is some distance away from 

its peak, compared to investment in 'traditional' 

approaches to IT. Their estimates say it will be 

2020 before spending on Cloud services will 

come close to equalling what is spent on 

traditional IT. For IT users and purchasers, this 

will mean Cloud will continue to dominate 

strategic technology decision making next 

year. For most, the debate has already gone 

far beyond whether they will use cloud, to how 

they can use it more effectively in even more 

areas of their business. Businesses will also 

seek out greater expertise in order to optimise 

their use of cloud. The role of Cloud and 

managed service providers will grow as IT 

teams shift their emphasis from the traditional 

role of 'keeping the IT lights on' to focusing on 

how tech can deliver bottom-line benefits." 

Jacco van Achterberg, EMEA Sales Director 

at Cloudian sees security being a driver for 

hybrid Cloud growth: "Last year we predicted 

8 Cloudhosting Feb/March 2017 @CHMagAndAwards 



"For most, the debate has already gone far beyond 

whether they will use Cloud, to how they can use it more 

effectively in even more areas of their business. The role 

of cloud and managed service providers will grow as IT 

teams shift their emphasis from the traditional role of 

'keeping the IT lights on' to focusing on how tech can deliver bottom-line 

benefits." - Jon Lucas, Hyve Managed Hosting 

that Amazon S3 would become the de-facto 

standard for Cloud storage. The rise of S3 

has helped drive the adoption of cost-effective 

object storage. Now, object storage is not just 

a niche market; people are using it in everyday 

life without realising, be it through social 

media, Netflix and many other outlets that rely 

on the service. S3 has turned object storage 

into an industry movement. Looking ahead 

into 2017, we are predicting a bigger 

migration of data to cloud environments with a 

focus on the deployment of hybrid 

public/private Cloud solutions. With more 

companies looking to deploy a Cloud storage 

solution, the protection and control over 

sensitive data will be a further driving force 

toward hybrid solutions." 

Geoff Barrall, CTO at Nexsan agrees but 

goes further: "Towards the end of 2016 we 

heard that vSphere-based Cloud services will 

run on AWS in 2017, a move that shows the 

major players are preparing to accommodate 

customers in a hybrid Cloud environment. No 

matter how far we look into the future, there 

will always be data too sensitive to trust to 

public Cloud services. So whilst some 

companies will create a hybrid Cloud strategy, 

and some may go all private, most 

companies, especially larger ones, will not risk 

their data to a 100% public Cloud strategy. So 

what of file sync and share? Today's NAS 

storage solutions have not kept up with the 

times, creating a gap between the worlds of 

the data centre and the connected mobile 

user. 2017 will see forward thinking companies 

not just creating secure file sync and share 

capability, but intertwining them with the 

company's storage environment to avoid 

damaging or duplicating files. In essence, next 

year we will see the delivery of the data centre 

on the go." 

CULTURE SHOCK 

Paul Zeiter, President of Zerto is another 

proponent of the hybrid Cloud approach: 

"Over the last few years we've seen previous 

predictions around increased public Cloud 

adoption come to fruition, and we predict 

2017 will be the year hybrid Cloud asserts 

itself as the dominant Cloud environment. 

Cloud spending will continue to be on the 

incline, and we believe a majority of that 

spend will go toward hybrid Cloud 

infrastructures; this is proving to be the sweet 

spot for the enterprise. Organisations that 

have spent a lot of time and resources on their 

own data centre are not likely to do away with 

it all overnight. Adopting a hybrid Cloud 

environment allows for a transition to Cloud in 

a way in which feels most comfortable; a 

gradual approach that can provide both 

immense cost savings as well as recovery 

benefits. Hybrid Cloud allows for a variety of 

recovery options should the need arise, onpremises, 

public Cloud or a little of both, 

which help companies be better prepared for 

a variety of disaster scenarios. Additionally, the 

www.cloudhostingmagazine.co.uk 


Feb/March 2017 Cloudhosting 

9


"2017 will be the year that organisations are able to break 

free from the shackles of their storage hardware vendor and 

take advantage of innovations in hybrid Cloud deployments 

for storage. This is being driven by the long-awaited promise 

of Software Defined Storage and that public Cloud pricing 

can be realised for data protection."- Gary Quinn, FalconStor 

perceived complication and expense of 

transitioning to cloud, that has previously held 

many IT organisations back, is now starting to 

wither. More and more companies are 

realising that adopting a hybrid Cloud 

approach, with the right partners in place, can 

actually be quite simple and affordable." 

On the other hand, Campbell Williams, 

Group Strategy and Marketing Director at Six 

Degrees Group sees Cloud having to win 

friends in the boardroom: "Businesses have 

continued to rapidly adopt Cloud computing 

in 2016 and IT leaders have become more 

business focused. Now, IT is not just about 

'keeping the technology lights on', it is a way to 

transform organisations. Cloud technology 

may have high levels of automation, but it 

doesn't run itself. Businesses now realise that 

human expertise is central to the success of 

Cloud strategies. Moving into 2017 we are 

seeing the growth of a broader 'Cloud culture' 

where the influence of IT leaders is going far 

beyond just tech teams and instead going 

right into the boardroom. IT leaders in 2017 will 

have to be more business savvy than ever 

before and those in the boardroom will need 

to be receptive to this change." 

SDS ON THE RISE 

Software-defined is one of the buzzwords of 

the last year, and there is no question that this 

will continue to be the case in 2017. Gary 

Quinn, CEO FalconStor, says: "2017 will be the 

year that organisations are able to break free 

from the shackles of their storage hardware 

vendor and take advantage of innovations in 

hybrid Cloud deployments for storage. This is 

being driven by the long-awaited promise of 

Software Defined Storage and that public 

Cloud pricing can be realised for data 

protection. While SDS has in the past been 

more about utilising legacy equipment, it can 

now be used to leverage multi-vendor 

hardware implementations that also leverage 

multi-vendor public Cloud offerings." 

CENTRE OF ATTENTION 

The growth of Cloud will of course continue to 

impact on how data centres evolve, as Patrick 

Brennan of Atlantis Computing suggests: "In 

2017, Cloud will continue to drive radical 

change across enterprise IT. Businesses will 

make even greater investments outside of their 

own data centres, particularly in 'as-a-service' 

computing. 2017 will be the last year we 

spend money in our own data centre as we 

move applications to the public Cloud. The 

Cloud will also bring about significant change 

in the role of IT professionals - IT leaders with 

more general experience will create teams of 

people with specialised knowledge of key 

elements of IT infrastructure, such as storage 

and security." 

Jonathan Arnold, MD of Volta Data Centres 

also sees radical changes in the future of the 

data centre: "The modern data centre is set to 

undergo big changes in 2017. Companies are 

now accepting the need and practicalities of 

outsourcing the care of their IT equipment to 

third parties, but it is more imperative than ever 

that those partners have the right 

infrastructure, service levels and set-up. 

Location, performance and technical 

excellence all underpin the choices a business 

will make when outsourcing to a data centre. 

These can't be underestimated and in 2017 

we will see the rise of the 'super data centre' - 

delivering a service like no other. Those legacy 

data centres that don't invest and update to 

keep up will be left standing in the wake of 

facilities that can offer exactly what this new 

breed of customer needs." 

Arnold goes on: "Legacy equipment is 

finding its way out of enterprise data centres, 

giving way to new equipment capable of more 

computing in a smaller footprint. With 

customers being more aware of the amount of 

data they use and how they are using it, they 

are looking to data centres to use 

supercomputing technologies, such as High 

Performance Computing clusters which exploit 

parallel processing to enable advanced, 

resource intensive applications to be run 

efficiently, quickly and sustainably." 

Chuck Dubuque of Tintri sounds a similar 

warning: "Companies don't want to actively 

manage their data centres-in fact they can't. It's 

impossible to meet the agility and scale 

demands of the digital market. 2017 will be the 

year companies turn away from legacy 

architectures that are crudely automated (or 

Cloudhosting 

10 Feb/March 2017 




"The rise of S3 has helped drive the adoption of costeffective 

object storage. Now, object storage is not just a 

niche market; people are using it in everyday life without 

realising, be it through social media, Netflix and many other 

outlets that rely on the service. S3 has turned object storage 

into an industry movement." - Jacco van Achterberg, Cloudian 

automatable) and look for intelligent 

infrastructures built for virtualisation and 

Cloud workloads that are highly autonomic, 

providing guaranteed levels of service, high 

performance, and policy based 

management for workloads that run for 3 

years or 3 seconds." 

DIGITAL WATCH 

A relatively new term that we are certain to see 

more of in 2017 is 'digital transformation'. 

Matthew Finnie, CTO of Interoute, touches on 

the theme: "While some commentators expect 

2017 to be flat on IT spending overall, we 

expect to see IT increase spend on Cloud and 

digital transformation. In particular, we'll see 

investment in emerging integrated digital 

platforms that enable a business to move 

faster, deploy resources quicker and exploit 

new market opportunities. The majority of 

business-critical information for many 

organisations is still in systems that are not 

currently in the cloud, but as part of their 

development, many companies will seek to 

exploit Cloud-based models of consumption. 

Exploiting corporate information whilst 

continually innovating will drive a need for a 

bimodal digital platform approach, or else 

companies will risk ending up losing ground." 

Dimension Data's CTO Ettienne Reinecke 

says digital is about building truly customercentric 

business models on IT including the 

network, data centre, applications, and other 

infrastructure - which may be on-premise, or 

Cloud-based. "Today, there's no such thing as 

a digital strategy - just strategy in a digital 

world. And while the digital age is creating a 

degree of uncertainty for some organisations, 

it's also opening the doors to exciting 

possibilities and ushering in an era of infinite 

potential. In the year ahead, control and 

ownership of data and metadata will emerge 

as a point of discussion - and indeed 

contention. That's because data and metadata 

are the 'gold dust' that allow organisations to 

glean rich insights about customer behaviour. 

In addition, metadata allows organisations to 

identify specific behavioural patterns, derive 

business intelligence, and make informed 

business decisions." 

POST-BREXIT BLUES? 

The impact of the 2016 referendum on EU 

membership is yet to be felt, of course, but 

there is little question that data sovereignty 

and information management issues will arise. 

As Dimension Data's Reinecke argues, 

organisations are increasingly protective of 

their metadata, and wary of who has access 

to it. "Organisations don't just want ownership 

and control of their data for compliance 

reasons: they want it to perform analytics. We 

expect that this will trigger some interesting 

discussions between businesses and their 

Cloud providers. For example, where are the 

boundaries with respect to ownership, 

especially around metadata. We foresee this 

issue resulting in a bit of 'push and pull' among 

the various parties." 

Volta's Jonathan Arnold suggests: "Brexit 

has brought about a greater need for data 

sovereignty and for consumers to 

understand that their data is held in a country 

with data privacy laws they have confidence 

in. London continues to be the number one 

city location for colocation, with 72% of UK 

consumers highlighting that they would feel 

more confident if they knew their data was 

being stored in London rather than other 

European cities." 

Matthew Finnie of Interoute reminds us that 

the GDPR legislation will still affect practically 

every business in the UK in 2017, whatever 

Brexit may bring: "We will see 2017 beset 

with GDPR readiness and testing, as the 

bounds and impact of the regulation start to 

become apparent. The onus will be on 

enterprises and providers to seek out 

solutions that have definitive compliance, 

rather than waiting for challenges and legal 

disputes to unravel in the courts. 

Investments in compliant platforms that 

support a simple approach to geographic 

location of data will avoid this confusion." 

Ultimately, there is only one absolutely 

certain statement that we can make with 

regard to the coming year: that in about 12 

months time, Cloud Hosting magazine will be 

running another 'predictions' feature not unlike 

this one, containing just as many diverse 

views. Anything more than that - well, your 

guess is as good as ours! Ch 




11

STRATEGY: HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING 

Performance anxiety 

Jonathan Arnold, Managing Director at Volta Data Centres, explains how 

high performance computing can change your business for the better 

Big data has changed the way 

companies view information; they 

now recognise its value almost as 

an asset on the balance sheet. How it is 

managed, analysed and used to deliver 

new services determines everything, from 

operational performance to customer 

satisfaction - not least through the 

effective use of that essential single view 

of the customer. 

As a result, more and more companies 

are looking to data centres that have 

embraced high performance computing 

(HPC). With its foundations in 

supercomputing technologies, HPC 

clusters exploit parallel processing to 

enable advanced, resource intensive 

applications to be run efficiently, quickly 

and sustainably. This is done by using 

huge amounts of power while dividing 

activities between multiple processors, 

dramatically reducing processing times 

from hours to minutes. 

HPC enables companies to scale 

processes significantly, for example in the 

cases of collecting, storing, analysing and 

processing more data. In turn this will reduce 

costs and increase profits through optimised 

production and delivery of a service. 

Companies with access to HPC solutions will 

be able to develop and analyse increasingly 

large databases of information. 

Previously the need for HPC was limited 

to markets such as engineering or 

science and academia, focused on dataintensive 

calculations. 

One of Volta's customers, Academia, 

specialises in providing software, IT 

hardware, training and service solutions to 

a vast number of clients within the 

Education (and other) sectors. It required 

a partner able to cope and scale with the 

ever-increasing data needs of its own 

customers and chose to work with Volta. 

This enabled it to provide excellent 

service, uptime and data speeds to its 

customers in line with their expectations 

and demands. 

However, the business world is now 

recognising the advantages of HPC and 

looking to data centres to provide these 

same capabilities. 

One industry that has embraced high 

performance computing is media postproduction, 

where high quantities of data 

need to be processed and moved as 

quickly as possible. In this market, 

reliable, accessible and secure IT 

infrastructure is imperative to ensure 

companies can deliver their world-class 

movies on schedule. Downtime, latency 

and poor security cannot be accepted in 

the fast-paced and commercially sensitive 

movie marketplace. 

Without a partner able to perform at the 

same speed, post-production studios will 

struggle to meet the pressing demands 

required by real-time editing and online 

collaboration. 

While these two sectors are just 

examples of early adopters of high 

performance computing, it's clear that 

other businesses will benefit from faster 

and more efficient processing. 

For anyone looking to get more out of a 

lot of data, HPC could be the answer, or 

at least part of the solution. While the 

growth of data acquisition and processing 

demands is far outstripping the ability of a 

standard CPU, a data centre with HPC 

infrastructures will be able to help 

customers get more out of their big data 

by developing patterns and analysis. 

HPC heralds a new opportunity to 

innovate in order to meet the demands of 

our new, data-devoted world. It is costeffective 

and powerful, putting more 

information back more quickly into the 

hands of the people who need it. With 

speed and analysis at your fingertips, your 

business processes could be what 

propels you to the head of the pack. And 

when data is fully recognised as a 

financial asset on your balance sheet, 

how you treat it and how you make it work 

effectively for you will help determine how 

successful your company becomes. 

More info: www.voltadatacentres.com 



2017 

COMING SOON 

www.cloudhostingawards.com

CASE STUDY: ASTRAZENECA 

Focused on protection 

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is leveraging Cloud collaboration 

technologies while keeping users and data secure 

As a global pharmaceutical 

company whose footprint includes 

operations in over 100 countries, 

AstraZeneca has an immense amount of 

data to protect, thousands of users to 

connect, and a highly regulated 

environment to operate in. 

To help tackle these challenges, 

AstraZeneca Chief Information Officer, 

Dave Smoley, developed an IT strategy 

that put collaboration at the forefront, 

breaking the traditional mould of 

conservative pharmaceutical companies; 

allowing users, patients and medical 

professionals to share data and make the 

most of new science, creating a lean, 

fast-paced and creative environment. 

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX 

In addition to collaborating with leading 

universities and other pharmaceutical 

companies, AstraZeneca has tens of 

thousands of salespeople globally who 

need immediate access to their data from 

anywhere in the world. With the old ways 

of connecting through VPNs proving to 

be cumbersome, the team at 

AstraZeneca started looking to the Cloud 

for answers, specifically, how to drive 

secure and effective collaboration 

through widely used Cloud-based tools 

like Box. 

"People couldn't understand why they 

need to VPN-in to access Box," says Jeff 

Haskill, AstraZeneca's Chief Information 

Security Officer. "With the help of Skyhigh, 

we've removed that friction and offer a 

more streamlined solution which is still 

secure and compliant, but a night and 

day difference from what our employees 

are used to." With Skyhigh, AstraZeneca 

now enforces security and compliance 

policies across Cloud services like Box 

without adding any friction in the form of 

VPN or new agents on devices, making 

the secure path the easy path for users. 

With the consumerisation of IT on the 

rise, the use of shadow, or unsanctioned 

Cloud services, has grown within the 

enterprise as any employee with a credit 

card or email address can sign-up for 



CASE STUDY: ASTRAZENECA 

new Cloud services without the 

knowledge or approval of IT. As 

employees start sharing data outside the 

enterprise, they increase an 

organisation's overall risk of data loss and 

exfiltration. 

"What we needed was visibility," says 

Haskill. "As we pushed more data into the 

Cloud, we really had to answer the tough 

questions - what are we using the Cloud 

for, what's our data doing, where's it 

moving to, and who has access to it?" 

To gain the granular visibility and control 

AstraZeneca was looking for, they 

decided to leverage CASB (Cloud Access 

Security Broker) technology and brought 

in Skyhigh Networks. Haskill and his team 

deployed Skyhigh for Shadow IT to help 

answer questions about who had access 

to their data and where it was going. 

AstraZeneca uses Zscaler as their inline 

proxy to monitor web traffic across users, 

devices and locations and protect 

employees from malicious or 

compromised sites. Skyhigh seamlessly 

integrates with existing technologies like 

Zscaler to process proxy logs to provide 

the visibility into AstraZeneca's Cloud 

usage as well as the individual risk ratings 

of each service. 

Using the integration, AstraZeneca can 

also analyse a particular Cloud IP address 

to see if the site is malicious or serving 

malicious content and block it if so. 

With increased visibility, Haskill and his 

team were able to leverage Skyhigh's 

Global CloudTrust Registry which includes 

the risk ratings of over 19,000 Cloud 

services to allow or block Cloud services 

based on their individual risk scores, and 

further drive adoption to Box through justin- 

time coaching and user education. 

"I've been in this field a long time and 

not much surprises me," says Haskill. "We 

thought we would have a lot of shadow IT, 

we found it was true and now we can act 

upon it." 

In addition to driving adoption and 

consolidating services, AstraZeneca also 

uses Skyhigh to further secure their Box 

usage. By using Skyhigh, Haskill and his 

team are able to drill down and see who 

has access to sensitive data, who it has 

been shared with, and also have the 

ability to extend their existing on-premises 

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to the cloud. 

As such, they can limit and control 

access based on user role, device type 

(managed and unmanaged) and user's 

geographic location; all while notifying the 

security operations centre if compromised 

accounts or insider threats are detected. 

"Skyhigh lets us use Box to its full 

capability," says Haskill. "We can see how 

our data is being used and if it is being 

shared with third parties." 

DATA DRIVEN SECURITY 

In utilising Skyhigh as a central control 

point to enforce policies across all Cloud 

services, Haskill and his team are armed 

with the actionable information they need 

to continue to lower risk across the 

organisation and gain executive support. 

"We have the proof, down to the 

smallest kilobyte of data, which allows us 

to have intelligent discussions with the 

executive leadership teams and with the 

business, because we have actionable 

data to share," says Haskill. As a result, 

Haskill knows that the overall risk posture 

at AstraZeneca has decreased by the way 

the business approaches Cloud usage: 

"When IT can bring the audit committee 

and the executive members together and 

they are confident and comfortable using 

the Cloud, it is huge. You know you've 

made an impact on risk. It is no longer IT 

security saying, 'we believe this, or we 

think that'. We have the data we need to 

answer their questions and provide the 

metrics showing how Skyhigh is 

mitigating and lowering risk. It's the facts." 

FORWARD LOOKING 

As Haskill and his team continue to 

enable their workforce's needs for global 

collaboration, all new services are 

screened and "wrapped in Skyhigh," 

allowing for the required controls to be in 

place. "Skyhigh has allowed us to 

leverage new Cloud technologies that 

wouldn't have been possible before," 

says Haskill. "Our users never see 

Skyhigh even though it is a key part of 

our whole IT security strategy, allowing us 

to keep our users and data safe so they 

can have the global access they need on 

any device." 

With a target of having a substantial 

proportion of their apps in the Cloud by 

2018, it is imperative for AstraZeneca to 

have solutions that integrate into existing 

solutions, as the old, traditional model is 

heavy on paperwork and requires onpremises 

devices. 

"Skyhigh integrated seamlessly with our 

existing providers like Zscaler, and feeds 

into our SIEM, so we get the information 

that is important for us and we can 

continue to be fast, lean and agile," says 

Haskill. Leveraging the integration 

between Zscaler and Skyhigh, 

AstraZeneca can secure and govern 

Cloud usage, by pushing governance 

policies based on Skyhigh's Cloud 

insights directly to Zscaler to block highrisk 

services, and enforcing granular DLP 

policies on Cloud usage. 

"Skyhigh has streamlined application 

management from weeks to hours and 

that's key to our overall strategy to be 

fast," concludes Haskill. "The reduction in 

man hours allows us to focus on more 

important things, like enable our users 

and deliver on the key science that makes 

AstraZeneca a great place to work." 

More info: www.skyhighnetworks.com 




15

RESEARCH: SECURITY 

Scared to innovate? 

New research from Claranet suggests that UK IT departments are among 

the most likely in Europe to identify security/compliance as their biggest 

challenge - and as a result, they are also more likely to host their 

applications internally 

stumbling block to the prosperity of 

businesses in the UK." 

Vanson Bourne surveyed 900 end user 

IT leaders from mid-market businesses 

in the six markets in which Claranet 

operates (Germany, Benelux, France, Spain, 

Portugal, and the UK) and found that 57 per 

cent of UK organisations rank security and 

compliance as the biggest IT challenge, joint 

highest with security conscious Germany. 

This concern is reflected by the fact that 50 

per cent of applications managed by UK 

businesses are hosted on internal 

infrastructure, which can be attributed to 

prevailing attitudes towards cloud security 

and data ownership. Additionally, 

authentication and security are the 

applications that are most likely to be 

hosted internally, with 63 per cent of UK 

organisations doing so, due to the fact that 

these are often associated with highly 

secure data. 

For Ian Furness, Hosting Services Director at 

Claranet, it's critical that British businesses 

address these security concerns and maintain 

the integrity of their data so they can facilitate 

innovation and respond to changing market 

pressures. He explains: "Security concerns 

amongst UK organisations are justified as 

businesses come under increasing pressure 

to keep up with the constantly evolving threat 

landscape, especially as more data is 

analysed and stored online. However, these 

security concerns make organisations a lot 

more risk adverse, which ultimately stifles 

innovation. 

"Considering that today's businesses are 

becoming much more software driven and the 

gate to competitiveness comes down to 

adapting applications that respond to 

increasing market pressures, security 

concerns, if left unaddressed, present a major 

According to Furness, organisations often 

equate security with having perceived control, 

which indicates why British businesses are 

more likely to host their applications internally. 

It's understandable, he argues, that 

organisations may want to take this approach 

for their applications, particularly those that are 

associated with high risk information: "But just 

because your servers are under your roof, this 

doesn't necessarily make them more secure. 

In fact, if managed and maintained correctly, 

alternative delivery models - such as public 

cloud - are suitable for even the most sensitive 

data and can bring massive transformational 

benefits to organisations." 

Claranet's conclusions from the research 

are clear: though security is not likely to 

change as the number one IT priority any 

time soon, the specific threats, and the ways 

businesses manage and respond to them, 

most certainly will. Ian Furness comments: 

"Businesses will need to stay alert to changes 

to legislation and the nature of prevailing 

threats as more and more data is stored and 

analysed. IT services providers (ITSPs) have a 

critical role to play here. A well-staffed ITSP 

with years of security expertise is likely to be in 

a better position to maintain the integrity of 

data, compared to an under-resourced inhouse 

IT team. By working with a trusted 

service provider businesses can benefit from 

transformational benefits and highly compliant 

security protocols in tandem." 

More info: www.claranet.co.uk 



TECHNOLOGY: ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT 

Choose your 

partners 

The advantages of the Cloud reach to the core of 

most businesses - but executives must choose their 

partners carefully, argues Tim Rushent, Account 

Manager for industry and commerce at Hyland 

Nearly four-fifths of all data centre traffic 

will be Cloud-based by 2019 

according to some predictions, fuelled 

by a growing awareness of the opportunity to 

scale an organisation's digital capacity, not just 

in terms of storage, but also functionality. 

As early concerns over security have been 

assuaged, executives have been persuaded to 

embrace the Cloud for its flexibility and 

reduced costs: however, most remain unaware 

of further opportunities that the move presents 

- and its hidden risks. For example, a move to 

the Cloud can be an ideal time to adopt an 

enterprise information platform that unites data 

from different systems and formats, from 

where it can be accessed, analysed and 

managed. From increased efficiency at a user 

level, to automated workflow management 

and vastly improved executive overview, a 

fundamental technology overhaul may not be 

necessary, as enterprise content management 

(ECM) software can provide the seamless link 

needed to bring together existing platforms. 

The move to Cloud makes the adoption of 

such systems even easier, as they will not be 

restrained by capacity. But it is not enough to 

simply trust that a Cloud provider will keep a 

company's data secure: it is important to 

thoroughly evaluate key aspects, such as the 

provider's infrastructure and security 

provisions, alongside their track record and 

industry reputation. 

Common pitfalls include failure to ensure a 

system offers the scope to cater for longerterm 

needs; becoming locked into contracts 

that can hold a firm's data hostage; and failure 

to make adequate provision for disruptive 

events, such as outages or the Cloud provider 

going bust. All of these scenarios can be 

avoided or suitably mitigated, but they must 

be considered at an early stage - not when 

they happen out of the blue and leave a 

company unable to use its essential IT 

infrastructure. 

Other key issues to consider include: 

Security - What technologies are in place 

to manage risks and what are the 

processes for dealing with a data breach? 

How is encryption used and what data 

backup regime do they have in place? 

Audits - Will the provider carry out regular 

infrastructure reviews, to ensure regulatory 

and legal compliance? Who is responsible 

for carrying out such audits and are they 

prepared to share earlier reviews with you? 

Integration - Are there any technical or 

other hurdles to overcome, to ensure the 

Cloud resources can readily be integrated 

with your own on-premise and existing 

Cloud systems? Does the hosting 

provider have sufficient networking 

bandwidth in place to deal with increased 

data volumes? 

When evaluating vendors, remember not all 

Cloud providers are the same. For example, 

if you are looking for a provider to deliver 

ECM services, that provider's infrastructure 

must be specifically designed for the task. 

Servers, data stores and networking links 

must be optimised to ensure they can 

provide the level of availability and 

performance that is required. 

Once a Cloud provider has been selected, 

putting an effective contract in place is the 

next important step. Don't get locked into a 

long-term agreement from which it is very 

costly to withdraw. Also, pay particular 

attention to how data will be transferred at the 

end of the contract and what would happen to 

it in the event that the provider ceases trading. 

The contract should be clear about what 

would happen if there were difficulties with any 

third party involved, where responsibilities lie 

and what compensation would be payable in 

the event of outages. 

The flexibility and scalability offered by the 

Cloud provides a golden opportunity for firms 

looking to develop their digital infrastructure 

and build further competitive advantage 

through a single enterprise information 

platform. However it is important to carefully 

review the prospective hosting provider before 

entering what should be a very productive 

long-term relationship. 

More info: www.onbase.com 




17

CASE STUDY: METRO BANK 

Take that to the bank 

Metro Bank, the first new UK high street bank in over 100 years, has 

reduced close-of-business processing time by 50 percent and report 

production time by two-thirds by moving its IT infrastructure to a managed 

Cloud solution 

focused culture and ethos of delivering 

exceptional customer service. Kane explains: 

"Rackspace just gets us - they understand 

our culture and share our values. You can't 

underestimate the power of people. They 

have exceeded our expectations, and 

provide us with superior levels of support 

and guidance day in, day out." 

Metro Bank was founded in 2010 and 

has already launched more than 45 

branches, providing banking 

services for both personal and business 

customers. With ambitions to reach 100 

branches by 2020, Metro Bank stands out 

from traditional financial organisations, with its 

highly customer-driven approach that 

includes services such as being open seven 

days a week and the capability to open an 

account in under 20 minutes - without having 

to book an appointment. 

Unlike its high street competitors, Metro Bank 

is not tied to legacy IT systems, which means it 

has the freedom to incorporate the latest 

technologies that offer unparalleled scalability 

and agility. This has enabled the business to 

genuinely disrupt the banking sector and break 

away from industry norms with services that 

are focused entirely on providing high levels of 

customer service and convenience. These 

capabilities became a reality when seamlessly 

migrating Metro Bank's entire infrastructure - 

including its core banking operations, digital 

offerings and even ATMs - to a managed 

Cloud solution architected by Rackspace. 

Metro Bank chose Rackspace to help 

support its rapid growth, roll-out new services 

and streamline existing processes, starting 

with an initial 12-month migration project. This 

was delivered on time, on budget and without 

any costly downtime, with applications starting 

to go online within six weeks. The day after the 

first migration, close of business processing 

on core banking systems were 50 percent 

quicker and vital reports that were taking an 

hour to produce could now be completed in 

just 20 minutes. 

Aisling Kane, Chief Operating Officer at Metro 

Bank says: "We're growing exponentially so it's 

essential that we partner with organisations 

that can scale alongside us, which Rackspace 

has clearly shown it can." 

GROWING A CUSTOMER-FOCUSED 

CULTURE 

Both businesses share the same customer 

Metro Bank is using a Rackspace 

Dedicated Server Solution for its high 

performance and enhanced security. The 

company is also using DevOps to roll out 

new services quickly in a controlled 

environment as it moves towards automated 

management. The infrastructure includes 

Disaster Recovery capabilities. 

Darren Norfolk, MD of Rackspace UK 

added: "We're proud to be supporting Metro 

Bank's impressive growth, and as an 

organisation with a customer service 

orientated culture ourselves, its mission to 

deliver truly outstanding experiences for 

customers. Metro Bank has used this 

approach to pose a serious challenge to the 

industry status quo during a period that has 

seen technology change the face of 

banking. These days, finance companies 

have to focus on connecting people to their 

money quickly, processing transactions 

accurately and presenting customers with 

access to their information at all times. We 

have enjoyed helping the bank achieve this, 

by providing the leading technology 

platforms that power these compelling 

customer offerings." 

More info: www.rackspace.co.uk 



OPINION: DATA CENTRE RESILIENCY 

Pressure sensitive? 

The growth in cloud services is putting increased pressure on data centre 

resiliency, suggests Adrian Barker, General Manager EMEA at RF Code 

to damage or failure. A lack of capacity is 

equally damaging - a spike in traffic could be 

enough to cause downtime if equipment 

becomes overheated and overworked. 

The flood of digital content, internet 

traffic, Big Data and eCommerce has 

had a dramatic effect on data centres 

in recent years. One of the most significant 

trends to date is the meteoric rise of cloud 

computing. 

Cisco is forecasting 83% of data centre 

traffic in the next three years will be generated 

through cloud computing. Is that really 

surprising? Businesses of every size are 

utilising Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), 

PaaS (Platform as a Service) or SaaS 

(Software as a Service) offerings. Data 

centres have had to physically transform in 

order to meet availability demands. 

With fundamental business tasks now 

dependent on an uninterrupted service from 

the data centre, the spotlight is on the issue 

of downtime. This is more than just a financial 

consideration. If a business cannot access its 

cloud and hosted services it seriously risks a 

loss in productivity and the potential for a 

major impact on its commercial reputation. 

DOWNTIME DEBACLES 

Software company SSP Worldwide came 

under fire in September 2016 when its SaaS 

solution suffered an outage. The system is 

used by 40% of the UK's brokers to track 

insurance renewals amongst other services. 

The downtime, which was said to be caused 

by a data centre power outage, lasted almost 

two weeks, by which time brokers had made 

their frustrations known online. Their concerns 

included loss of business and risk of action 

from the Financial Conduct Authority. 

Another incident saw Salesforce suffer an 

outage attributed to a failure in the power 

distribution in its primary data centre, causing 

twelve expensive hours of disruption. In this 

case, the CEO was forced to apologise via 

social media; the kind of experience that all 

business leaders dread. 

COPING WITH DEMAND 

There are many different ways in which data 

centre and service availability can be affected. 

Around a quarter of outages are due to power 

failures, but software and hardware problems, 

human error, natural disasters and cyberattacks 

also play a big part. 

Another problem is overheating due to 

inefficient cooling. A rapid increase in 

temperature can cause immediate equipment 

failure but inadequate cooling of equipment 

over a prolonged period of time will also lead 

Operators face a constant battle of 

balancing workloads against available 

budgets. Many data centre owners choose to 

over-provision resources and servers 'just in 

case' a disaster situation occurs, however this 

can be immensely costly. There are other 

strategies available. 

PREVENTION - BETTER THAN CURE 

One of the methods to maintaining resiliency, 

even in the face of an extreme weather event 

or a catastrophic power failure, is through a 

clear understanding of the data centre 

environment. Operational management 

solutions can provide real-time insight, 

control and predictability so data centre 

managers can solve environmental and 

operational challenges with valuable insight, 

rather than guesswork. 

Data centre assets need to be monitored 

and tracked to maintain performance and 

guard against technical failure. Environmental 

conditions need to be dynamically adjusted 

with changes in demand. It is all about 

understanding and managing your 

environment to ensure reliability. 

As data gets bigger and cloud computing 

expands further, data centre dependency is 

only set to increase, although the use of realtime 

insight and other tools will ensure data 

centres remain secure, resilient and reliable in 

the face of businesses' unrelenting appetite 

for more data. 

More info: www.rfcode.com 




19

CASE STUDY: FISCAL TECHNOLOGIES 

Safe and sound 

Fintech specialist FISCAL Technologies is securing customer data and 

winning new business thanks to The Bunker's virtual hosting infrastructure 

Founded in 2002, innovative fintech 

company FISCAL Technologies 

provides forensic solutions that 

empower purchase-to-pay (P2P) teams to 

protect organisational spend. Ultimately, the 

company creates software that prevents 

money from mistakenly or fraudulently leaving 

an organisation. It offers a variety of forensic 

solutions that analyse financial transactions 

across the entire P2P process, finding 

anomalies, errors, duplicates and identifying 

potential fraud. With offices in the UK and the 

US, FISCAL has experienced seven years of 

profitable growth, with ambitious plans for the 

future. 

INTERNATIONAL RESCUE 

FISCAL Technologies' customers place a 

premium on their security. Some of their 

customers require contractual certainty that 

their data does not come into contact with 

any organisation that has any kind of 

relationship with the US or American 

organisations due to data sovereignty 

requirements. FISCAL had kept US and UK 

customers' data stored in the same data 

centre in the UK, but subsequently needed to 

split the data because of this segregation 

requirement. Whilst FISCAL partnered with a 

company in the US for their American 

customers, they found that their previous UK 

provider, who had been in place for three 

years, did not have adequate measures in 

place to guarantee adherence to their client's 

data sovereignty requirements. 

In order to guarantee its customers 

complete certainty that they fulfilled the above 

requirements, FISCAL needed a hosting and 

infrastructure provider that not only met all the 

most recent security accreditations, but also 

had security embedded in everything it did. In 

particular, adherence to the ISO 27001 

security standard - a comprehensive, 

technology-neutral specification that deploys 

a risk-based approach going across all 

sections of an organisation - was key. 

Moreover, as an ambitious organisation 

looking to accelerate its growth, FISCAL 

needed a partner who could not only keep up 

with them, but would have both the capacity 

and the drive to grow with FISCAL and be 

adaptable to its requirements. Another critical 



CASE STUDY: FISCAL TECHNOLOGIES 

"It's hugely important to our clients to have certain security guarantees in 

place. The Bunker is distinct for a security culture that is deeply embedded 

in its DNA, and for having a more comprehensive security provision than 

anyone else we spoke to." 

consideration was experience, and FISCAL 

sought a partner that had a heritage of 

working with other fintech and financial 

services firms. 

ULTRA SECURE SOLUTION 

FISCAL embarked on a wide-ranging 

procurement process - and quickly found that 

The Bunker stood out for its security provision, 

which was more comprehensive than any 

other they had encountered before and 

covered all the necessary accreditations, 

including ISO 27001. With a significant 

amount of experience working in the fintech 

sector, The Bunker fitted the bill perfectly. 

The Bunker's solution was a virtual 

environment, with powerful SQL Server 

databases, load balanced firewalls, and 

active directory domain controllers. This 

system delivers not only a robust approach to 

data and system security, but also the speedy 

performance and seamless management that 

FISCAL requires in order to deal with the 

sheer volume of data and amount of 

processing that it manages for its customers. 

A NEW IMPETUS 

Demonstrating a high-level of security 

compliance has provided a powerful new 

business impetus for FISCAL. 

Howard Durdle, CTO at FISCAL, 

commented: "Being in financial services, 

security is absolutely paramount, and for 

many of our customers, having the level of 

security provided by The Bunker was a 

prerequisite to making deals. For example, for 

a large defence contractor who placed huge 

value on security and on their data not 

touching the US, The Bunker were a vital 

element in passing a lengthy procurement 

process and securing a deal. Hosting our 

customers' data in a former Ministry of 

Defence bunker, deep underground and fully 

insulated from the outside world, gives us a 

powerful story to tell potential and current 

customers about the importance we place on 

security." 

Moreover, the benefits of running a fully 

virtualised estate are clear to Howard: "In the 

case of any kind of system failures, we can 

migrate virtually across to other parts of the 

infrastructure, massively reducing any 

potential for downtime - not that it's been an 

issue as of yet." 

PRODUCTIVE PARTNERSHIP 

Howard said: "It's hugely important to our 

clients to have certain security guarantees in 

place. The Bunker is distinct for a security 

culture that is deeply embedded in its DNA, 

and for having a more comprehensive 

security provision than anyone else we spoke 

to." 

Looking to the future, while FISCAL is still in 

the process of moving their customers off the 

old platform, the company is looking to 

expand the virtual infrastructure and to double 

its customer load over the next year - all whilst 

maintaining current performance levels. 

"We have mutually complementary 

narratives," concludes Howard. "FISCAL is 

absolutely focused on protecting 

organisations' money, whilst The Bunker has 

the same obsession with protecting 

organisations' data. This cultural overlap has 

made for a productive partnership." 

More info: www.thebunker.net 




21

TECHNOLOGY: APIS 

Automating the IT 

production line 

David Grimes, CTO at Navisite, discusses the growing role of APIs in reducing 

costs and developing tomorrow's businesses 

Finding ways to reduce costs while 

continuing to offer excellent 

products and services is the eternal 

business challenge. To help businesses 

do this, IT teams and service providers 

are increasingly looking to APIs 

(Application Programming Interfaces). 

APIs are sets of routines, protocols and 

tools for building software applications 

that enable automation, which supports 

increased efficiency, consistency and cost 

savings for businesses. How exactly are 

organisations using APIs to do this, and 

how is this likely to develop in the future? 

OPERATIONAL RELIABILITY & 

EFFICIENCY 

One important outcome of the automation 

enabled by APIs is consistency. Through 

automation, businesses remove human 

error (and human expense) from 

operational processes. Even when a 

repeatable task is well-documented with a 

clear procedure, when human workers 

perform the task it is likely that you will 

end up with varied outcomes. 

On the other hand, if that repeatable task 

is automated, it will be performed in the 

same way every time, improving 

operational reliability and in turn 

operational efficiency. API enabled 

platforms are driving a true re-think in how 

we manage IT; we are moving quickly 

from a process-driven, reactive world to 

an automation-driven, proactive world. 

AUTOMATING DEVOPS 

APIs allow for more dynamic systems that 

can scale up and down to deliver just the 

right amount of infrastructure to the 

application at all times. For example, 

instrumentation in your application that 

provides visibility to an orchestration layer 

can tell when more capacity is required in 

the web or app tier. The orchestration 

layer can then come back to the APIs 

provided by the infrastructure and begin 



TECHNOLOGY: APIS 

spinning up new web servers and adding 

them to the load balancer pool to 

increase capacity. 

Likewise, systems built on APIs will then 

have the instrumentation to tell when they 

are overbuilt, for example at night and can 

then use the APIs to wind down 

unnecessary servers in order to reduce 

costs. 

Indeed, through the ability to script the 

powering-on of development and testing 

environments at the start of the business 

day and automatically powering-off at the 

end of the business day, businesses can 

realise huge cost savings on their hosting 

- up to 50-60 per cent in some cases. 

Overall, leveraging APIs in support of a 

DevOps strategy is always a blend of 

optimising for cost, for performance and 

the ability to have deep app-level visibility. 

AUTOMATING REPORTING 

APIs are also highly useful in reporting 

procedures, as many applications are 

now producing vast amounts of data that 

are often an untapped asset. IT teams 

therefore need to think about how to 

make those datasets available efficiently 

in order to build a dynamic reporting 

engine that can potentially be configured 

by the end user, who will be the person 

that understands the nature of the 

information that he or she needs to 

extract from the data. 

This is frequently accomplished through 

APIs. IT teams and application services 

providers can use APIs to build systems 

that process data and make it accessible 

to end users immediately, so that they do 

not have to go through a reporting team 

and do not lose any of the real-time value 

of their data. 

BUSINESS CONTINUITY & DR 

The benefits of automation through APIs 

make them a crucial part of modern 

disaster recovery approaches. The 

assumption that you'll be able to access 

all of the tools that you would need during 

a disaster through the typical user 

interfaces is not always true. In the 

modern world of highly virtualised 

infrastructure, APIs are the enabler for the 

core building blocks of disaster recovery, 

in particular replication, which is driven 

from the APIs exposed by the 

virtualisation platforms. The final act of 

orchestrating DR, failover, is also often 

highly API dependent, for these reasons. 

In essence, disaster recovery is one 

specific use case of the way that APIs 

enable efficiency and operations 

automation. Humans make mistakes and 

processes become very difficult to 

maintain and update. Therefore a DR plan 

based on processes and humans 

executing processes is not an ideal option 

to ensure the safety of your business in 

the event of a disaster. Kicking off DR can 

be likened to "pressing the big red button". 

However if you can make it one button 

that kick starts a set of automated 

processes, this will be much more 

manageable and reliable than thirteen 

different buttons, each of which has a 

thirty-page policy and procedure 

document that must be executed during 

a disaster. 

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? 

While there are some obvious benefits to 

API-enabled technology and automation, 

much of the IT industry is yet to get up to 

speed to understand this technology's 

potential. This is particularly true in 

industries that have been using 

information technology for a long time. In 

these industries, we're still seeing a large 

number of legacy applications, legacy 

staff skill-sets and legacy approaches to 

managing infrastructure. 

As we watch the younger generation 

coming into the IT industry, who have 

grown up with and are being taught about 

APIs, there is likely to be a shift towards 

more comprehensive API use and 

understanding of the value APIs can offer. 

As we see disruptors displace incumbent 

packaged software players and new 

entrants to the enterprise IT community, 

we are likely to see more realisation of the 

benefits of API use - particularly as skillsets 

build and the potential to utilise 

capabilities inherent in new generation 

Cloud infrastructures grow. 

It will, however, take time to produce and 

develop enough entry level IT 

professionals who possess the training 

and education required to take full 

advantage of the opportunities APIs offer. 

APIs are also contributing to reducing 

the cost of developing new ideas. 

Entrepreneurs can now quickly start a 

new business on Cloud Infrastructure-asa-Service 

platforms, without having to 

make large upfront investments on IT 

equipment to get an idea off the ground. 

Start-ups can use APIs to control and 

power systems down to reduce costs as 

required and can then efficiently scale up 

on the same Cloud infrastructure as their 

new product or service grows. 

To fully take advantage of the reduced 

costs, APIs should be an integrated part 

of Cloud solutions, rather than an 

expensive addition to the service. 

As the number of innovative startups in the 

tech space grows and as enterprises 

increasingly search for new, effective 

solutions and ways of working, we are likely 

to see more creative uses of APIs, driving 

consistency, efficiency and automation. 

Businesses are going to have to work hard 

to stay ahead of the market and making full 

use of API-enabled technologies and 

software to increase efficiency and reduce 

costs is a key enabler to support these 

competitive drives. 

More info: www.navisite.co.uk 




23

EVENT REPORT: CLOUD EXPO EUROPE 2017 

The main event 

Cloud Expo, Europe's biggest and best attended cloud and digital transformation 

show took place recently in London's ExCel: Cloud Hosting 

magazine was there to report back 

This year's Cloud Expo Europe - 

alongside Smart IoT, Cloud 

Security, Data Centre World and 

Big Data World - played host to over 500 

leading international technology 

exhibitors and 600 speakers. Delegates 

took advantage of the free entry to learn 

from global business experts as well as 

leaders of innovative UK and 

international start-ups. 

The comprehensive conference 

programme included: 

Over 600 top experts, including 

number 1 rated CIOs, Acclaimed 

Global Cloud Leaders, Cloud Gurus 

from Box, BT, Google, McLaren 

Technology Group, Microsoft, Paypal, 

Spotify, Twitter and Vodafone, 

covering all the major technology 

and business issues 




The opportunity to learn from dozens 

of real practitioners from blue chip 

companies, service providers and 

leading organisations including 

organisations including Financial 

Times, ITV, LEGO, Lloyds, LV and the 

Ministry of Defence. 

Suppliers at the show included AWS, 

Commvault, LeGrand, IBM, Intel, OVH, 

Navisite, NTT Communications, Pure 

Storage, Samsung, Trend Micro, 

VMware, Veeam, Volta and Western 

Digital. 

Delegates were able to network with 

thousands of peers, industry 

visionaries, leaders and people who 

are facing similar challenges. 

The industry-leading sister events 

were all well attended: Data Centre 

World, Cloud Security Expo, and 

Smart IoT all took place at the same 

time in the same place, as well as 

brand new launch event Big Data 

World. 

SPEAKERS' CORNER 

Pulsant CTO Matt Lovell presented at the 

Infrastructure, Storage & Virtualisation 

Theatre, talking about 'converting hybrid 

services to value', and also told us about 

Pulsant's newest collaboration with 

Microsoft on AMP, a hybrid cloud 

solution set. As one of only a handful of 

strategic hosting partners to Microsoft, 

AMP will strengthen Pulsant's delivery, 

management and support of Azure and 

Azure Stack. 

We also spoke with Hiren Parekh, UK 

Director at OVH, one of Europe's largest 

cloud hosting providers and a relatively 

new name in the UK market. The 

company recently announced a new 

data centre in the UK, and has ambitious 

growth plans. OVH also presented at 

Cloud Expo on 'Understanding different 

types of cloud services' as well as 'My 

CTO loves Software Defined Data 

Centres' - we were sorry to have missed 

that one! 

On the IBM stand the focus was on a 

demonstration of the 'Cognitive 

Command Centre', showing social 

sentiment around blood and organ 

donation using URLs and hash tags. 

The company was involved in a number 

of speaker sessions including the 'Cloud 

Super Providers' panel discussion which 

was one of the best attended of the two 

days. 

THIS YEAR'S MODELS 

Navisite had a very noticeable presence 

at the event, and Sean McAvan, Navisite 

Europe MD presented on the topic of 

'Multi-Cloud - Practical Use Cases,' 

exploring one of the hottest trends in the 

cloud and IT industry. Sean's talk 

covered why businesses across multiple 

industries are adopting a multi-cloud 

approach, and how this is impacting IT 

across a range of industries. He also 

discussed how IT teams and providers 

could manage multi-clouds and 

overcome the barriers to adoption. 

A major Navisite customer, the National 

Theatre was also at the show talking 

about the importance of technology to 

the Theatre's success, and how moving 

to the cloud has enabled this, including 

the enablement of better remote 

working. Cloud solutions are supporting 

digital transformation across the arts 

sector, explained John Cheyne, IT 

Director at the NT, and this is likely to 

develop in the future. 

HyperGrid attended Cloud Expo to 

showcase their HyperCloud offering but 

also to talk in more detail about how 

consumption-based models are set to 

define the way businesses embrace 

cloud in the coming years. HyperGrid 

were the first provider to move from a 

traditional, hardware-based hyperconverged 

infrastructure solution to a 

SaaS solution. HyperGrid now offer a 

fully consumption-based, on-premise 

cloud service for the enterprise, with no 

Capex costs - an approach also adopted 

by the likes of Nutanix and Simplivity. 

HyperGrid CEO Nariman Teymourian 

was on hand at the show to discuss how 

HyperCloud is 'shaking up the cloud 

landscape', as well as share his thoughts 

on the latest developments and future of 

cloud, including how consumptionbased 

models can bring added depth to 

a space currently dominated by key 

players such as AWS and Azure. 




25


Datapipe - who acquired Adapt late last 

year - were named a leader in the 2017 

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud 

and Infrastructure Managed Service 

Providers (the tenth time it has been 

placed in a Magic Quadrant) and Stewart 

Smythe, Managing Director at Datapipe 

Europe was at Cloud Expo Europe to 

discuss the strategies which have helped 

to enable this achievement. This included 

Datapipe's ability to support cloud 

deployments in China, as a global 

managed service provider of Alibaba 

Cloud, as well as the recent launch of 

Datapipe's end-to-end platform, 

Trebuchet. 

MAKING CONNECTIONS 

Elsewhere, Talend was promoting how it 

is using data to develop the connected 

car and also talking about the 

government's journey from being 'data 

rich and insight poor' to truly data driven. 

Vice President Ciaran Dynes discussed 

the issues surrounding data collection for 

the 23% of UK cars that are predicted to 

be connected by 2020. 

Interoute unveiled its VDC Container 

Orchestration platform with Rancher - to 

help companies develop the tools needed 

to improve customer experience and 

service levels, as well as speed up 

DevOps projects. Matthew Finnie, CTO at 

Interoute hosted a keynote presentation 

on 'Why digital transformation is no longer 

a choice'. 

Finnie was also keen to explain how 

Interoute is enabling enterprises (such as 

client AO.com) to digitally transform, as 

well as explaining how organisations can 

integrate legacy, third party and digital IT 

environments. 

Druva used the timing of the event to 

announce news around Office 365 and 

data protection for cloud applications, 

based on a partnership with Phoenix 

Software here in the UK. According to 

Rick Powles, Druva VP for EMEA, many 

companies don't consider how easy it is 

for data to live outside the data centre, 

but at least 40 per cent of all company 

data is already there according to analyst 

reports. 

Rubrik, one of the fastest growing cloud 

companies to come out of Silicon Valley, 

is the start-up responsible for developing 

the world's first Cloud Data Management 

platform for data protection, storage and 

archival - and has recently opened a 

London office. In the three years since its 

conception, Rubrik has grown 

exponentially, announcing earlier this year 

a booked revenue approaching $100m 

run rate and a 700% annual customer 

growth. As a company, explained Yvonne 

Prest, Rubrik's recently appointed UK 

Channel Manager, its fundamental aim 

has always stayed the same; to reimagine 

and radically simplify how data storage, 

back up and cloud recovery works. 

WHAT'S IN STORE? 

As usual, storage companies were well 

represented at Cloud Expo Europe. Tom 

O'Neill, Kaminario's CTO International, 

talked about the urgent requirement for a 

scalable storage platform to enable cloud 

businesses to grow rapidly without 

adding complexity. To that end, Kaminario 

set itself a challenge: how to create a 

cloud storage platform which can scale 

without adding complexity. The answer, 

O'Neill explained, is to make storage 

application-aware. 

At the event Kaminario was 

demonstrating its sixth generation of its 

K2 all-flash array delivering multi-petabyte 

scale storage. The newer generation AFA 

delivers up to five times more capacity 

than the previous generation and twice as 

much performance. The array can linearly 

grow the number of CPU cores and 

independently grow solid-state capacity. 

Samsung Semiconductor showcased its 

industry-leading memory and storage 

systems at the show - including its Z-SSD 

products, 10nm class DRAM with 3D TSV 

and AutoCache. The company was also 

promoting its selection of all-flash array 

and NVMe over fabric solutions. 

Overall there can be no question that no 

other UK business IT event is bigger, 

better attended and packs more leading 

educational content into 2 unmissable 

days than Cloud Expo Europe - all at no 

cost. 

More info: www.cloudexpoeurope.com 

Cloudhosting 

26 Feb/March 2017 



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