BT customers to benefit from new hybrid cloud solution

By Akhona for BT
Johannesburg, 29 Jan 2014

BT announced today it will support Cisco's InterCloud service working alongside Citrix and NetApp to broaden its Cloud Compute portfolio and improve the way its hybrid cloud solutions benefit customers globally.

As organisations increasingly turn to the cloud for flexible and cost-efficient ways of delivering IT services, the migration of workloads between different cloud environments remains a challenge. Cisco's newly launched InterCloud, based on open standards and supporting Citrix CloudPlatform powered by Apache CloudStack, enables companies to move workloads, such as storage, compute and applications, across different clouds in a highly secure way.

BT worked with Cisco, Citrix and NetApp to develop and launch its Cloud Compute services across 17 countries in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific.

The service is currently used by companies spanning many industry sectors. For example, it allows life sciences companies to collaborate globally on crucial research and development projects and improve their speed to market. It is also used by leading international law firms to provide clients with fast access to legal and market know-how across Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

Neil Lock, director of BT Compute portfolio at BT Global Services, said: "As more applications are being driven to the cloud, the need for flexibility and control is critical for IT departments. Working with global companies in various industries offers us the insight into the daily challenges these IT organisations face. Our global network reach and extensive Cloud Compute capability give us a unique advantage in helping our customers design and build cloud solutions that are tailored to their needs."

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Notes to editors

BT Compute

* Available in 17 countries locally with 24/7 local service
* Delivered from tier three or better data centres
* Access options: Portal, multilingual and multi-currency, open API, role-based access
* Architecture: Multi-availability zones across public and private resources
* Security: Role-based access, virtual security appliance, port forwarding
* Integration: Active directory and LDAP supported
* Network: Load balanced, multi VLAN, WAN connectivity available, virtual routing
* Commercial: Flexible pricing per hour, per month or per annum
* OS supported: Microsoft, Linux, customer-generated templates, ISO images
* Hypervisors supported: VMware, Citrix

BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband, TV and Internet products and services; and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

For the year ended 31 March 2013, BT Group's reported revenue was lb18.103 million with reported profit before taxation of lb2.315 million.

British Telecommunications (BT) is a wholly owned subsidiary of BT Group and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.btplc.com.

InterCloud

Cisco InterCloud paves the way for interoperable and highly secure public, private and hybrid clouds that span across multiple public and private clouds and between premises-based applications and public clouds. Cisco InterCloud enables hybrid clouds by allowing organisations to combine and move workloads across different clouds as needed, easily and with high security, while maintaining associated network and security policies. On-demand flexibility and workload portability allow organisations to cost-effectively select their optimal cloud strategy.

CloudPlatform

Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack, is an application-centric cloud solution that reliably and efficiently orchestrates both traditional enterprise workloads and cloud application workloads. CloudPlatform will interoperate with Cisco InterCloud to securely orchestrate workloads across hybrid clouds. For example, customers who run Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp on CloudPlatform can also securely deliver desktop and application workloads across hybrid clouds.

FlexPod

FlexPod is a portfolio of pre-validated, integrated infrastructure solution designs that combine the Cisco Unified Computing System, Cisco Nexus data centre switches and NetApp storage components, managed by Cisco UCS Director with a single console for bare-metal and virtualised workloads. Cisco and NetApp developed FlexPod to meet the demands of business leaders who need to consolidate IT infrastructure, save energy costs, host more applications, and share resources across different departments. The FlexPod portfolio includes FlexPod Datacenter for core enterprise data centres and service providers, FlexPod Express for medium-sized businesses and branch offices, and FlexPod Select for data-intensive workloads. The portfolio is validated with leading hypervisors, operating systems, systems management tools and cloud management platforms.

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BT customers to benefit from new hybrid cloud solution

BT works with Cisco, Citrix and NetApp to integrate InterCloud into its Cloud Compute service.