Internet Solutions (IS) and application delivery infrastructure specialist, Smart Axess Solutions, have launched a new hosted environment called Enterprise Application Delivery.
The platform, developed using leading application delivery infrastructure from Citrix Systems, will enable the optimised delivery of applications through the cloud, from IS' new, next-generation Parklands data centre.
“Enterprise Application Delivery will allow IS to deliver optimised, highly available and secure on-demand access to hosted applications, desktops and database servers in a fault tolerant and redundant environment,” says Hayden Lamberti, Application Solutions Business Unit Manager at IS.
“Delivering applications across the cloud will enable our clients to leverage their existing IT infrastructure by consolidating applications into a central data centre. This reduces infrastructure requirements and costs because through economies of scale we are able to provide companies with a greater IT infrastructure at a lower total cost of ownership.”
The platform was developed by Smart Axess using the Citrix Delivery Centre. “As a multinational certified Citrix Gold Partner, we have used the latest Citrix technology to develop a virtualised platform that is both stable and secure,” says Alex Russell, Managing Director of Smart Axess.
“Once we had developed the platform, the new IS Parklands data centre offered the best environment and infrastructure to deploy it, ensuring users have secure, highly optimised, fault-tolerant and accelerated access to on-demand applications, data and desktop operating systems through the cloud.”
“Citrix brings together the service delivery infrastructure building blocks that have been proven in the world's largest clouds and enterprise data centres,” says Nick Keene, country manager of Citrix Systems Southern Africa. “This cloud computing service will ease the mind of local organisations that in the past may have feared losing direct control of their vital data and applications.”
According to Lamberti, Enterprise Application Delivery also enables the delivery of applications and windows desktop operating systems to multiple users, irrespective of their location, device or connection, all through a single user interface. “Any existing connectivity infrastructure, including WANs will also be utilised more efficiently and effectively, offering customers a better return on their IT investments,” says Lamberti. “Additional benefits include centralised application and operating system support and deployment, with updates provisioned on-demand, without the need for lengthy, on-site single-user installs.”
These benefits also make Enterprise Application Delivery an ideal tool for independent software vendors (ISVs) to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver their software to market. “Local ISVs are set to realise a major benefit from this partnership, as the cloud provides an opportunity to deliver applications on a software as a service (SaaS) basis. This will provide a quicker go-to-market strategy, especially as local players target international business,” concludes Russell.
“Many clouds that offer services based on the Xen hypervisor have asked Citrix to help them offer a richer set of virtualised IT infrastructure services, as well as a more scalable infrastructure to deliver them to both enterprise and consumer users. This is a great example of how local partners have come together to offer South African users a complete cloud computing solution,” concludes Keene.
To showcase and test this platform, IS and Smart Axess are leveraging the Citrix Ready Programme within the IS competency centre. This will give current and future ISVs the opportunity to play with and get a feel for the new environment, as well as Web-enable their service offerings, allowing them to deliver software over the Web on a utility billing model. “We can also use this environment to Web-enable and prepare the applications our clients are going to use for the hosted environment, ensuring they can be optimally delivered across the cloud,” continues Lamberti.
“Having passed all competency tests, applications can then be moved into the production environment, where we can on-board new clients.
“Going to market with Enterprise Application Delivery demonstrates our belief in the power of business-ready virtualised applications. This is the future of IT in the current market environment, where costs savings and efficiency have become vital to business success and survival,” concludes Lamberti.
Clients hosted on the current legacy environment were ported to Enterprise Application Delivery at the end of April.
For more information, visit http://www.is.co.za/application/citrix/AS+Citrix.htm.
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Smart Axess Solutions
Smart Axess Solutions is a market leading end-to-end virtualisation company, servicing the technology sectors of:
* Application delivery infrastructure
* Application virtualisation
* Server virtualisation
* Desktop virtualisation
The company offers market leading point solutions and corporate IT strategies, especially around the software as a service (SaaS) offering. These are designed to solve business challenges as well as offer lower total cost of ownership to customers, through enabling business mobility and virtualisation.
Smart Axess is a certified Citrix Gold Partner and has offices in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town serving sub-Saharan Africa, and Dubai, serving the Middle East and North African markets.
Internet Solutions
Internet Solutions (IS) is Southern Africa's most established and experienced Internet service provider. Since 1993, IS has been providing end-to-end connectivity solutions and related services across the African continent. IS is now also able to self-provision, having received an ECNS licence in 2008. This is enabling the company to deliver fully aggregated telecommunications services to the South African market.
The innovative solutions and services offered by IS are underpinned by the company's founding principles; developing a robust infrastructure that enables corporates and other organisations to communicate, which is then brought to life and implemented by the passionate people who work at the company. For 15 years, IS has been delivering these products and services to over 80% of South Africa's top businesses, from listed companies to non-governmental organisations, local and national government and small to medium-sized enterprises.
All IS products and services are built on a world-class, secure and resilient infrastructure, delivered according to global best practices and in partnership with the world's leading technology vendors, such as Cisco and Microsoft. IS is a Microsoft Gold Partner with competencies in hosted messaging and collaboration (Hosted Exchange and SharePoint) and advance infrastructure (managed hosting) solutions. IS is the first ISP in Africa and the Middle East to achieve this accreditation. Similarly, in 2002 IS was certified as a Cisco Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP), the first company outside of the US to be awarded this accolade. IS also embraces open source technology and partners with leading local and international companies to deliver business ready Linux and open source solutions.
IS continues to enjoy market leading positions across multiple vertical market segments through the company's current product mix of hosting, access, security, virtual private network (VPN), mobile, VOIS, wireless, broadband and application services solutions. Recent growth in the African economy has resulted in IS spreading its services across all parts of the continent, as clients demand reliable and robust networking connectivity throughout Africa.
IS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dimension Data and is certified as a 100% BBBEE compliant company, meeting the Level Four contribution requirements to achieve this status.
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