Virgin offers cloud-based services

cloud-based services to business customers, as part of a drive to double revenues from its enterprise division in the next five years, Financial Times reports.

Virgin said it would “shake up” the cloud computing market with easy-to-use technology and clear advice. The cloud itself is often a cause for confusion for consumers and companies, although it is in effect a service that can provide IT systems such as storage, software and processing from a remote place over a network.

According to Computer Weekly, the service is aimed at enterprises with between 250 and 1 000 employees, and offers three different service-level agreements and uptime guarantees.

Mark Heraghty, Virgin Media Business' managing director, said the service allows companies to quickly deploy private data centres, and avoid complex procurement processes.

“The technology in the network and data centres is sufficiently mature for the benefits of cloud to be delivered,” Computer World quotes Heraghty as saying.

The company added that one of its selling points was its simple user interface, which will help IT managers to design and deploy their own private data centre that will go live within 90 minutes.