Colt Launches Private Cloud Services In Europe

British telecoms company Colt is extending its enterprise cloud services into mainland Europe, to help companies on the continent store and access data securely, in accordance with their local data protection requirements.

Colt already offers private dedicated clouds for its customers in Europe, as well as enterprise public cloud services built on VMware’s vCloud data centre technology. However, the expansion will enable customers to access local enterprise private cloud services from local data centres by the end of 2012.

Solving cloud compliance

This means they can store their data in the country in which they operate, which helps to address the compliance, taxation and IP challenges caused by placing data in the cloud.

“Our customers are increasingly turning to cloud computing to help transform their business. But there is a growing recognition that cloud computing does not solve every problem,” said Carl Robertson, chief marketing officer at Colt.

“What customers are really asking for is an information delivery platform, a means of combining network, data centres and IT services. They need flexibility and agility while keeping control of how and where information is delivered across the business.”

The programme will also deliver the capacity for other managed IT services such as on-demand high-volume data storage, said Colt. The company claims this will significantly reduce the cost and resources required for data analysis and disaster recovery.

Journey to the hybrid cloud

Colt announced the news at the VMworld conference in Copenhagen, where cloud and virtualisation vendors from around the world gathered to tout their latest offerings. Colt’s executive vice president Simon Walsh took part in a press panel session, discussing organisations’ journey to the hybrid cloud.

“Customers are putting a toe in the water. They’re putting some workload in their own virtual machines and then they’re using third parties like ourselves to test for handling increased capacity,” said Walsh.

He explained that one of the biggest barriers to adoption is the conversion from a Capex (capital expenditure) budget to an Opex (operational expenditure) budget. “We have to talk through with our customers migrating their current on-premise platform from a capex model on their balance sheet to a subscriber rental model on someone else’s balance sheet – a service provider,” he said.

A report by EMC earlier this year found that, if companies across Europe’s five largest economies – the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – continue to adopt cloud technology as expected, they will generate 2.4 million jobs in Europe over the next four years and more than $243 billion (£150bn) in annual revenue.