Computacenter Targets Email With Cloud Service

IT services provider Computacenter has launched what it is calling its Computacenter cloud computing service, or C3 for short.

The idea is that it allow organisations to adopt the cloud at their pace, using a blend of onsite and offsite IT delivery models. The first product in the cloud suite is C3Mail, which is designed to reduce the cost and complexity of managing messaging infrastructures and offer organisations the flexibility of dedicated or shared infrastructure, based within their own data centre or offsite at Computacenter’s UK-based facilities.

C3Mail is based on Microsoft’s latest Exchange 2010 release, and guarantees 99.9 percent availability.

One Stop Shop

Computacenter operates the service as a ‘one stop shop’, in that it takes full ownership (and control) of the infrastructure, as well as migration, security and user admin, without the need to involve other outside vendors.

“We have talked to users and analysts to understand what customers are seeking from a cloud service,” explained Computacenter CTO, Matt Lovell, speaking to eWEEK Europe. “We are offering a pragmatic approach to the cloud, with an email offering (C3Mail) available now and a collobration offering available at the end of Q1.”

“C3Mail addresses challenges businesses have around their messaging platforms, including availability. C3Mail can be purchased on a utility basis and consumed on a flexible model, where the customer only pays for what they consume. And it can flex according to customer needs, as it is very modular.”

Google Competition?

Typically the service is aimed at businesses with 1,000 users and can scale to up to 50,000 customers, but Lovell said it can also cater to those businesses with 500 or 600 users as well. He said that the cost per mailbox for the base service is typically around the £7.95 mark per month, but this includes some of Computacenter’s other services.

But how does this compare to the likes of Google and its apps?

Lovell points out that if a business goes down the Google route, they will of course need a number of partner companies and suppliers. “We offer a full service outcome compared to Google,” Lovell said. “For example, we will fit in with the customer’s security model; users have access to 24×7 helpdesk support; we offer migration services; and we also offer an assessment service for customers, so that they can directly compare C3 against Google and other offerings. It is a complete professional service.

“We partner with Google today,” Lovell added. “We are not trying to compete with them in the app space. C3 is different as it is all included in the price. The end user experience is great because we have a dedicated user team; the data can be hosted in UK or Germany. We can flex the customer up and down, and even interface to Google Apps or to other service providers.”

Lovell agreed that the advantage of the solution is that the customer can avoid hefty upfront capex charges. “We can begin the journey to help customers understand the cloud and help them qualify the process. Let us start the journey here, and let us show customers what they benefits of the cloud are.”

Cloud Concerns

Despite this optimism however, Computacenter said that it found there are still concerns over cloud adoption.

It pointed to a survey of more than 150 IT decision makers in UK enterprises, by research specialists Loudhouse, which found that almost all IT decision makers surveyed (99 percent) were worried about the risk, service levels or functionality of the cloud.

This is despite 75 percent feeling confident that it can help streamline costs. In addition, 91 percent believe that cloud can support their organisation by easing headaches around infrastructure upgrades, management and delivering more for less.

As well as understanding that cloud can support their organisation at a general level, most companies believe that email is one of the best cloud technologies to adopt first. 55 percent of companies agreed that their company was most likely to see strong benefits from cloud email over other cloud technologies, with 70 percent anticipating that their organisation will be using email in a private cloud within the next three years.

The latest findings are an advance compared to another Computacenter survey back in January 2010, which found that 50 percent of IT decision makers did not know how important cloud computing is, or believed it to be of little or no importance to help improve the operation and cost effectiveness of their IT environment over the next two years.

Computacenter currently manages 1.2 million mailboxes per annum, and handles approximately 150,000 mailbox migrations each year.

It also has over 300 Microsoft certified systems engineers.