K3 launches dedicated international hosting division

K3 Hosting has been set up by the established K3 Business Technology Group plc, in response to overwhelming demand throughout the UK and overseas for cloud-based IT services, from companies in the retail, manufacturing, finance and public sectors. The company builds on the strong foundations laid down by the previous K3 Managed Services division, with products and services being expanded and further developed to provide a wide range of cloud and managed service support, all over the world.

Unique to the IT consultancy market is K3 Hosting’s own Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution, which it has developed to help businesses worldwide solve the challenges of constantly having to invest in, maintain, and manage their own datacentre infrastructures. K3 Hosting’s IaaS offering is a hosted Enterprise Class Cloud Service built on the latest technology to allow options for dedicated or shared IT infrastructure resources, allowing businesses to shift their IT focus and receive dynamic, hassle-free IT provision.

IaaS is just one unique service from the new company, which also provides the more traditional Software as a Service (SaaS), Hardware as a Service (HaaS) and Network as a Service (NaaS) infrastructure services, often integrating provision with Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Project Management facilities. The result is a complete one-stop-shop for IT infrastructure support, maintenance and protection.

IT storage is another issue facing businesses today and K3 Hosting has been set up to provide a simpler storage option. IDC estimates that in the years between 2009 and 2020, the size of the digital universe will increase 44 fold, resulting in a 41 per cent increase in capacity every year, taking the total capacity from 800 Exabytes to 35,000 Exabytes. K3 Hosting’s solution to managing Big Data is its Storage as a Service (STaaS) solution. The economy of scale in K3 Hosting’s infrastructure allows the company to provide storage much more cost effectively than most corporations can provide their own storage. This is thanks to its global MPLS network and over 300 points of presence (POPs), eliminating 37% of costs associated to storage in the datacentre.

According to global IT research firm Gartner, businesses globally spend more than 75 per cent of their total IT budget just on maintaining their systems and software infrastructure. Official research from the Cloud Industry Forum also states in the last 18 months alone, the UK cloud market has seen a 27 per cent increase in first time users and that rate of adoption has accelerated over the past nine months.

K3 Hosting is backed by the support of the wider K3 Business Technology Group, a company ranked number 30 in the top 100 Value Added Reseller list and well established within the IT market. Neil Farnworth, Managing Director of K3 Hosting, brings 20 years of experience working in the technology industry to the new division and has experienced for himself how the popularity of cloud infrastructures has grown globally over the past few years. He is joined by Director, Ed Renwick, a datacentre, cloud and managed services expert, and a team of 70 staff working in roles ranging from engineering through to sales, support and project management.

Ed Renwick said: “For many organisations, maintaining an IT infrastructure can be a difficult task that takes resources away from its main focus – that’s why cloud based services are in demand and we have seen interest in our own cloud provision increase significantly over the past few years. That’s why we are launching K3 Hosting and our own IaaS offering, so we can support business critical systems and help companies save money and enhance productivity, taking the hassle of IT infrastructure away.”