Workspace as a Service offering gives customers a wider choice and increased flexibility

VCE says that Colt has deployed a Workspace-as-a-Service offering based on VCE Vblock™ Systems. Drawing from Colt’s experience with VCE converged infrastructure within its state-of-the-art data centers, Colt is now offering an on-premises solution that replicates the same secure and highly reliable experience directly on customers’ own sites.The on-premises solution is aimed at IT departments serving a large community of users who want to keep their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and data within their physical sites, but who are still looking to gain the flexibility and economic benefits of a cost-per-user model. This addition to Colt’s Workspace-as-a-Service portfolio relies on Vblock Systems as the converged infrastructure foundation to deliver secure, anytime, anywhere access to users’ corporate applications and data across the whole range of end-user computing devices.

Thursday, 29th January 2015 Posted 9 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Hugo Harber, vice president, Portfolio & Strategy, IT Services at Colt, said, “We are thrilled that we are now able to offer our fully managed cloud Workspace-as-a-Service experience to a broader customer base with this on-premises solution that relies on the inherent reliability, availability and scalability of Vblock Systems. Its ‘appliance’-like characteristics mean we can leave the infrastructure onsite in complete confidence and concentrate on delivering a first-class service to our customers.”

Initial deployments of the on-premises offering are proving successful, with Colt deploying a managed Workspace-as-a-Service solution to more than 3,000 concurrent users for one local government project in only four weeks from delivery. This has accelerated the customer’s VDI project and enabled the rapid transitioning of users.

Andy Wilson, vice president, EMEA, VCE, said: "We are delighted that an early customer of VCE is adding its expertise to our innovative technology and transforming the IT experience of more organisations. By combining Colt’s extensive experience in data centers, wide area networks and managed services with VCE converged infrastructure, this solution offers customers high performance and productivity with the ability to deliver IT services faster and at a lower cost from a location of their own choice.”

Converged infrastructure is building momentum in the industry by becoming the fastest route to enabling private and hybrid clouds, and VCE leads the space.1 The VCE Experience goes beyond the integration of different infrastructure components and business-critical application environments such as SAP, Microsoft and VDI by providing long-term solutions to customers. By pre-integrating, pre-testing and pre-validating every Vblock System, VCE is able to provide
lifecycle assurance with maintenance and service upgrades for the converged infrastructure, creating a highly efficient and secure way to keep software and systems up to date.