Broadband Update - Virtualisation

Based on the latest IP SAN technology, Griffin launched white label hosting to the channel in 2007. It won storage product of the year and a few prestigious contracts through specialist Partners but overall the take-up was disappointing. The feedback from the channel was that although this was a step forward from dedicated servers it was still too complicated, too difficult to sell and long term contracts made it too risky if the end customer failed to pay or went bust.

In the last three years hosting requirements have changed and demand has grown. Companies persuaded to link all of their offices and home-workers by plugging into an MPLS cloud are wondering why they need to host servers running their internal databases and communications themselves. If you offer hosting it delivers high margin revenues and makes your overall solution much 'stickier' but if you don't you probably won't get shortlisted ahead of someone who has that capability.

The answer for most resellers may be virtualisation. Virtualisation means that instead of buying dedicated servers to process information and store data you can simply rent space and processing power from a shared platform in the cloud. No need to worry about which processor, what size hard disk, RAID arrays, mirroring and back up. This is all done for you and because it's virtual you should expect same-day lead times and there are no hardware costs that have to be paid back through long term contracts. Contracts are monthly and since the investment in the platform is effectively a sunk cost, top specification all-in configurations can be rented for under £100 a month. Many of our Partners are trying it out by sending us their Exchange server or shared files. Anything that requires significant bandwidth out to the internet is bound to be better suited to a network-centred arrangement and if for any reason they don't like it they can just switch it back - after all they are only committed for a month. There is nothing like using something yourself to understand the features, benefits and potential objections.

These early adopters amongst our voice resellers are already including virtualised hosting in tender responses and we have discovered some unexpected niches where this approach is perfectly suited. Think about the retailer who does 80% of his annual turnover at Christmas. He needs to wind up his storage and processing capability for a month or so but after the January sales are over the requirement drops right back again.

Of course some enterprises have an inherent fear of shared infrastructure and no amount of assurances about secure partitioning and resilience will dissuade them from insisting on their own dedicated equipment. But these organisations are in the minority. Any company that would entertain buying hosted voice from you should have no qualms about hosting their applications and data in a virtualised environment.