Hawke’s Bay gets priority for data storage centre

Hawke’s Bay is now ahead of other regions in priority for a multi-million dollar data storage centre due to the roll out of the ultrafast fibre network locally.

National company Virtual Infrastructure Professionals (VIP) announced today it will initially invest $250,000 over the next three months to provide local businesses with cloud hosting services immediately.

VIP managing director Lance Warren said the initial data storage centre will be based at Unison’s head offices in Hastings and the company is currently identifying sites for a permanent 2.5 tier or more data storage facility in Hawke’s Bay.

He said this was on the back of UnisonFibre laying over 140 kilometres of fibre optic cable.

“Fibre to businesses is well advanced in Hawke’s Bay and one of the major benefits of fibre is cloud storage of data.

“Because of UnisonFibre’s considerable investment and roll out of fibre, we’ve accelerated our plans and given Hawke’s Bay higher priority and set up a highly secure data storage centre,” Mr Warren said.

VIP plans to set up 17 data storage facilities throughout New Zealand.

For increased security and storage ability, each site will be replicated at across the data storage network.

VIP’s national vendor relationship manager Brett Rawcliffe will head the Hawke’s Bay operations.

Mr Rawcliffe believes the announcement of a data storage centre in the region will be a catalyst to attracting larger businesses to the region.

“It’s an economic boost for the region because we can now attract more large businesses which want to make sure they have a local secure data storage centre,” he said.

He added that it will also boost local businesses that have a national and/or international reach.

“For example we’re working with Radius Medical in Hamilton and they now have a direct and fast access to Radius Medical’s head office in Napier.

VIP will also partner with local IT companies. The company has already signed agreements with Glenn Cook Technologies and Talkmore.

“We’re looking for more local resellers as we want to lift the level of IT utilisation in Hawke’s Bay.

Mr Warren sees a transformation in the way businesses use fibre and cloud hosting services.

“If you’re using fibre, then a key benefit is the ability to store files in the cloud rather than on your own server.

“Businesses should not to focus on the day to day running of IT but how IT can be a business advantage and an enabler.

Virtual Infrastructure technology is one of the fastest growing trend within IT over the last five years.

The benefits of the technology include heavily reducing physical computer server numbers, data centre power consumption and cooling requirements. Other benefits include high availability, easier server management and disaster recovery capabilities.

This allows businesses to save significant money within a very short period of time.

ABOUT VIP

VIP in a very short period of time has become an industry leader, implementing dozens of large virtual infrastructure environments within New Zealand and building an enviable reputation.

Our customers are geographically spread all over New Zealand, unlike our competitors, we have been building our customer base within each distinct region across the country. This gives us a unique advantage as we implement our regional strategy.

Our plan is to set up VIP offices as well as a complimentary purpose built Data Centre in 17 regions we have identified around New Zealand. This will allow us to provide local support services to our regional customer base as well as offer new services such as infrastructure hosting.

VIP Hawke’s Bay’s services will include Virtual Infrastructure architecture, deployment and support; Server and Storage implementations; Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) architecture, deployment and support; Disaster Recovery design and implementation; Hosted Virtual Infrastructure services (Infrastructure as a Service); Hosted Telephony Services; Hosted Mail and Web Marshal; Virtual Infrastructure Training; System Health Checks and Best Practise Compliance and Customised Support Contracts.

About cloud computing

Cloud computing is a way of delivering IT services to users without the need to buy, install or manage any infrastructure. Businesses can have desktops, software, applications and services over a secure network. It is a flexible, enterprise IT environment on a "pay-as-you go" basis.

Cloud computing means highly scalable computing resources provided as an external service via the internet or direct fibre links on a pay-as-you-go basis. The cloud is simply a metaphor for the internet, based on the symbol used to represent the worldwide network in computer network diagrams.

Economically, the main appeal of cloud computing is that customers only use what they need, and only pay for what they actually use. Resources are available to be accessed from the cloud at any time, and from any location via the internet or direct fibre connections.

Businesses no longer need to worry backups, power, cooling and physical security.

ENDS

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