The Enterprise Strategy Group has written a report on desktop virtualisation for 2010.

Desktop virtualization has the potential to bring about a fundamental change in end-user computing. Deployments will have an increasing impact on data center operations, desktop support, security policies, service levels, and, ultimately, the way businesses deliver applications to their employees. Who wins and who loses depends on who can reach senior level IT professionals as they place long term bets and invest in desktop virtualization.

Read more here

ThinkGrid, a leading platform vendor enabling IT services from the cloud today announced that care provider the Independent Living Group (ILG), will deploy 100 ThinkGrid Hosted Virtual Desktops across its head office and registered care homes across South England. ILG will also use ThinkGrid’s platform to host Cold Harbour, an industry standard management application for care providers, as well as ThinkGrid’s low cost Hosted Exchange solution. ThinkGrid’s services will replace ILG’s existing Citrix-based hosted solution, moving the entire IT operation to a fully supported and highly scalable enterprise-class cloud infrastructure. ILG will continue to enjoy the benefits of reduced CapEx by purchasing IT on a pay-as-you-use basis, and make additional savings by deploying ThinkGrid services on its existing desktop hardware.

"Whilst there’s no doubting the role IT plays in improving the quality of the care we provide, it can still be a huge cost and management burden. In order to maintain ILG’s (Independent Living Group) high standards of care, it is critical to remain focused on delivering the best service possible to the people we support, which is why we have pursued an outsourced IT strategy that allows us to drive greater efficiency in our day-to-day operations," said Alex Korniak, IT Consultant for ILG. "The challenge now is that ILG has reached a size where for many similar businesses the obvious next step is to invest in an internal IT to retain quality, whilst reducing outsourcing costs. So when the time came to review our existing IT services contract, we needed a partner who would be able to sustain our outsourcing strategy without compromise. I recommended ThinkGrid’s cloud platform as it gives ILG the best of both worlds: high quality and affordable IT services."

Managing and maintaining IT can become time consuming for organisations such as ILG; PCs need to be patched and maintained, email and file servers must be managed, applications need to be updated and software licences kept up-to-date. With ThinkGrid’s IT services from the cloud, these pains are taken away and the IT infrastructure grows and contracts in line with the business, with customers only paying for what they use on a monthly basis. Staff at ILG’s 43 learning and disability homes will now benefit from ThinkGrid’s Hosted Virtual Desktop and Hosted Exchange services, which will run on their existing PCs:

Hosted Virtual Desktops look and work exactly like traditional PCs, but users connect over the Internet to their desktop, which is hosted on a secure ThinkGrid cloud infrastructure. Staff at ILG will continue to use familiar applications including Microsoft Office and the Cold Harbour application, which are all delivered as a service. Moving to a hosted desktop model creates additional benefits such as mobile working, reduced management overhead, and full disaster recovery protection.

Hosted Exchange allows ILG to benefit from enterprise email and collaboration both in the office and on the move. The service grows alongside ILG’s business, with user accounts added as needed but without the pain of management and provisioning."

According to Rob Lovell, CEO at ThinkGrid: "For many outsourced IT contracts there can be a high degree of pain involved in switching services to another supplier. In a matter of one weekend it’s been possible to move ILG’s entire infrastructure over to our cloud platform so they could literally start using our services with no impact on day-to-day operations when staff returned to the office on Monday morning." He continued: "By moving IT to the cloud, businesses become less dependent on expensive infrastructure such as servers and PCs. In fact, ILG is extending the life of their existing PCs because Hosted Virtual Desktops perform effectively even on low spec machines such as thin-clients. All in all, ILG are proving how many businesses today can significantly transform the way they use, purchase and manage IT by adopting the cloud services model."

London, 27th October 2009: SMEs and small businesses moving into serviced office space can now benefit from a new partnership between Avanta Managed Offices and ThinkGrid, avoiding the need to make capital investment in IT hardware and software. Avanta operates 19 serviced office centres in London, Manchester, the Thames Valley and Edinburgh, whilst ThinkGrid provides hosted business IT services from the cloud, on an on demand basis. As a result, businesses no longer need to make large upfront CapEx investments in PCs, servers and supporting software licenses, or dedicate time and resources to managing IT. Instead, they can move all these costs to more predictable monthly contracts fully managed for them.

By working with ThinkGrid and Avanta, new businesses moving into Avanta serviced offices can immediately begin to use low cost PCs called thin clients, familiar desktop software and applications such as Microsoft Windows and Office as well as file servers for saving data. Alternatively, established businesses relocating to Avanta can continue to use their existing PCs to access ThinkGrid’s services and then switch to thin clients when these older machines need replacing.

ThinkGrid’s services are built on the same type of IT infrastructure that corporate businesses and banks use, and can be accessed via a standard internet connection, anywhere in the world. This means that employees on the move or working from home can benefit from the same level of IT as those at Avanta’s offices.

ThinkGrid also enables Avanta customers to securely store their valuable business data off-site, so removing the cost and headaches associated with storage, disaster recovery and data back-up. As customers only pay for what they use on a monthly rolling contract, they are also free to scale the number of users up and down, as well as adding and removing applications - all at the click of a mouse.

"Avanta serviced office centres are known for providing outstanding levels of customer service, and this new deal with ThinkGrid extends those levels even further," comments Geraint Evans, Avanta’s sales & marketing director. "Our business service package already includes 4 or 8Mb resilient internet access and together with telecoms services, the deal with ThinkGrid now completes the menu of services available to Avanta customers."

"In the current economic climate, most SMEs and small businesses need to channel their management resources on their core business without worrying about the cost, availability and security of their IT systems. So, by linking up with ThinkGrid we have taken a significant step towards minimising customer IT issues by providing them with a cost-effective solution that will provide them with real peace of mind."

"Avanta has built a strong reputation around delivering high-quality, flexible serviced office space that offers customers everything they need to start operating from day one. We are therefore extremely pleased to be partnering with them to offer no fuss, flexible IT that is ready to go the minute customers move in," said Rob Lovell, CEO at ThinkGrid. "Thousands of our SME customers across the UK are already seeing the value of our business IT on-demand services, which remove all the pain and leave only the benefits of IT, so that they can focus on what they do best. Avanta customers that want a free trial of our services should go to www.thinkgrid.co.uk/avanta."

ThinkGrid is pleased to announce that its continued programme of international expansion will now see the company moving into into the southern hemisphere, with the establishment of new points of presence in Sydney. The city is regarded as Australia’s technology hub and is a key centre for internet distribution and ICT services exports in the country.

CEO Rob Lovell explains: "Our new data centre facilities in Sydney will extend and improve our capability to provide IT services from the cloud, and will allow us to reach more customers than ever before. With their specialised knowledge of the country’s IT market, our network of partners will be able to bring the advantages of truly scalable cloud computing services to many of the 1.8 million Australian SMEs who do not have the financial resources of larger enterprises. In order to ensure full redundancy, two sites are already live and able to provide low latency services, and these facilities provide good connectivity not only to Australia but to the entire Asia-Pacific region, giving us the opportunity for continued growth across the globe."

ThinkGrid has already signed up several new partners in Australia. Simon Probert, Director of Skybox, stated: "We are pleased to align ourselves with ThinkGrid as our primary delivery partner. The Australian market is perfectly suited for the adoption of cloud computing services as there are numerous incumbent suppliers still entrenched in the 'old way' of providing IT services. The main challenge is one of educating the business consumer that the Australian broadband infrastructure is perfectly capable of supporting on-demand cloud based services, in particular the Hosted Desktop product line. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, over 90% of Australian businesses already have fast broadband capability - but interestingly only a small percentage of this capability is being used beyond the usual web surfing and email scenario. With Skybox in partnership with ThinkGrid we hope to release the Australian business owner from the rigid constraint and cost of owning and maintaining IT systems."

When asked how businesses in Melbourne and Sydney were reacting to the Skybox proposition, Simon commented: "The reception so far as been amazing. Small and medium-sized business owners seem to grab the cost saving aspect very quickly. ThinkGrid was a logical choice for us to partner with as they are able to provision the full range of cloud services that a typical business can benefit from. This relationship also gives Skybox clients confidence that their services are being delivered on a tried and tested enterprise-grade cloud platform."

ThinkGrid is pleased to announce the acquisition of historic Heythrop College as one of its newest customers. The specialist philosophy and theology college of the University of London chose to move to ThinkGrid’s state-of-the-art Hosted Exchange platform instead of Microsoft’s BPOS offering because of the quality of customer care and value-added services provided by ThinkGrid's partners. Nadeem Ahmad stated: "The excellent level of service and dedicated technical support offered by ThinkGrid was the deciding factor in our selection process."

Established for nearly four hundred years, Heythrop College has among its lecturers some of the leading thinkers in their fields, and will now benefit from cutting edge technology delivered by one of the UK’s leading hosted IT providers.

ThinkGrid has announced its partnership with Mezeo Software Corp. As part of its IT on demand service offering, ThinkGrid will soon be able to utilise the Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform, which allows users to access, share and collaborate on files on an ‘anytime, anywhere’ basis.

ThinkGrid COO David Pratt states: "We are proud to announce that ThinkGrid has been selected as Mezeo’s first PHP (Premier Hosting Partner) in the whole of Europe. This relationship will allow us to deliver the company’s deployable cloud storage platform to service providers and other resellers, bringing added value and greater competitive advantage at a time when these qualities are more important than ever. Mezeo’s highly secure cloud storage platform was purpose-built for the IT service provider market, and it has given us the opportunity to quickly deploy cloud storage services without the costs or delays involved in developing the solution from scratch ourselves."

Cloud storage is growing in popularity due to the benefits it provides, such as simple, CapEx-free costs, anywhere access and the removal of the burden of in-house maintenance and management.

Steve Lesem, Mezeo’s President and CEO, explains: "We believe that mass adoption of cloud-based IT services requires that they be offered by significant, trusted service providers, which is why ThinkGrid was a perfect choice to partner with us. As for security in the cloud, the combination of the Mezeo platform and its use of encryption for data in motion and data at rest with the management and infrastructure of a trusted service provider like ThinkGrid establish the required confidence for cloud storage to take off. ThinkGrid is an innovative and reliable presence in the marketplace, and is doing much to bolster belief in the cloud, so we fully expect that together we can make great strides in continuing to establish cloud computing as a trustworthy and secure solution as well as a cost-efficient and convenient one."

ThinkGrid’s cloud storage service is due to be launched later this month.

ThinkGrid has just established a new North American POP (point-of-presence), in addition to its existing facility in Chicago, at a high-specification data centre in Ashburn, Virginia.

CEO Rob Lovell explains: "In conjunction with our partners SoftLayer and HP, we have expanded our US presence in order to meet the escalating demand for our hosted IT services. As well as providing increased capacity and additional resilience, the new facility will help us to deliver lower latency for our services around the world, along with more choice for our customers."

Located within the Dulles Technology Corridor, the Tier 4 facility receives power from two redundant Dominion Virginia Power grids and includes three on-site, 600-ton cooling towers, fully meeting N+1 cooling requirements. It features multiple power feeds, 10 GB fibre uplinks, dedicated generators and battery backup to ensure the highest level of performance, reliability and interoperability.

Mr Lovell continues: "By utilising facilities in strategic sites like this, we create a level of geographical diversity that is ideal for maintaining system and data redundancy, as well as for positioning systems in the best physical location for traffic volume and speeds. The new facility will allow more customers than ever to take advantage of the comprehensive set of hosted services we offer, including hosted desktops, VOIP telephony and a full range of software on demand."

Plans to open a third US POP in Seattle later this year are already underway.

Online IT publication vnunet.com has awarded ThinkGrid’s Hosted Desktop service 4 stars (out of a possible maximum of 5) after the service was reviewed by one of its experts.

Describing it as ‘responsive’ from either an office internet connection, a domestic broadband service or a laptop via Wi-Fi, journalist Daniel Robinson said of his sample hosted desktop account: "I found it pretty much like using a thin client session, except you have your own desktop that can be customised to appear how you want it."

Confirming ThinkGrid’s claims to provide a near-identical experience to running the infrastructure in-house, he continued: "(it) looks and feels exactly as if it was running on the computer in front of you. I perceived no lag in either mouse movements or keystrokes when accessing the desktop." He also noted that the service "could prove especially useful for smaller companies that do not have a dedicated IT staff."

ThinkGrid CEO Rob Lovell commented: "We are very pleased with VNU’s review, and I think this backs up what we have been saying - that hosted desktops ARE a great alternative to PCs, and they offer a huge array of benefits. Our average user rating is actually 5/5 stars, but we are working on improving our service all the time to deliver desktops from the cloud."

A full review of the service can be found at: http://www.vnunet.com/

Why the channel must embrace a new business model to sell IT

2009 has had a bleak beginning. The news of doom for the UK economy seems to be growing every day. The implications for IT departments are clear: they are under more pressure than ever to cut spending - but, at the same time, they are still expected to deliver more value to the business. Inevitably this is placing the channel under substantial pressure as resellers risk going to the wall while competing for ever decreasing pots of budget. As Computacenter’s recent withdrawal from PC distribution has shown, resellers need to adjust their business models if they are to come out of the current recession with a sustainable business. However, for those that don’t have the ability or luxury of being able to pull out of entire lines of business, what else is available? David Pratt, COO at ThinkGrid believes ‘business IT on demand’ offers an entirely new opportunity to regain margin and build new revenue streams during the downturn.

"The channel has to realise that to remain competitive it is necessary for them to start behaving differently. ‘Business IT on demand’ is basically a hosted IT infrastructure that customers subscribe to on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model. It offers a lifeline to resellers that are struggling to survive during a time of economic recession and continued decline in margins from PC and server sales."

How does it work? Instead of selling the hardware and software needed to build an IT infrastructure, resellers offer customers a ‘business IT on demand’ service. The customer benefit is that they no longer need to make large upfront CapEx investments in PCs, servers and supporting software licenses. They simply continue to use their existing IT, but access the latest desktop operating system, applications and stored data from ThinkGrid’s enterprise-class hosted infrastructure.

"The beauty is that cash strapped customers only pay for the IT they use, can scale up or down as needed and move a CapEx cost to a far more manageable OpEx entry, which is ideal for the bean counters. For the channel, this opens the door to double digit margins and recurring revenue streams. It is ideal for those resellers that are finding that customers simply do not have the cash to make upfront investments in technology at the moment. This is because when IT is supplied on demand, there is no need for investment in hardware, software or administration, which in turn removes a major cost for resellers and their customers. By offering ThinkGrid, or a white label version of it, resellers have a low-cost and simple route-to-market that can quickly lead to revenue from other high-margin services such as consulting and training. They will also find that business is ‘stickier’. Rather than shopping around for expensive, one-off IT purchases, customers will be providing a guaranteed monthly income - a predictable revenue stream that offers a degree of security in these uncertain times."

Virtual Planet is one of the first resellers to offer ThinkGrid’s ‘business IT on demand’ and as a result has already experienced significant benefits with this approach. David D’Orazi, CEO at Virtual Planet thinks that geographical boundaries that previously prevented resellers from exploring other markets are also removed.

"ThinkGrid’s ‘business IT on demand’ allows us to target the global market, as the infrastructure is available from anywhere in the world. This is because the hosted nature of the offering means that any user can access their entire desktop over any PC that is connected to the internet. At Virtual Planet, we have seen lots of interest in hosted solutions - businesses are clearly looking for an alternative way to buy and use IT. Our hosted offering based on ThinkGrid is providing an alternative; customers don't need to make expensive CapEx investments but can still get the latest technology."

About ThinkGrid ThinkGrid provides business IT on demand. Launched in 2008 with the aim of disrupting the way that businesses currently purchase, use and manage IT, ThinkGrid provides enterprise class IT to small and medium businesses. ThinkGrid removes the management and cost burden of owning IT by offering it to customers as an on demand service. Its current services include Hosted desktop, Exchange, VoIP, Hosted BlackBerry Enterprise Service and Dynamic Server Infrastructure. With ThinkGrid, each employee is given their own personalised hosted virtual desktop that can be accessed from anywhere in the world through an internet connection. ThinkGrid customers only pay for what they use, based on the needs of the business, and can scale up and down at the click of a mouse. For more information visit: http://www.thinkgrid.co.uk/

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