Infrastructure as a Service: Pay for what you need, when you need it – and nothing more

How do you build an enterprise grade IT infrastructure that can cope with peak demand, without having large chunks of capacity sitting idle most of the time – and costing you money?

More and more IT strategists are finding that the answer is a Virtual Private Data Centre, hosted in the cloud. By moving your infrastructure to an outside supplier and paying for it as a service, you can scale up and down on demand, with no need to spend your capital budget on building for the peak. You save on maintenance, space and power costs, while security and facilities management are taken care of too – all as part of your monthly fee.

A single, simple drag-and-drop online portal gives you detailed control of every aspect of your system. And because you’re saving in the quiet periods, you can afford not to compromise when the load gets heavy – making sure your customers’ experience is unaffected even when demand is at its highest.

All this translates into more business agility. When you need to make changes, they can be live in as little as 90 minutes - compared to lead times measured in weeks for new in-house infrastructure.

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The best services + the best network = the best cloud solution

Underpinning our Virtual Private Data Centre service we’ve chosen Savvis, recognised as a world leader in cloud computing. Savvis data centres set the standard for power management, cooling, security and redundancy features, and meet or exceed standards including ISO 27001, SAS70 Type II, ASHRAE T9.9 and TIA-942. This means that you get a robust service suited to the needs of British enterprises. You can even define your own service profiles and security settings with customisable firewall options.

Adding this to our superfast network means we can deliver something truly magical – blistering network performance and quality of service. Virgin Media Business already has the country’s largest fibre optic network, accessible by 85% of UK businesses, backed by enterprise-level SLA, and capable of connecting you via public Internet or secure virtual private networks.

Key points

Agile Infrastructure as a Service with an easy to use portal and pay as you go billing

Enterprise grade solution which you can customise to suit your application

Marrying a great service with a great network means choosing a solution and performance you can rely on

Infrastructure as a Service: Pay for what you need, when you need it – and nothing more

Cut your capital spend

Moving infrastructure, applications and services into the cloud with a VPDC cuts your capital spend and replaces it with predictable, visible operational expenditure. You only pay for what you use, with pre-agreed credit limits, so your efficiency goes up too.

No need to build for the peaks

Because you can add capacity as and when you need it, there’s no need to have equipment sitting idle just in case demand suddenly surges. Instead you can make efficient use of your in house equipment, while building out new capacity in busier periods.

Respond faster to your business’s changing needs

Adding computing power is as simple as visiting our online portal and making your changes in a web browser. Changes are live within hours, as opposed to lead times measured in weeks for in-house provisioning.

Connect in the way that suits you

Don’t want to connect over the public Internet? Fine. We’ll build a dedicated IPVPN right into your data centre. Of course you can also choose to use your Big Red Internet connection for some traffic, saving you money and giving you unrestrained bandwidth over our nationwide fibre-optic network.

Faster IT development and application deployment

Building a test environment in a VPDC can cut test cycles from weeks to days. Using the cloud controls your risk as there’s no live data and no connection to your live systems. If your idea doesn’t work out – no big deal. If testing is successful, you save costs again by simply making the test environment live, with no need to build it again.

Security assured

We’re the only UK network provider with Public Services Network (PSN) accreditation, and our network passes NGN 2-2-4 security standards. We can help you configure antivirus and intrusion detection policies – and if you want your network built to even more stringent specifications, we can do that too. The data centres we use are designed to ASHRAE T9.9 and TIA-942.

Infrastructure as a Service: Pay for what you need, when you need it – and nothing more

In detail:

Our VPDC introduces one of the industry’s first enterprise-grade cloud solutions with multi-tiered security and service profiles.

It enables you to define, configure and deploy a full virtual data centre without having to procure, install, configure, or manage any hardware. A VPDC can contain a complete set of enterprise data centre services, including compute instances of varying sizes, multiple tiers of storage, a wide variety of security features, high-performance, redundant bandwidth, and load balancing.

It’s a major leap forward from virtual hosting environments that emphasise just compute instances.

Online portal and remote management

The VPDC portal is a simple, Web-based drag-and-drop design interface that gives you self-service access to data centre creation, configuration, and ongoing management.

The system provides access to a rich suite of data centre services, including virtual hosts with a selection of pre-loaded operating systems such as Microsoft Windows^® and Red Hat^® Enterprise Linux^®, virtual security appliances such as firewalls, utilities such as load balancers, and virtual storage devices.

Just drag and drop the items you want onto your designer palette, choose options such as host names and storage pool sizes, and then activate and deploy your new data centre.

Multi-tiered service profiles

When creating a new VPDC, you simply choose the service profile that matches your needs – from simple web hosting up to enterprise computing. You choose the service level you want for each application, and your profile applies the appropriate security services.

As an application develops and takes on new production requirements, you can simply promote it to a higher service level.

True enterprise-class computing in the cloud

Built on cutting edge VMware^® virtualization technology, Cisco virtual fabric technologies, and a best-of-breed hardware platform, Virgin Media Business VPDC is designed to deliver what other cloud computing services can’t - true enterprise-class computing, massive scale, and advanced enterprise services at the cost of a lower-grade shared virtual cloud solution.

Our 24/7 Support Centre team provides proactive monitoring, alerting and support to provide a cloud solution that delivers reliable service for the most demanding enterprise applications, and our design and pre-sales teams are always on hand to make sure we meet your specific needs.

Technical specifications

 Fast, self-service data centre provisioning through Web-based drag-and-drop topology designer or application programming interface (API)

 Multi-tiered service profiles with policy enforcement

 Enterprise-grade security, platform redundancy, and high-performance

 Information lifecycle Management (ILM) storage

 Massive scalability for all data centre services

 Infrastructure as a Service: Pay for what you need, when you need it – and nothing more

IPVPN

A direct, secure and flexible connection to your cloud data centre – for voice, video and data.

More about IPVPN

Ethernet Extensions

Connect to the cloud with Ethernet Extensions – dedicated, secure, all-fibre networking across your business sites.

More about Ethernet Extensions

High Capacity Services

Move heavy-duty applications into the cloud, with dedicated high capacity services available nationwide.

More about High Capacity Services

Managed Internet Access

Get the basics right – dedicated, hassle-free internet access for the first link into the cloud.

More about Managed Internet Access

Ethernet VPN

Take a cloud approach to your own networks. Ethernet VPN is flexible, secure and scales with your business, saving you more as your network grows.

More about Ethernet VPN

National Ethernet

Long-distance connectivity at local speed – flexible, scalable Ethernet nationwide.

More about National Ethernet

Big Red Internet

Stop worrying about bandwidth. Big Red Internet gives you more capacity than you’ll ever need for a simple, low price.

More about Big Red Internet

Security

Step into the cloud with confidence. We were the first UK network provider to gain Public Sector Network (PSN) accreditation and our network passes NGN 2-2-4 security standards. We make Internet traffic safe with firewall and encryption solutions.

More about Managed Security Solutions