Loughborough University, Logicalis and JANET® Move Hybrid Cloud into Mainstream

SLOUGH, England, August 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- Demonstrate Hybrid Cloud, Mobilising Enterprise Applications Between Private and Hosted Clouds

International solutions provider, Logicalis UK, today announced that in conjunction with Loughborough University it has successfully moved a complete enterprise application stack - including both virtualised and non-virtualised workloads - back and forth between an on-campus private cloud and Logicalis' hosted cloud, via JANET (Joint Academic Network). The exercise has validated Loughborough's conviction that hybrid cloud is a viable IT service delivery platform, and demonstrates the true capabilities of cloud as far more than just a hypervisor workload enabler.

Leveraging Logicalis' industry leading innovation in cloud infrastructure and its connection into JANET, Loughborough automated a total infrastructure move between data centres located over 200 miles apart, within minutes.

Phil Richards, Director of IT Services, Loughborough University, comments, "If it sounds groundbreaking it should do. We have just demonstrated that Loughborough's strategy of leveraging JANET-connected cloud services can transform the way we deploy ICT infrastructure forever. Very simply, we picked a number of virtual and physical servers running key applications, along with the associated networking, storage and security elements, and moved them to Logicalis' data centre in Slough. The applications had no understanding they had changed hardware platform or that they had been moved or modified in anyway, and we did it within five minutes."

The exercise demonstrates the real potential of cloud to organisations that traditionally only perceived it as suitable for hypervisor enabled workloads. Simon Daykin, CTO, Logicalis UK, explains; "What we have achieved in this exercise rips up the rule book on what cloud means to customers. The industry has been so inwardly focussed on hypervisor-based clouds that it has forgotten that real organisations, like Loughborough, have a myriad of operating systems and workloads.

"In successfully automating the move of an entire infrastructure and application stack in this way, we have proven that cloud is more than a vanilla slice of hypervisor paid for with a credit card.  This is not an engineering experiment; this is a real, live, demonstrable and adoptable approach for secure enterprise application cloud deployment."

In 2010, Loughborough University adopted Logicalis' Cooperative Cloud as its strategic ICT platform, leveraging Logicalis' JANET-connected hosted cloud as the institution needs new capacity in the future. This enables Loughborough to move real IT services between on-site private and off-site shared hosted clouds rapidly, reliably and without application or infrastructure changes.  Moreover, the University's use of private cloud has enabled it to save over £2million in data centre regeneration costs.

The cloud solutions are based on Cisco's unique Unified Computing System (UCS), NetApp Storage platforms, and CA Technologies' automation and orchestration tools.

Richards comments, "This test is a key milestone in validating our decision not to spend money regenerating our old data centre, and that Logicalis' hybrid Cooperative Cloud offers a unique road ahead.  The fact that this is backed by Cisco, NetApp and CA Technologies, assures us that we are using industry standard technologies in a very compelling way. The vision and hard work of Loughborough and Logicalis, and the willingness of JANET to support and encourage innovation in the sector, has created a totally new IT provisioning model.  Loughborough is proud to be at the forefront of ICT transformation in the Higher Education sector and beyond."

Tom Kelly, MD, Logicalis UK, concludes, "This is a significant achievement.  Loughborough, with their foresight and innovative spirit, have just changed thinking around cloud forever, and proven that enterprise cloud has come of age."  

Andrew Parker/Jennifer Manning/Charlotte Sandy
Cohesive Communications
T: +44(0)1291-626200
E: logicalis@cohesive.uk.com