BT signs multi-year deal with datacentre provider to support its push into the cloud integrator market.
Ark Data Centres has struck a deal with BT to provide the telco with additional off-premise computing capacity for its recently announced foray into the cloud integrator market.
As previously reported by Computer Weekly in April 2015, BT is in the throes of positioning itself as a cloud integrator that can provide enterprise users with access to the apps and services they need through the delivery of a centralised catalogue.
The company said demand for its services has been steadily growing, prompting it to enlist the services of Ark Data Centres, which operates two facilities in Wiltshire and Hampshire, to ensure it has sufficient capacity to cope.
BT reportedly already makes use of more than 20 facilities across five continents, and benefits from having access to additional capacity provided by around 30 third-party datacentre providers.
The multi-year deal will see BT make use of both of the company’s datacentres to aid the delivery of new managed service offerings to users in local and central government, defence, health, and the police.
Ark has cited its experience with providing public sector organisations with access to secure datacentre services as a key reason why BT opted for its services over those of its competitors.
As evidence of this, Ark recently embarked on a seven-year joint venturewith the Cabinet Office to assist on its quest to centralise all the non-cloud datacentre services used across government.
Ark Data Centres CEO Huw Owen said the environmentally friendliness, performance efficiency and overall security of its facilities had also helped it clinch the deal.
“We not only provide world-leading datacentres, we also pride ourselves in running and managing all our datacentres to the highest standards,” he said.
“Our customers know they can rely on maximum datacentre performance and uptime, as well as the highest security levels and the highest efficiency in the industry. We are looking forward to delivering those benefits to BT and its customers.”
Neil Lock, vice-president of BT Compute at BT Global Services, said the extra capacity Ark is providing will enable the company to deliver on its “cloud of clouds” vision, which aims to provide enterprises with access to cloud services regardless of where they are hosted.
“Organisations in all industries are embracing the need for greater innovation through digital strategies that rely on cloud services. This is especially true for public sector bodies faced with the complex challenge of transforming services sustainably with increasingly tight budgets,” he said.
“By adding two new datacentres to our BT Compute portfolio that comply with the latest government security guidelines, we believe we have the ideal platform on which to innovate.”
