Vox, an integrated ICT and infrastructure provider, has announced enhancements to its Virtual Data Centre (VDC) offering that include support for high-performance storage and sees the introduction of an updated HTML5-based user interface.

“Having made the VDC available to our customers last year has resulted in an influx of demand for delivering cloud-based services. Using our solution allows customers to consume just the amount of resources they need without the burden of procuring and maintaining hardware,” says Barry Kemp, head of infrastructure as a service at Vox.

The new HTML5 interface delivers several features such as enabling additional firewall security as needed. It also empowers the customer to easily manage all aspects of the implementation in the cloud and scale resources according to demand. The interface links to the Vox software-defined networking approach for enhanced security features as well as connectivity to the customer’s site using a VPN, our MPLS offering, cross connects to other ISPs or direct Internet access.

“The most important update is support for high-performance storage. High-workload machines like ERP systems need access to faster storage and hardware to run applications effectively. Traditionally, storage has been a bottleneck limiting performance. By introducing this high-performance storage support to our VDC, Vox is removing a significant obstacle and giving companies a more effective way of moving high-demand computing workloads to the cloud,” says Kemp.

The VDC lets users split applications between high-performance and traditional storage. This provides for an improved total cost of ownership as the more expensive fast storage is only required for specific solutions.

“The enhancements to Vox VDC see our customers being able to effectively migrate customers to the cloud. We are essentially giving our customers a completely self-managed cloud environment. However, if the customer does not have the skills to migrate and manage the solution, Vox has a full managed services team ready to perform this on the customer’s behalf. This low-risk approach sees customers leveraging the opportunities available in the cloud and only start paying once they consume the services,” says Kemp.