Cloud has silver lining for NZ

By Adam Gifford. Reproduced with kind permission from the New Zealand Herald. Published Thursday Nov 5, 2009

I’ve been writing a lot about clouds in recent months, and each time think, “Am I thrashing this?” Then I meet up with Mark Loveys, and realise there is still much to be said about what is becoming a huge shift in the way people work and interact with the digital environment.

Unisys selects EMS-Cortex for Cloud Computing Service

Auckland. 12 October 2009.

EMS-Cortex today announced that global IT services company Unisys Corporation has selected the New Zealand-developed EMS-Cortex provisioning and management software to support and bring clear differentiation to the Unisys Unified Communication as a Service offering.

This Unisys offering enables secure communication and collaboration in Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint and Office Communication Services environments. It is a software as a service (SaaS) offering provided through the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution, which enables enterprise clients to securely move conventional business applications – including those with secure or sensitive data – into a managed, shared cloud service without costly, time-consuming rewrites or other alterations.

Unisys New Zealand managing director, Brett Hodgson, said Cortex had been selected following a competitive evaluation between the Cortex software and software from other vendors worldwide.

“Unisys selected EMS-Cortex for its combination of functionality and value. Its feature set matched our requirements to be the provisioning and management portal for the Unisys Secure Unified Communication as a Service offering in data centres that support the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution. The first implementation will be in North America.

“Unisys has supported businesses and government organisations in New Zealand for more than 40 years, and we are delighted to play a role in the international growth of EMS-Cortex as an innovative New Zealand software developer,” Hodgson said.

Cortex software provides a comprehensive control panel capability which enables hosted services to be set up and managed through a single interface. A key differentiator for Cortex is its ability to allow end customers to perform day-to-day administration themselves, as well as the breadth of applications it supported – including key Microsoft applications, Blackberry and Citrix.

EMS Cortex CEO Mark Loveys said the selection of Cortex by Unisys to support one of its global cloud services offerings was a major sales milestone for the Cortex product.

“We’re delighted that Unisys has selected Cortex to support its unique cloud offering. Our success in winning this business is evidence of our leadership in provisioning and managing large enterprise level customers, as well as smaller companies. That speaks to our technical strengths around customer self management, multi-tenanting, and the breadth and depth of applications we support,” Loveys said.

Loveys also said the Unisys sale was part of a strong increase in market demand from large international providers of hosted services as the Cloud computing model gains momentum. This demand has seen EMS Cortex increase its customer numbers by more than 40 percent over the past 12 months, with sales in Australia, Europe, the UK and the US. Flagship customers include Telecom New Zealand and Australia’s largest web and application hosting company, WebCentral.

Unisys unveiled its cloud computing strategy – with the Secure Cloud Solution as a core component – on 30 June 2009 . The Unisys strategy enables clients to choose the type of data center computing services that best meet their business objectives, from self-managed private clouds to Unisys-managed cloud services as well as hybrid solutions.

EMS-Cortex partners with implement.com to deliver next-generation Cloud services

Auckland. 9 October 2009.

EMS-Cortex today announced a strategic partnership agreement with Seattle-based implement.com Corporation. The agreement will see implement.com provide implementation and consulting services to Cortex customers worldwide.

implement.com is the leading worldwide systems integrator of Microsoft-based provisioning systems and infrastructure to hosted service providers and telecommunications companies. implement.com has a close working relationship with Microsoft, offering consultancy, training and services to both Microsoft and its customers.

implement.com President Steve Schwartz says the partnership is logical in that it combines complementary skill sets and software: “Cortex provides a comprehensive control panel capability that enables hosted services to be set up and managed through a single interface. implement.com specializes in the infrastructure itself, so it’s a perfect match,” he says.

“Cortex has a number of unique strengths. The software delivers a highly self-reliant provisioning engine, with architecture flexible enough to allow us to expand capabilities for clients – without modifying the platform itself,” says Schwartz.

“We are delighted to be partnering with EMS-Cortex, especially as we start to enter into the 2010 release cycle from Microsoft where our respective assets will be critical to the success of our mutual customers.”

EMS-Cortex General Manager Colin Williams says the partnership agreement formalizes an existing relationship with implement.com. The two companies have worked together in the past on Cloud implementations for tier-1 companies, including global telecommunications companies and systems integrators.

“implement.com will help us bring our cloud solutions to market by expanding our implementation capability, especially for larger projects and high market demand areas such as Exchange 2010, server virtualization, Office Communications Server and hosted voice systems,” he says.

“The partnership with implement.com is highly strategic for us. It means we can support the explosive growth in demand for our software with the highest quality implementation and consulting services.”

Williams says global demand for the Cortex platform has been accelerated by Microsoft’s discontinuing development of its own provisioning services engine. EMS-Cortex has increased customer numbers by more than 40 percent over the past 12 months, with sales in Australia, Europe, the UK and the US.

The implement.com partnership announcement closely follows a global purchase of EMS-Cortex’s provisioning and management software by Unisys Corporation. Unisys made the purchase to support and bring clear differentiation to its Unified Communication as a Service offering. The Unisys strategy enables clients to choose the type of data center computing services that best meet their business objectives, from self-managed private clouds to Unisys-managed cloud services as well as hybrid solutions.

Colin Williams says the Unisys deal helps illustrate the rapid evolution of ‘next generation’ Cloud services. “Inside the Cloud we’re seeing trends towards virtualization, customer self management, virtual private clouds, and an ever wider choice of applications,” he says. “There is huge demand for customer-specific integration of hosted applications, specialized implementations of virtual private clouds, and support of business and billing systems.

“The Cloud revolution is just beginning. We’re excited to be at the forefront of that revolution - supported by partners of the caliber of implement.com.”

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