Managed Cloud Services deliver many benefits to a business that aspires to make its operations leaner and more efficient. Melita Business and Smart Technologies Limited have teamed up to establish Smart Cloud, which allows users to minimise invested time and resources in order to maximise output and performance.
The new service offering was presented by Melita Business and Smart Technologies Limited during an event held at the Melita Data Centre in Madliena. Attendees learnt about Smart Cloud’s infrastructure and the potential uses and importance of Managed Cloud Services from Robert Azzopardi, System Architect at Smart Technologies at Melita; Malcolm Briffa, Director of Business Services at Melita; Michael Balzan, Malta Country Manager at Oracle; and Jeffrey Sultana, Malta County Manager at HPE.
Through the combination of Melita Business and Smart Technologies Limited’s expertise, custom integration solutions, and unique connectivity and hosting capabilities, Smart Cloud is a package of services that provides many aspects to enhance business operations:
- virtual machine and desktop Cloud backups
- virtual machine hosting
- disaster recovery
- options for data storage and management
- hybrid solutions and colocation
As digitalisation is rapidly advancing into every aspect of business operations, integrability is a must. Hence, Smart Cloud has been developed to ensure seamless communication between different apps. The platform is suitable for integration and the development of digital business apps.
Smart Cloud Infrastructure
Smart Cloud’s infrastructure and resources rest on three pillars to ensure that data migration, configuration, optimisation, security and maintenance are executed to the highest standards.
1. The Melita Data Centre and Connectivity
Using the facilities of the Melita Data Centre in Madliena, Smart Cloud’s connectivity compatibility includes Google, Decix, Cogent, CenturyLink, TellaCarrier and MiX. The package rests on the security provided by Melita’s fully redundant network, which has two broadband fibre routes to mainland Europe.
Both the Pozallo and Catania hubs have diverse paths connecting to Milan thanks to Windtre and Tiscali. Through this multi-connectedness,services always remain online even if disruptions happen in the cables.
The size of Melita’s Madliena hub is more than 10,000 sqm in two buildings equipped with the highest standards of security:
- RFID security card and PIN access system
- CCTV monitoring with 90 days’ of backup storage footage
- 24/7/365 manned patrol security guard
The Melita Data Centre is ISO/IEC 27001 and PCI-DSS certified.
3. Technology Platform
The core platform runs on HPE technology connected in service-centric nodes to provide high availability, resiliency and scalability.
Compute resources are provided through HPE Synergy. It is the first composable, software-defined infrastructure that provides a fluid set of resources that can be dynamically combined to meet the unique needs of any application. With HPE Synergy, one can instantly compose and recompose fluid pools of physical and virtual compute, storage and fabric resources into any configuration to run any application or workload. This platform consolidates resources with simplified management, which, combined with built-in redundancy, avoids any point of failure that prevents downtime.
Storage resources are provided through HPE Primera, which Is designedfor NVMe and Storage Class Memory. It delivers remarkable simplicity, app-aware resiliency for mission-critical workloads, through intelligent autonomous storage that anticipates and prevents issues across the infrastructure stack, based on the promise of intelligent storage advanced data services and simplicity for your mission-critical applications with a services-centric OS that sets up in minutes and upgrades seamlessly to minimise risk and be transparent to applications. All these capabilities add up to enable HPE Primera to provide 100% availability guaranteed.
3. Managed Services
Smart Cloud provides app services:
- DataGuard
- Dbvisit
- InnoDB Clusters
Smart Cloud can provide different support options for database replication and management, which mainly include Oracle, MySQL and Microsoft SQL.
At virtual machine level, Smart Cloud can provide patch management including OS and Application, both for Windows and Linux platforms.
4. Flexibility
Smart Cloud’s heterogenous environment allows for the complete customisation of resources. This flexibility makes it possible for clients to have their unique managed cloud platforms tailored to their needs.
Additionally, thanks to the flexible bandwidth function, customers and clients have the possibility to add bandwidth on demand, which allows for limitless scalability.
Smart Cloud Benefits
Managed Cloud services are expected to rapidly develop and grow in the coming years —Smart Cloud is ready to adjust to changes in the market. Its unique proposition is provided by the amalgamation of the strengths of Melita Business and Smart Technologies Limited. The service can offer all the services that a Malta-based business would expect and require to run international operations in our globalised world, where a corporation must always be online and ready to swiftly react.
Smart Cloud pricing is based on a fixed fee Its cost transparency and high levels of have been tailored to the needs of local businesses.
Despite allowing users to run global operations, all the data remains in Malta. This solves crucial data residency issues, which may affect many regulated industries, as well as the added data privacy protection that comes from being within a European jurisdiction
Bottom Line
Competent, secure and highly customisable managed cloud services are indispensable for driving business innovation and growth in the 21st century’s fiercely competitive, international corporate environment. New technologiesare transforming businesses in every vertical, by the day.
As connectivity speeds are reaching never seen highs and fifth-generation technology (5G) is fueling Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, excellent connected services are a must. Smart Cloud provides solid foundations for any company, from micro to enterprise, enabling data security in a reliable digital environment.