The pace of business is accelerating. Enterprises today require the robust networks and infrastructure required to effectively manage and protect an ever-increasing volume of data. They must also deliver the speed and low-latency great customer experiences require in an era marked by dramatic innovations in edge computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things, unified communications, and other singular computing trends now synonymous with business success.
We recently caught up with Mike Fuhrman, Chief Product and Information Officer at Flexential, to learn how the company is helping customers gain the connectivity and cloud solutions they need and what it means to be VMware Cloud Verified. We also took the opportunity to learn what he sees as the next big transformative trends in cloud computing.
“We serve companies in numerous industries, including those in software and IT services, manufacturing, finance, insurance, retail, health care, transportation, media and Internet, and telecommunications,” says Fuhrman. “The kinds of organizations that benefit most from our unique approach are those that require a seamless and integrated solution, low-latency connectivity across North America and beyond—and access to an all-inclusive solution from a single vendor so they can offload as much or as little of the IT management burden as they want. Organizations also turn to us for access to an extensive bench of professional services and IT experts who can assist in everything from strategy and design to implementation, ongoing management and optimization regardless of how their businesses scale.”
Flexential’s 40 state-of-the-art data centers in North America – located in metropolitan areas across the country to ensure short hops and low latency – are connected by a 100 Gbps network backbone that is easily upgradable to 400 Gbps for those customers that require ultra-high speeds. Notably, the company offers cloud solutions with built-in security and compliance to the hypervisor for the peace of mind that results when infrastructure is audit-ready at all times. Industry-leading SLAs also guarantee that applications and the data within and used by them – the very lifeblood of the enterprise – is always accessible and protected.
The company’s unified cloud platform, FlexAnywhere™, integrates colocation, cloud, edge, connectivity, data protection, and the managed and professional services to deliver a true hybrid IT approach. Flexential also offers two types of private clouds, a hosted private cloud with dedicated resources for compute, networking and storage; and Advanced Access, a hosted private cloud offering that enables enterprises to maintain control of the provider-owned VMware vCenter server. An industry-first, it allows for greater personalization in a virtual environment that performs and functions like an on-premise solution.
Flexential also provides a managed public cloud service that lets customers use AWS and Azure, through a managed, consumption-based model that ensures they only pay for the public cloud services and capacity they use. And the Flexential Cloud Fabric, a Network-as-a-Service solution, makes it easy to spin-up, configure and manage all cloud connections from a single pane of glass, an innovation that makes true multi-cloud operations a reality.
The company also offers Desktop-as-a-Service, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service, managed containers, as well as managed services for networking and infrastructure, security, and compliance. Addition services address each stage of the cloud journey, from design and migration to optimization.
All of the company’s cloud offerings are based on VMware technology. This includes vSphere, HCX, vROps, NSX accessed through Flexential’s FXP portal, which is tightly integrated with VMware vCloud Director.
“Being VMware Cloud Verified is important to us because it not only allows us to demonstrate Flexential delivering best-of-class solutions to our customers today, but it also contributes to an important strategic partnership that allows us to innovate and easily deliver market-leading future enhancements to our customers going forward,” adds Fuhrman. “Being VMware Cloud Verified is also important for our customers because it gives them the confidence and assurance that our cloud solutions utilize best-in-class network, storage, and compute solutions that are future-proofed and based on industry-leading technology that will continue to leverage market-leading innovations.”
Fuhrman notes that this confidence and assurance will be crucial as enterprises embrace what he sees as the next big transformative trend in cloud computing. It’s a trend he says already has significant momentum and will be increasingly commonplace in the near-term future.
“Multi-cloud deployments that enable enterprises to capitalize on the strengths of individual clouds for specific use cases, software-defined data centers, and enhancements to virtualized networks are where we will see a dramatic increase in activity,” says Fuhrman. “And that will only increase as more organizations stretch workloads across multi-cloud environments to dramatically improve customer experiences and simultaneously lowering their overall IT costs.”
Learn more about Flexential and its partnership with VMware here.
