Darren Adcock, product manager at Redcentric responsible for the company’s privately owned Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering, the Redcentric Cloud, has strong beliefs about what differentiates a cloud vendor from a cloud partner. His views are shaped by more than two decades of experience overseeing mission-critical IT systems, first in the financial services industry, and today in service to Redcentric’s growing customer base that includes standouts across industries and in high-regulated sectors, including government agencies that provide critical national infrastructure.
“Vendors deliver value, but they also leave a lot of heavy lifting to customers that often impacts their ability to differentiate through their IT investments and gain a competitive advantage,” he says. “This extends beyond core technology into service integration, operational integration, and end-to-end service delivery. In contrast, a partner provides the platform an organisation needs to innovate and the transparency to see ‘what’s under the hood’ with the peace of mind of knowing they don’t need to worry about it. A strong partner is dedicated to making the customer’s organisation more efficient, both operationally and commercially, but is not interested in increasing cloud spend. More than anything else, a strong partner like Redcentric is a trusted advisor and advocate.”
Adcock is not alone in his views. The emphasis on being a partner, rather than a vendor is a key differentiator in Redcentric’s success since its founding nearly three decades ago. Today, it serves a who’s who of private and public sector enterprises in the United Kingdom, including companies in highly regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, across fields like charity, construction, education, hospitality, manufacturing, media, retail, technology and travel, and core government agencies.
Notably, all benefit from the company’s exceptionally wide portfolio that includes seven high-performance privately owned data centers, its own software-defined network and 100Gb backbone, an elevated fully sovereign cloud platform, an extensive array of public and private cloud services – including Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service and Backup-as-a-Service – and an equally broad menu of robust security and professional services offerings.
“We pride ourselves on providing the people and organisations we serve with everything they need across the full infrastructure spectrum,” adds Adcock. “That includes not only the technologies, platforms, and tools they need, but also the strategic guidance, know-how, and support that enables them not only to realise the full potential of the technology-enabled capabilities we provide to them but also the comfort and confidence of knowing they are secure and supported by a partner that is always there for them.”
Delivering private sovereign cloud at a massive scale
Notably, Redcentric’s customers utilise the company’s offerings, including its sovereign cloud, for large-scale initiatives. Adcock notes that these demonstrate in very real terms the ability the company gives enterprises to address hyperscale workloads with confidence in a fully private and sovereign environment.
“We have engagements where organisations have more than 500 sites connected as well as deployments that operate at hyperscale scope and speed,” says Adcock. “For example, our elevated sovereign cloud and data centers continually process the license plate data gathered by U.K. law enforcement from thousands of cameras located around the country. That engagement alone processes more than 100 million photos each day – more on most days than the 30 million users of Instagram generate. And that’s just one of the important projects our people, systems, and solutions support.”
To that point, Adcock believes there is a growing realisation among enterprises that it’s important to match workloads with the right cloud. It’s yet another reason why he believes every organisation’s cloud journey should and must be tailored to address their unique needs.
“Hyperscale cloud is a destination, but it is one of several destinations that should be considered after gauging a blend of factors. There are workloads that are best completed in a hyperscale, public cloud, but there are some applications that just don’t sit well on them, and which can’t be easily or cost-effectively adapted,” he adds. “If there are features you can exploit to your advantage in a hyperscale environment then by all means use them but know that they may not necessarily save money. Far too many businesses have gone ‘all-in’ for a hyperscale environment only to learn they didn’t match their workload to the right cloud. Then of course there are drivers to consider around regulations and sovereignty. In our case, this also includes the knowledge that all engineers touching our cloud are security cleared.”
He stresses that Redcentric’s long and extensive relationship with VMware, and experience using VMware by Broadcom technologies is a differentiator regardless of which cloud approach and path enterprises take.
“We’ve worked with VMware for many years. The simplification of the VMware stack and extensive new capabilities included in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) gives enterprises a true alternative to traditional hyperscale environments while maintaining the freedom to use them when desired – all while radically simplifying lifecycle management and maintenance,” says Adcock. “That’s a winning combination that puts enterprises in a position to modernise with less disruption and at a pace that works for them.”
For more information on Redcentric visit here. CIOs are also invited to attend Redcentric’s upcoming webinar “Cloud Confidence” on multi cloud by visiting https://www.redcentricplc.com/cloud-confidence-webinars .
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