Networks Europe Jul-Aug 2016 | Page 7

NEWS IN BRIEF 07 Pulsant acquire Onyx The cloud computing and colocation expert, Pulsant has acquired IT infrastructure services provider Onyx. The acquisition is part of a wider strategy for the company to enhance capabilities and strengthen their overall market position. Five Onyx data centres in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sheffield and Newcastle, alongside staff and infrastructure will be integrated with Pulsant over the coming month. The combined business will be made up of 400 staff, with revenues of £75m and over 4,000 customers in a number of industries. 15 owned and operated data centres across the UK will provide the backbone of operations. Pulsant CEO Mark Howling, said: “Bringing Onyx and its capabilities into Pulsant is the latest step in our targeted acquisition strategy. The acquisition increases the scale of our business and the breadth of services we can offer, which is crucial as multi-cloud environments become more complex and more important.” Pulsant’s position as a provider of hybrid IT services will be greatly increased, with expanded reach in the UK to deliver more options for resiliency and solutions to customers. The promises to customers are; better opportunities for resilience and reliability, enhanced regional reach with 15 UK data centres and expanded capabilities and services. n BICSI president visits Networks Centre Networks Centre was privileged to host the BICSI president, Brian Ensign and BICSI Director of Global Developments & Support, Paul Weintraub while in they visited the UK for the BICSI conference in June. As the only BICSI Authorised Design Training Provider (ADTP) in Europe, Networks Centre has developed a dedicated training centre, literature and training competencies to facilitate BICSI RCDD. This is the flagship qualification for network infrastructure designers, and is offered by Networks Centre alongside a portfolio of related training courses by City & Guilds, Capitoline, Square Mile and manufacturer specific courses. Brian and Paul were able to witness a BICSI RCDD training course that was being delivered by a BICSI Certified Trainer. They were most impressed with the whole setup, remarking that in conjunction with the success of the conference, it marked a new chapter in the evolution of BICSI in the UK. Keith Sawyer, Technical Services Director commented, “Hosting such prestigious visitors is a landmark for our training academy which we are continually developing to meet the growing demands of our customers.” n New congatec Server-on-Modules for real-time media processing congatec has announced two new Serveron-Modules designed specially for real-time media processing. The conga-TS170 Serveron-Modules are based on the latest Intel Xeon E3-1578L and E3-1558 processors. And feature integrated Intel Iris Pro Graphics accelerated by 128MB eDRAM, with double graphics base frequency for transcoding and video processing performance. Software support is provided by the Media Studio Server package, and new conga-TS170 Server-on-Modules come with complete Board Support Packages, comprehensive driver support and instantly application ready carrierboards and evaluation kits. The two main areas of application for these modules are Edge and fog computers for industrial IoT applications, and where densely packed servers are used for high-quality video transcoding. The aim is to provide end users with the best experience. n CMS Distribution to offer complete range of data protection solutions for hybrid local and cloud environments Hybrid cloud data protection software company Acronis is expanding its UK and Ireland distribution agreement with CMS Distribution. This will make the latest Acronis hybrid cloud data protection solutions, including backup, cloud storage, disaster recovery, and file sync & share solutions, available to the CMS Distribution cloud reseller network. As data volume is continues to increase alongside a growth in digital business processes, the real and present threat of problems and cybercrime such as Ransomware, data backup and protection are critical requirements. The aim of the new partnership is to fulfill the growing demand for cloud data protection in the UK. And with 50% of businesses are expected to move all IT assets off-premise in the future (UK Cloud Industry Forum 2015) it’s more important than ever. Frank Salmon, CEO & Founder at CMS Distribution said. “As the adoption rates of cloud services is healthily growing among our reseller network, expanding our portfolio offering with a key partner such as Acronis was a simple decision.” He added. “Together we are committed to enhance partner profitability and provide highly flexible cloud solutions designed for service providers in order to always remain competitive within every opportunity.” n  www.networkseuropemagazine.com