David Howden (Umbrellar Group)
Umbrellar Group has unveiled plans to launch a dedicated cloud management offering in the New Zealand market, leveraging the capabilities of Microsoft Azure Stack.
Specifically, the hosting provider will go-to-market with a new multi-cloud management portal, designed to enable consumption of public cloud technologies through Microsoft Azure.
Central to this will be Umbrellar’s own locally hosted Umbrellar Cloud offering, powered by Microsoft Azure Stack as well as Microsoft 365 productivity services.
“A consistent approach to consuming cloud is vital to realise the benefits of the technology in an economy of cloud services,” Umbrellar Group head of cloud, David Howden, said. “A consistent Azure experience across both New Zealand-hosted Azure Stack and Azure public cloud are a key component to delivering a successful cloud strategy.
“Unified identity, deployment consistency and continuous innovation are all foundations of the Umbrellar hybrid platform strategy, and Azure Stack is pivotal in that strategy.”
According to Howden, both offerings will be available through a new multi-cloud self-service portal, enabling customers to access and manage services from a single Azure consistent environment.
Backed by a 90-strong local team, the portfolio includes workloads deployed in New Zealand through Umbrellar Cloud, alongside the option of Azure public cloud globally.
“We are evolving our product line to give more to our customers,” Howden added. “We will be executing our Microsoft relationship with Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack, and evolving the collaboration services offered to customers through Microsoft 365.”
Currently, Umbrellar is working through a “private preview phase” of the portal, with general availability expected by February 2018.
“This is an opportunity for medium to large businesses to take the future into their own hands and reinvent themselves,” Umbrellar Group CEO, Michael Foley, added.
“We have done that ourselves, building on our virtualised private cloud to create an entirely new business from the ground up.
“As a traditionally server-based business, we have taken the bold step to digitally disrupt ourselves by building a server-less cloud business with automation and self-service at the core. We are a proof statement to our customers that this is entirely doable.”
The deployment of Azure Stack, which allows service providers to build their own Azure consistent hosting platform in their data centres, will be one of the first in New Zealand.
As reported by Reseller News, Azure Stack is also now live in New Zealand through Datacom, with the technology provider running the first Dell EMC node in-country.
Billed as Microsoft’s secret weapon in the battle of the cloud giants, Umbrellar is one of 16 global service providers who are working with Redmond on planning, testing and proving Azure Stack use cases as part of a Microsoft Azure Stack programme.
“It is great to see New Zealand partners delivering Microsoft Azure Stack solutions to customers,” Microsoft principal group program manager of Microsoft Azure Stack, Vijay Tewari, added.
“It offers a robust hybrid cloud solution, essential for customers who require something that is on-premises to complement what they put in the public cloud.
“As a managed service provider, Umbrellar makes it easier for customers who can get the hardware, the deployment services, integrated support and the software all in one bundle.”
