Securicom, a leader in managed IT security solutions in Africa, has brought to South Africa Cloudistics, a cloud software appliance technology. Named "Cool Vendor in Cloud Infrastructure" by Gartner in 2017, Cloudistics delivers a premium private cloud experience. Its software-defined technology natively converges network, storage, compute resources, virtualization, and management into a single platform. The sole distributor of Cloudistics in southern Africa, Securicom will also provide managed and professional services to companies in the region.

"The benefits and functionality of Cloudistics is unprecedented. The platform simplifies the deployment, protection and management of applications to bring the benefits of the public cloud into companies' own data centres.

"While delivering the agility and scalability of the public cloud, Cloudistics can be deployed extremely fast and at a much lower cost than traditional infrastructures. Notably for local companies; it is now possible to have the complete public cloud experience, allowing them to manage and secure applications from anywhere, while keeping their data on home soil. This is a significant advantage over public cloud services when it comes to performance, and importantly for governance and regulatory compliance," says Richard Broeke, IT security specialist and General Manager at Securicom.

According to Chris Hurst, Vice President of Cloudistics for EMEA, Cloudistics is the first on-premise cloud in the world to provide for virtualization, compute, network and storage; natively and imbedded, on one platform.

"The Cloudistics platform is a comprehensive on-premises cloud solution. Everything is included, all software and all hardware to run your cloud. There is no tuning needed. Companies can be up and running quickly with their own private cloud from where they can host, secure and manage their big data. Not only is Cloudistics fast and easy to deploy, but it also solves agility and scalability problems for businesses. They can easily create virtual networks as well as adapt their networks to changes in applications, which come and go. Companies can create their own application templates or download pre-configured ones for quick and simple deployments of their most complex applications from the Cloudistics Application Marketplace."

Broeke says Cloudistics is a cost effective and meaningful alternative over popularly-used public cloud services for businesses in southern Africa.

"Companies in the region that use public cloud services are seeing costs increasing over time, particularly as their businesses and needs have expanded. The experience is also not quite what they expected, considering that data to be accessed is housed in data centres across the globe. Cloudistics brings data closer to the action, where it is needed, but it is manageable from anywhere – just like the public cloud but much faster."

The adage, "dynamite comes in small packages" rings true with Cloudistics. The stack is very compact, starting at 6U, and due to its high density is extremely efficient. Bringing a huge reduction in datacenter footprint, the Cloudistics appliance presents opportunities for companies to reduce both power and cooling costs in the server room. The end-to-end stack is immediately visible in the management portal, from where an array of appliances can be managed from a single console.

Hurst explains that everything that used to live in multiple management IT silos can now be managed centrally through the cloud with the Ignite Cloud Controller.

"Whether you are deploying a single site or across multiple sites, the Cloudistics Ignite Cloud Controller is powerful enough to meet the demands of IT professionals while easy enough for someone with little infrastructure management experience."

Through the Cloudistics Ignite Cloud Controller, admins can control the entire infrastructure from a single, simple to use pane of glass.

• Manage everything - networking, storage, compute and virtualisation all controlled from a single console.
• Create your own VM templates or deploy pre-configured ones from our application marketplace for quick and simple deployments of the most complex applications.
• Create resource profiles for each application to ensure predictable performance.
• Secure applications within virtual networks in just a few clicks.

Hurst concludes: "Our platform is a fraction of the cost of the public cloud or legacy hyperconverged solutions. Designed from the ground up to fit even the tightest budget, along with an integrated Cloud Controller that's completely free, Cloudistics is the obvious choice for cost-sensitive deployments. But don't let the low price fool you: Cloudistics exceeds the performance of other solutions costing ten times more."