Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), a provider of enterprise-class server virtualisation and virtual infrastructure management software, today announced that XCalibre, (www.xcalibre.co.uk), a leading UK-based hosting service provider, has selected and deployed its platform to create an advanced hosting infrastructure for its 9,000 plus residential, business and reseller customers. The software is helping XCalibre to increase service levels, simplify infrastructure management and reduce operational costs across its entire ISP infrastructure.

“Virtual Iron is the first server virtualisation platform that could satisfy our requirements and it is now turning our vision for a flexible and dynamic IT infrastructure into reality,” said Tony Lucas, XCalibre Communications CEO. “We’re able to deploy Virtual Iron across our entire ISP infrastructure to increase service levels for both our internal and external customers.”

XCalibre offers both shared hosting and dedicated server environments. With Virtual Iron, it is increasing the flexibility and scalability of its hosting infrastructure while dramatically reducing its total cost of ownership. Virtual Iron’s advanced virtualisation and management features enable XCalibre to fully automate the provisioning of new services for customers and its high availability and capacity management capabilities ensure reliability and security.

XCalibre has just released a limited Beta of its FlexiScale Platform, a new outsourced infrastructure service which many industry watchers expect to compete directly with Amazon’s EC2. The Virtual Iron solution is a key component of the FlexiScale offering.

“Virtual Iron is a wall-to-wall virtualisation technology that is ideally suited for deployment across an entire ISP infrastructure,” said Dermot Reynolds, managing director at NewDatum, a U.K.-based virtualisation consultancy and Virtual Iron channel partner working with XCalibre. “It combines a number of key features and capabilities including low cost, flexible scalability, the ability to manage your entire infrastructure from a single console screen, and ease of deployment.”

XCalibre is also leveraging VLAN support, now available in Virtual Iron’s recently released Version 3.6. VLAN support allows multiple networks to share a single network card securely. This is particularly important for hosted service providers like XCalibre, which hosts thousands of different customers in the same data center.

“XCalibre is taking full advantage of Virtual Iron’s policy-based management and automation capabilities to increase service levels across its entire infrastructure while reducing its operational costs,” said John C. Thibault, president and CEO of Virtual Iron. “The combination of Virtual Iron’s enterprise-class capabilities and outstanding price/value performance is perfectly suited to service providers like XCalibre that compete on their ability to provide highly reliable and cost-effective hosting services.”