Virtustream, Inc., a leading cloud solutions provider, today announced that NIIT Media Technologies (NMT) and Morris Communications have selected xStream, Virtustream’s enterprise cloud platform, for Morris’s SAP environment and supporting infrastructure in order to offer cloud-based IT services to media clients. Virtustream was selected for its ability to provide secure cloud infrastructure backed by performance guarantees and cloud economics in addition to value-added services that ensure a successful cloud migration.

NMT, a technology solutions and services company developed via a joint venture between NIIT Technologies, a leading global IT solutions provider, and Morris Communications, a diversified media company, advises media organizations on IT strategies to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs and increase profits. NMT worked closely with Morris Communications to centralize IT services and run a single instance of SAP enterprise-wide that supported mission-critical processes. By migrating Morris Communications’ SAP environment to the NMT xStream-based cloud, NMT can efficiently deploy parallel instances of the environment for its other clients.

“The media industry is being challenged now more than ever to try keep pace with the technology innovation supporting content distribution, leaving many companies searching for ways to reduce operating costs and boost performance of business systems. We project significant benefits centralizing Morris Communications’ SAP environment within the cloud and are confident we can replicate the process for other media properties,” said Steve K. Stone, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Morris and board member of NMT. “We turned to Virtustream because they offer the only enterprise cloud platform that features the security and availability of a private cloud and the cost efficiencies of a public cloud—in fact they are the only vendor we could find with true consumption-based pricing. Virtustream xStream delivered superior performance, and the company has the in-house managed services expertise to advise and execute on the entire migration process.”

NMT first engaged with Virtustream’s Cloud Advisory Services group to analyze Morris Communications’ IT environment, assess its cloud readiness and develop a cloud strategy based on industry best practices. Virtustream determined the specific requirements for Morris Communications workloads in a cloud environment and provided a clear and actionable roadmap for migration. This type of granular analysis and roadmap development, which was not available through other cloud infrastructure companies, provided NMT with the assurance that its cloud deployment would be successful and cost-effective. NMT and Virtustream expect the migration to be complete by Q2 2012.

“Virtustream applauds forward-thinking companies, like Morris Communications and NMT, that recognize industry-specific challenges and understand the IT performance improvements and cost savings that cloud computing could deliver,” said Bill McNamara, chief corporate development officer of Virtustream. “The NMT deployment showcases Virtustream’s existing expertise regarding SAP cloud migrations and highlights the foundation Virtustream has built to offer additional SAP-specific optimization services.”

Virtustream currently manages one of the largest production environments of SAP applications running in a multi-tenanted cloud for its customer Domino Sugar (American Sugar Holdings, Inc. and its affiliates). The company is also a member of SAP’s virtualization and cloud technology advisory board, a select group of SAP customers and partners who are actively involved with cloud computing, and is an SAP-certified provider of cloud services.