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.