Oncore IT Customer and Distributor of HDS

Oncore IT Ltd will
deliver an enhanced portfolio of cloud-based services to existing and new
customers powered by Hitachi Data Systems
Corporation unified storage and content platforms, along with blade
infrastructure.

Capitalising on its track record working with over 100 customers
primarily in the legal, financial and professional services sectors, Oncore IT
will roll out a portfolio of services including On Data (online data backup),
On Archive (archiving and data recovery) and On Share (data sharing).

Over the past three years, through investment in product development and the
2011 acquisition
of BlueArc Corporation to add network attached, file-based storage
capability to its portfolio, HDS has extended in product range to address the
information solutions requirements of SMBs. This builds on its position selling to large organisations where highly available,
fast, and reliable mission critical storage systems are vital.

The latest Federation of Small Business data shows that SMBs account for 99.9%
of all private sector organisations in the UK, employing 14.1 million people.

Neill Burton, HDS UK VP of channels and
alliances, explains: "We are very excited to partner with Oncore
IT who add real value given their knowledge of key markets where we lack track
record, as well as operating a business model we don’t namely Cloud delivery which allow SMBs to
access HDS enterprise-class technology as a service rather than buying and
owning the assets."

HDS is already a channel centric organisation in the UK and globally, but its
intent is to generate more revenue through indirect channels defined as
traditional reseller partners, system integrators and service providers.

Partner companies who buy HDS information solutions to sell to
customers, use as part of a service offering or both. The Oncore IT partnership
supplements HDS TrueNorth partner programme and extends
its footprint to work with SMB focused partners.

To support this, HDS has created an internal team of 20 staff to aid SMB partners,
appointed two distributors, and invested in new business
development activities to create growth. Oncore IT will work with Zycko, Ltd, one of
the distributors, who will provide assistance in terms of sales, technical, and
marketing support and help Oncore interface with HDS.

Founded in 2004, Oncore IT has experience designing, implementing, and
managing cloud compute environments providing its SMB customers access to the
level of enterprise class technology typically the preserve of large
corporates.

Key customers include barristers chambers, solicitors,
asset management companies, brokers, professional services
organisations, along with logistics and retail organisations.

Oncore IT has purchased two key HDS platforms: Hitachi Unified Storage VM (HUS
VM) and Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) to standardise on Hitachi information
solutions within its business. This means that Oncore IT has
become a HDS customer and partner at the same time and will utilise HDS storage
on client projects whether its managing solutions at a customer site or hosting
applications in its multi-tenanted cloud environment.

Oncore IT has invested in building this cloud environment working with partners such as Asigra [data backup], Brocade [data centre switches
and Ethernet Fabric technology] and now the final component HDS – as its key
storage platform provider and the heart of its new storage brand On Data.

Client data is stored in Oncore IT’s London data centre and replicated to its
Amsterdam facility to guarantee resilience, leveraging 600Mb/s of dedicated
bandwidth.

Michael Croft, Oncore IT’s CEO, says: "The
important thing about the HDS relationship is firstly we can expand our
portfolio to now offer a suite of data services for customers and secondly
respond appropriately to their particular data challenges irrespective of the
type – structured or unstructured or
the quantity. Our HDS platform is completely scalable in this sense and will
enable us to develop a data strategy per client to address their specific
commercial needs."

Burton agrees: "By using HCP, Oncore IT
will target more [SMB] customers than we can and spawn new revenue generating
services. They are taking HDS to a much wider audience."

Croft concludes: "The word
partnership in the IT industry is commonly banded about rather loosely. Rather
than just having the credentials, what’s far more significant is what you do as
a partner. We are fortunate to be fully engaged with HDS to ensure that the
relationship works delivering value to our customers yet creating sales
opportunities for both companies."