Data#3 bets big on hybrid future

Data#3 is preparing to reveal a hybrid cloud solution to help customers manage on-premise, outsourced and public cloud infrastructure.

The launch is expected in the coming months, Data#3 cloud solutions manager John Griffin told CRN at the reseller's Brisbane JuiceIT event.

Hybrid IT was also the theme of the conference, which took place in Brisbane on 2 April following events in Perth on 13 March and Adelaide on 25 March.

More than 500 Data#3 customers attended the one-day event. It marked the sixth year of JuiceIT, with more than 6,000 customers having attended over the conference's history.

[Check out all the photos from JuiceIT]

The hybrid management interface is due to launch "imminently". It is part service catalogue, part corporate app store and and part portal for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and software-as-a-service.

It should give IT departments more control of provisioning technology services for their end users.

The billing component of the stack is provided by Cloud Cruiser, a US-owned vendor founded in 2010. Cloud Cruiser is now being deployed after three to four months of piloting that has been "very successful", said Griffin.

The IaaS foundation is built on FlexPod, the converged compute, networking, and storage solution developed by Cisco and NetApp. Griffin added that EMC would play a major role in Data#3's future storage plans.

Customers will also continue to purchase products via Data#3's existing web portal, based on Oracle's BigMachines.

Public cloud

Data#3 chief executive John Grant said the hybrid push would include reselling public cloud services, pointing to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as well as IBM's SoftLayer and Cisco's newly announced public cloud.

The price of public cloud has been plummeting, with major players Amazon, Microsoft and Google all announcing major price cuts in the past few weeks.

Grant said: "There are models in the States at the moment, where there is arbitraging of the infrastructure-of-a-service providers. They are buying bulk over a term and switching customers at spot rates."

He told CRN that Data#3's hybrid offering would help organisations regain data integrity and deal with "shadow IT" – where business users procure as-a-service solutions without going via the IT department.

"It has to be overseen by someone. Someone has to take accountability for organisational integrity, privacy and security. The people who are best equipped to do that are the IT group."

But he said IT managers needed to "get better and smarter".

"They need to  move from being an IT services business worried about their technology to being a business IT group worried about the business," said Grant.

Data#3 is also targetting C-suite executives at client organisations. At this year's JuiceIT, it launched an executive stream, with a private lunch and presentation for CFOs and other non-IT roles, including state government and private sector execs.

Grant also said that Data# practised what it preached in terms of cloud software, utilising Salesforce, BigMachines for pricing and quoting, as well as other SaaS tools for HR and recruitment.