Press Release: Virtual Ark solves enterprise problems with the Cloud

December 6, 2011

You can’t simply take the old way of doing things and apply it to the Cloud - Virtual Ark CEO Marty Gauvin

Next generation managed services specialist Virtual Ark has raised $1.6 million to broaden the market reach of its Cloud application management platform to accelerate adoption of the new computing model.

Australian company Virtual Ark is one of only four companies globally recently named a Gartner Cool Vendor for Infrastructure Services. Virtual Ark is now also supplying its Cloud management platform and managed services in the Australia New Zealand market following its entry to the US market.

Virtual Ark will apply proceeds from its recent modest capital-raising to undertake product development that broadens the reach of its Cloud management platform to work with privately owned Clouds and Clouds built with the OpenStack open source solution. This development started after completion of a proof-of-concept project which was supported by Commercialisation Australia.

Virtual Ark CEO Marty Gauvin said Australian companies were discovering that migrating services to the Cloud required new skills, processes and tools. “As customers gain some experience with Cloud services (IaaS – Infrastructure-as-a-Service) from companies like Amazon, Rackspace or with internal private Clouds, they soon discover that deploying and running enterprise applications on these Clouds requires very different skills, processes and new tools,” he said.

“The benefits of moving to the Cloud are substantial. Our experience shows that organisations moving applications to the Cloud can reduce costs anywhere from 30 per cent to 70 per cent, depending on how closely the Cloud environment matches their business needs. For example, a university enrolment system might need 50 servers running full-tilt for two weeks a year, but require only two servers for the other 52 weeks of the year. That would achieve a very high cost saving from moving to the Cloud.

“However, you can’t simply take the old way of doing things and apply it to the Cloud in the belief this will work seamlessly on the new Cloud platform without creating new challenges such as security. That incorrect assumption is the most common mistake companies are making. That’s where we come in.”
Virtual Ark sits “above the Cloud”. As a globally-focussed managed services company, Virtual Ark provides large enterprise customers with on-demand access to core business applications in the Cloud.

Virtual Ark’s delivery platform and services offer substantial competitive advantages to enterprises through a “pay-as-you-use” model that reduces fixed costs for IT, increases flexibility for rapidly responding to market demands, avoids Cloud lock-in and eschews a multi-tenant application architecture.

As a virtual business, Virtual Ark is undertaking software development for its Cloud management platform globally, with teams located throughout Australia and on the west coast of the US.

Mr. Gauvin said the current development would make the Virtual Ark platform more scalable to meet new markets, including private Cloud owners and enterprise clients. “This is where we see a lot of demand coming from during the next four to five years,” he said.

“We see two themes in the Cloud market, which we believe will remain immature for some time. The first approach is from the enterprise, which wants to build its own Cloud, thus providing it with a high level of control while still allowing it to derive some degree of benefit from the Cloud.

“The other approach involves Cloud ‘owners’ who want to take on business from their customers incrementally by building Cloud services one at a time. These ‘small bite’ projects will deliver rapid returns and prove the efficacy of the Cloud model with less risk for companies that are not willing to bet the farm on making a transition to the Cloud.

“The current platform development, for which we have customers already, will allow us to further respond to the needs of our enterprise customers and Cloud owners.”

About Virtual Ark www.virtualark.com

Established in 2009, Virtual Ark is a subsidiary of CloudTech Group Limited. Virtual Ark’s key management group is an experienced team in this space which has worked together for a decade and sold its previous company to Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group.

For media assistance:
Call John Harris at Impress Media Australia on 08 8431 4000 or email jharris@impress.com.au