Colt and Unisys Join Forces to Deliver Cloud Services for European Business

Event Summary

October 25, 2010 -- Colt and Unisys have announced a new go-to-market approach for delivering cloud computing services to European business. Under the terms, Unisys will host its cloud services platform from one of Colt’s London facilities before deploying out to six additional data centres across Europe. Colt will be able to offer infrastructure, software and services from Unisys, while the IT provider gets a very strong footprint leveraging Tier-3 facilities connected to the Colt infrastructure.

Quick Take

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on Colt’s partnership with Unisys, because it gives the company overnight credibility in the cloud services space by supplying the provider with the infrastructure, remote management capabilities and software to deliver a range of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services to European enterprise customers. The company also has an opportunity to expand upon its IT service offerings into new areas, such as virtual desktops, and it gains an important partner for expanding the VMware vCloud initiative to more customers.

• Vendor Importance: Very high to Colt, because as the company moves from an infrastructure to a services organisation, it needs mature processes and capabilities for IT infrastructure and management, deeper expertise across the board for professional services (e.g., consulting, integration) and the ability to address vertical requirements credibly. Unisys helps Colt to put checkmarks in a number of these boxes and puts the company in a stronger position against its top competitors.

• Market Impact: Moderate on the cloud services market, because there are many IT suppliers, carriers and integrators planning or extending cloud capabilities to more countries by co-locating platforms across new data centre locations to broaden geographical coverage. For Unisys, the company will be able to gain a foothold with cloud data centres in Europe. Its current capabilities, which support the Americas, are hosted from its facilities in Eagan, Minnesota (backed up in Salt Lake City, Utah).

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