Mimecast partners with Velocity MIS
Velocity MIS is the first of Mimecasts partners to offer true Infrastructure-as-a-Service. The virtual Exchange server provision brings the cost savings, functionality and flexibility benefits of the private cloud. The partnership eliminates the two most substantial barriers to Exchange 2010 migration: hardware costs and fear of data loss and downtime.
Grant Hodgkinson, business development director at Mimecast SA says, Mimecasts Migration Assist offer supports companies wishing to migrate to Exchange 2010 by removing risk of lost data and downtime. Another hurdle to migration is the cost of the hardware needed to support the upgrade. A need elegantly and cost efficiently met by vMIS¹s virtual server solution.
By provisioning a client¹s virtual Exchange server in a private cloud, velocity MIS removes the burden on the customer to buy, manage and maintain the hardware for the migration, says Brendan Haskins, business unit manager at velocity MIS. This lowers both the long term and short term costs associated with such a significant hardware upgrade, but with a service level agreement guaranteed 99.999 uptime in a locally hosted data centre.
Another significant benefit of a virtual model is the speed of implementation. My team recently provisioned a Windows Server 2008 virtual machine in three minutes for a client. It doesn¹t get faster than that, says Haskins.
Local hosting of data is becoming an important issue in South Africa as issues of data jurisdiction, reliability of international connectivity and packet latency effect the compliance, delivery and uptime of email.
Email is a mission-critical infrastructure service, says Hodgkinson. It’s not something to take a risk on. With support on Exchange 2003 coming to an end it is time companies considered the safest, fastest and most cost effective way to migrate to Exchange 2010. This partnership offers some great alternatives to the buy and supply model of old.
Businesses upgrading to Exchange 2010 can obtain free use (without commitment) of Mimecasts continuity service for six months. This ensures any risk of downtime is mitigated. In addition, velocity MIS is offering Mimecast customers a bandwidth inclusive deal with a two-month free trial.
The combination means the key risks inherent in a migration are mitigated. velocity MIS and Mimecast have essentially de-risked the entire process, says Hodgkinson.
