Archive for the ‘IaaS’ Category

The company whose name is synonymous with the process of copying documents continues to  expand its reach into the everyday life of business through its cloud offerings. Xerox’s latest announcement touts its effort aimed at small and mid-sized businesses, and it includes Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for midrange and Intel systems; cloud backup; and disaster recovery services.

Xerox claims its business cloud services ensure that a company’s applications, data and IT platforms are secure. The services also manage workload demand and are priced to serve SMBs that have annual revenue of $10 million to $250 million. Ken Stephens, senior vice president of Xerox Cloud Services explained the benefits SMBs could find in this cloud solution, saying:

Cloud technology is often presented as a complex, ‘big company’ infrastructure solution. But, in fact, managing IT operations in the ‘cloud’ is just as relevant and affordable for smaller companies and can be even more impactful. Expanding Xerox’s IaaS and Backup and Recovery services to SMBs is the next step toward offering a full suite of business cloud services that SMBs can access on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model.

What’s especially important here for AEC firms is that while many cloud vendors don’t support multiple operating systems and legacy software, this one does. That makes it a whole lot easier to grab a piece of the cloud while hanging on to familiar software and processes. The other upside to IaaS is that it’s scalable and you can provision the computing power you need, up or down, with a mouse click. No more paying for infrastructure you don’t need, and you get much lower cost overall.

This is being sold through VARs, chiefly Affiliated Computer Services, a Xerox acquisition dating to 2009. ACS was already deeply embedded with government and was the largest provider of managed services in that sector, not to mention its coverage of many other industries in the same capacity.