Hornbill has built a multi-tenant cloud platform specifically designed and optimised to run its Enterprise Support Platform software in the cloud. The platform is built on enterprise-grade highly redundant hardware, running an optimised hardened Linux software stack. The platform gives customers a choice of data centre locations to support compliance with national privacy laws, as well as providing optimal network performance to the service based on geography.
Hornbill has partnered with Peer1, a global leader in Data Centre provision, giving Hornbill's PaaS solution a world class high speed global network (FastFiber Network™) as well as access to 17 data centres distributed across North America and Western Europe. The initial deployment in the UK will service Western Europe, with the San Antonio (TX) data centre coming on line in Q4/11, followed by Herndon (VA) and Fremont (CA) soon after.
Hornbill's PaaS solution includes a comprehensive SLA providing 24x7 telephone support from its Network Operations Centre, providing automatic platform software upgrades with no loss of customisations or settings, as well as fully automated backups and policy controlled historic data archiving. As the author, Hornbill is uniquely placed to provide the support and services around its own software to meet today's expectations of always-on cloud solutions. Hornbill's cloud operations team work directly with the developers of the software in the same facility, ensuring unmatched agility for support and issue resolution.
The PaaS solution is initially targeted at existing Hornbill customers that have purchased on-premise software licenses, but would like to take advantage of a fully managed cloud platform and still retain the value of the capital investment they have made in the software licenses.
Gerry Sweeney, Founder and CTO of Hornbill Technologies said "I am delighted to be able to make this announcement; we have worked tirelessly over the last 12 months to create a world-class cloud platform that has real substance. We have already moved our own in-house service desk deployments into the cloud with great success and we are confident about our ability to provide a cost-effective, high quality and pain-free cloud service to our customers. It's very important that we bring our customers with us, or at least give them the choice as we move into cloud based solutions. Vendors often abandon their existing technology, forcing customers to migrate once they have created new cloud based products. At Hornbill we made a conscious decision and took the time to expand our technology, adding key platform components that are needed for cloud service provision."
Hornbill's Enterprise Support Platform offers a full complement of web services API's as well as a cross-browser web interface that works with IE, Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox and matches all user functionality found in its rich desktop client like-for-like. In addition, industrial strength security features and considerable network related performance optimisations are key enabling components that have been worked on in the last 12 months. Hornbill's cloud solution is unique, as it offers both browser and desktop client options, which gives customers greater choice. "Creating a custom cloud platform for our software was a natural progression for us. By directly managing deployed software instances our own experts are able to react instantaneously and address any issues that arise, most likely well in advance of our customers experiencing any service failure", said Sweeney.
Providing its software in the cloud is a key growth strategy for Hornbill, but the company remains equally committed to their on-premise model. Hornbill's on-premise and cloud software solutions are engineered from a single code base, so the company is positioned to support both delivery models with equal conviction and commitment.
About Peer1 Hosting
PEER 1 Hosting is one of the world's leading IT
hosting providers. The company is built on two obsessions: Ping
& People. Ping, represents its commitment to best-in-breed
technology, founded on a high performance 10Gb SuperNetwork™
connected by 17 state-of-the-art data centres, 21
points-of-presence and 10 colocation facilities throughout North
America and Europe. People, represents its commitment to delivering
outstanding customer service to its more than 10,000 customers
worldwide, backed by a 100 percent uptime guarantee and 24x7x365
FirstCall Support™. PEER 1 Hosting's portfolio includes Managed
Hosting, Dedicated Servers under the ServerBeach brand, Colocation
and Cloud Services. Founded in 1999, the company is headquartered
in Vancouver, Canada, with European operations headquartered in
Southampton, UK. PEER 1 Hosting shares are traded on the TSX under
the symbol PIX. For more information visit: www.peer1.com or www.peer1hosting.co.uk.
