Developed specifically to address the evolving needs of SMBs and educational establishments, the latest developments in Zynstra's product suite have been crafted in association with Microsoft and HP to meet the looming end-of-life technology dilemma that requires an infrastructure refresh for Windows Server 2003.
"We estimate that there are well over a quarter of a million organisations in the UK still running Windows Server 2003 and a large number also based on Small Business Server 2003, both of which are approaching end-of-life and in just over one year will no longer be supported by Microsoft," said Nick East, CEO at Zynstra. "Organisations affected by this need to be considering how best to refresh their infrastructure without incurring huge costs or overhauling their way of working. With this in mind we have launched two new solutions in our range of Cloud Managed Server Appliances to support the Microsoft partner base in managing the transition with their customers and provide a practical on-ramp to cloud services whilst preserving on-premise capability where required.”
The SMB IT Appliance caters for organisations with five to 250 IT users at a site. Users get all the comfort and control of on-premise IT but with the economics and service levels typically associated with public cloud services. This enables SMB's to securely run both local Windows and Linux workloads in virtualised containers, whilst also seamlessly connecting them to public cloud services though Single Sign On to applications such as Microsoft Office 365. SMB IT Appliance is delivered as a managed IT service for a monthly subscription by the growing base of Zynstra partners, making it completely hassle free for SMBs.
Mark Devereux, CTO at Concorde Solutions, was one of the first businesses to sign up to the new SMB IT Appliance and managed service. Commenting on the solution, Devereux said: "Like many businesses, our internal IT had grown incrementally with our business over the years but its underlying design had become dated, temperamental and was facing end-of-support. We had been looking for a platform built for our size and with a capability to grow with us but remove the mundane administration and management. Zynstra's SMB IT Appliance provides that solution. We can now focus our efforts purely on building our business and have the peace of mind that our internal and development IT platforms are being managed for us by a local and trusted partner for a predictable and, frankly, more affordable cost."