Zynstra partners with UK channel to reinvent how SMEs buy and manage IT

Zynstra has launched a hybrid cloud IT solution designed to redress the balance between small and medium sized enterprises and larger companies when it comes to IT. Sold exclusively through and managed by the channel, it gives SMEs with up to 250 employees a fully managed IT solution that combines the reliability and security of on-premise IT with the economics and flexibility of the cloud. This hybrid approach to the cloud is already favoured by many large enterprises but to date has not been economically viable for smaller companies.

Rather than offering SMEs a 'hand me down' enterprise product scaled for smaller companies, Zynstra has reimagined a hybrid cloud solution for SMEs and built it from the ground up.  Its patent-pending technology sits at the heart of the solution and is the key to making hybrid cloud affordable and giving SMEs hassle-free, enterprise-level IT with built-in reliability.  The solution is delivered on HP hardware and managed by IT service providers. It comes with all the fundamental IT capabilities including storage, security, backup, recovery and optional applications such as MS Exchange, SharePoint and the flexibility to handle other applications required by the business. Zynstra is available for a monthly fee with no upfront costs.

"Zynstra brings hybrid cloud to SMEs and generates high value recurring revenues for IT service providers," said Nick East, CEO of Zynstra. "We believe that IT service providers are best positioned to deliver and manage IT for small and medium businesses and that belief is reflected in the way the product was developed. Zynstra comes with all the management tools IT service providers need to easily manage multiple installations. It also has built-in reliability, allowing our partners to focus on value added services, rather than worrying about day-to-day IT management."

Leading network and hosting service provider, Easynet Connect, is among the first to offer Zynstra to IT service providers. "Our partnership with Zynstra creates a compelling commercial proposition for IT service providers", said Mike Ayres, General Manager of Easynet Connect. "By standardising IT, we've made it really easy for them to manage hundreds of customers at any one time and offer a better service and greater flexibility at a lower cost. They are able to deliver the best of the cloud, whilst maintaining the benefits of on-site IT."

New economic model for SME IT

At the heart of Zynstra is a technology that standardises all deployments, making it really simple and cost-effective for IT service providers to manage. By keeping every single customer implementation 100% standardised, Zynstra removes the high costs and reliability concerns associated with IT implementations that over time become increasingly customised and prone to failure. The innovative technology also enables Zynstra to keep every IT implementation current and consistent, ensuring that all software is up-to-date and the customer's experience is as good years later as it is at the beginning.

Built-in reliability

Zynstra's IT solution for SMEs is delivered by IT service providers and installed on HP ProLiant servers that are delivered to the customer's premises. The service providers manage the customer implementation remotely via the cloud using Zynstra's management solution. Zynstra keeps all IT systems current by rolling out software updates via the cloud only once they've been fully tested in its lab and guaranteed conflict-free.

As a result, SMEs get all the benefits and functionality of a robust IT solution without any of the headaches, reliability issues and high costs. It also means that IT becomes easily scalable and SMEs can add or remove users as required. As with the initial installation, there is no upfront or set-up cost and SMEs pay only a per-user per-month fee for all required hardware and software.

Zynstra's solution delivers key infrastructure and applications including:

• Sophisticated security with firewalls, anti-malware, anti-phishing, anti-spam and intrusion detection

• File storage

• Domain control and authentication with MS Active Directory

• Backup and recovery

• Internet gateway with content filtering

• Applications including  MS Exchange, MS SharePoint,  Sage 50 and integrations with remote cloud based services such as MS Office365

Availability and pricing

Interested IT providers can sign up to Zynstra's channel programme directly or through one of Zynstra's partners including Easynet and voxclever. Pricing varies according to the specific package offered by each service provider, but is equivalent to the cost of a typical monthly mobile phone contract per user.