HP’s acquisition of storage specialist 3Par last year is being utilised locally with the opening of a datacentre in Albany, north of Auckland, that is operated by local systems integrator Softsource.
The datacentre, which opened earlier this month, is the first in the Asia-Pacific region to utilise 3Par’s technology since HP acquired that company. Dell originally intended to buy 3Par, but a bidding war between it and HP erupted, resulting in HP upping its offer several times and ultimately acquiring 3Par.
The purchase was so keenly contested because it offered a way for larger vendors such as HP and Dell to bring cloud and virtual storage offerings to their customers. Softsource originally began negotiations about building the datacentre with 3Par, but then dealt with HP after the sale.
The Albany datacentre, which is used for the delivery of Softsource’s Entrada brand of managed IT services, is also the first here to utilise HP’s Converged Infrastructure architecture.
Speaking at the launch of the datacentre today, Softsource general manager Pablo Garcia-Curtis said the datacentre’s capabilities are central to the Entrada offering, which allows Softsource clients to configure parts of their IT infrastructure themselves, through a portal created by Softsource.
“The portal is fully automatic and is what differentiates us,” Garcia-Curtis said.
He describes the offering as an example of IaaS, infrastructure-as-a-service; clients can scale up or down depending on their needs.
The portal was developed by Softsource staff, using Microsoft-development technologies.
Garcia-Curtis says several existing clients have moved to having their infrastructure hosted at the new datacentre. The datacentre has also picked up some new clients for Softsource, including Dominion Breweries.
Other clients using the datacentre include Genesis Energy and Auckland iwi Ngati Whatua O Orakei.
Garcia-Curtis says Softsource is looking at offering the Entrada service overseas.