Vodacom Business and Novell Partner to Securely Manage and Optimize Cloud Services

Novell, Inc. and Vodacom Business, majority-owned by UK-based Vodafone Group Plc today announced a partnership that will integrate much of Novell's Intelligent Workload Management portfolio including: SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server, Platespin® Virtualization and Workload Management, and Identity and Security solutions into the network provider's cloud hosting solutions. The partnership is aimed at helping businesses across Africa securely provision, manage and monitor multi-tenant applications deployed from Vodacom Business's cloud infrastructure.

Managing the Cloud
As businesses move to the cloud, successfully managing all aspects of infrastructure technology including service quality, security and availability, become more critical. Customers need comprehensive information about their physical and virtual server environments to obtain a true picture of how resources are being used, especially when trying to scale and rapidly provision workloads. Designed to take the guesswork out of complex server consolidation and capacity planning initiatives, Vodacom Business is using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell and virtualization and workload management solutions including PlateSpin Recon, PlateSpin Migrate and PlateSpin Protect from Novell to respond to growing business demands, improve server workload performance, reduce energy consumption and lower costs.

Securing the Cloud
A major benefit of cloud computing is the flexible, on-demand model that allows enterprises to rapidly acquire additional computing power only when needed. However, this presents significant security and audit challenges. Today's regulations require a complete audit trail when demonstrating identity and security compliance. Vodacom Business will leverage Novell identity and security management solutions to give customers the ability to treat their cloud assets as an extension of the data center. A core tenet of Intelligent Workload Management is the integration of identity and security management into cloud resources. This ensures policies and procedures for regulatory compliance and prudent business practices will be enforced ubiquitously.

"Cloud computing will change the way companies do business. The service delivery model is vastly scalable and less resource and energy intensive, enabling organizations to purchase robust and reliable infrastructure and application services for a reduced cost." says Richard Vester, Executive Head of Hosted Services, Vodacom Business. "However, security concerns are inhibiting the adoption of cloud computing. Our partnership with Novell enables us to deliver infrastructure and application services that can support our customers' specific security policies and regulatory compliance requirements."

Both companies have proven experience working together to enable application providers the ability to offer secure business practices in the cloud. For example, BasisOne, a hosting provider based in South Africa, uses Novell identity and security solutions for its platform that deploys SAP ERP solutions as a service using Vodacom Business's private cloud. Using Novell identity and security solutions, BasisOne can extend an enterprise organization's security policies onto the applications that are running on virtual servers at Vodacom Business's state-of-the-art data center.

"Cloud computing is core to Vodacom Business's strategy and we're pleased to be their engineering and technology solution partner for their cloud strategy," says Markus J. Krauss, VP Service Providers, Novell EMEA. "Vodacom Business is another proof point for Novell's strategy to become the leader in the intelligent workload management marketplace. We're looking forward to providing our partner with a more agile, cost effective and scalable way of managing, optimizing and securing cloud environment so they can pass the full benefits of cloud computing onto their customers."

Abut Vodacom Business
Vodacom Business was launched in February 2008 and offers a total communications service portfolio to corporate customers. Vodacom Business has invested in significant infrastructure and has a Tier 1 internet network capability as well as a corporate grade national MPLS VPN. Vodacom Business services include next-generation IP voice, managed networks and infrastructure, internet access, hosting and storage. In 2008, Vodacom Business launched a dedicated internet access service and also a broadband internet access service. It also launched a managed MPLS VPN service together with a managed enterprise voice and VoIP gateway in April 2008 and May 2008, respectively. These service offerings are supported by a new data centre at the headquarters in Midrand, the development of a soft switch and the development of a client services operations centre.