Uniserver

Uniserver transforms itself successfully into a Cloud supplier with support from TelecityGroup

"Of all the data centres, TelecityGroup best matched our core criteria: to provide the highest possible quality... We are positive we made the right choice, as the demand for flexible and reliable hosting services has grown explosively since then”

Hugo van Diepen, 
Owner, Uniserver

IT provider Uniserver celebrated its 10 years’ anniversary in 2010. Since its formation the company in Heerhugowaard has developed from being a webhoster for small businesses to a provider of scalable and flexible IT services such as Virtual Server Hosting for SMB as well as for larger businesses. Starting with virtualisation some 3 years ago, Uniserver has since then moved actively towards the ‘Cloud’ and became the first to offer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to the Dutch market. Uniserver’s evolution from webhoster to Cloud Hosting supplier has been powered by TelecityGroup’s data centre services, on which the company has been relying on for more than 7 years now.

Uniserver was established March 2nd 2000 by Hugo van Diepen and Ronald Bezuur in response to the growing demand for webhosting. Since that time Uniserver has built a strong reputation within the Netherlands hosting sector through its Virtual and Managed Server Hosting services. The company is an active member of the Dutch Hosting Providers Association (DHPA), whose members account collectively for about 80% of the Dutch hosting market. Uniserver currently has 40 employees and more than 8000 clients including Ericsson, Fuji, HotelSpecials, KPN, MeteoVista (WeerOnline), Sonja Bakker, Telefoongids en Ticketscript. After becoming the first to introduce Infrastructure as a Service to the Netherlands last year, Uniserver launched partner program Cloud-in-a-Box as an extension of this service in 2010. The company’s extensive service portfolio enables Uniserver to host the office environment of companies counting up to 1000 employees.

 In the ten years of its existence, the industry in which Uniserver operates has changed significantly. Van Diepen: “In 2000 hosting provider did not really need to distinguish themselves from the competition as there were enough customers for everyone. The dot.com crash changed all that. The internet hosting market split up, with companies competing on either price or quality. We were adamant about quality. This had implications for our data centre at that time which no longer met our changed requirements. Of all the data centres, TelecityGroup best matched our core criteria: to provide the highest possible quality. We started with a suite in Telecity 1. A few years later space in another TelecityGroup location, Telecity3 was added. We are positive we made the right choice, as the demand for flexible and reliable hosting services has grown explosively since then.”

Four years ago Uniserver was once again faced with an important choice with the advent of virtualisation. The company seized the opportunity and in 2007 became the first service provider partner of VMware in Benelux. Van Diepen: “We started introducing virtualisation to our clients about 2 years ago. We have been able to reduce the number of physical servers drastically to about 10% of what we formerly had. By using our fully redundant UniStructure platform which is constructed over both TelecityGroup data centres, we can offer our clients a guaranteed availability of 99.98% on physical and virtual servers.”

Meanwhile virtualisation cleared the way for on demand services, and offering Infrastructure as a Service was a logical extension of Uniserver’s Managed Server Hosting services. Setting up the service delivery, however, demanded a new approach to the supply chain. Van Diepen: “When you offer facilities ‘as a service’ your service usually depends on those of several partners in the supply chain. If you strive for transparency in your service delivery, the services from these partners must also be clearly formulated, in order that the end-user knows exactly what he is paying for.”

TelecityGroup, as a provider of carrier-neutral data centres, plays an important role in this chain. A data centre is in effect responsible for the availability of Uniserver’s services. And without guarantees that cloud suppliers, including the data centres where the data is physically stored, have complete control over their operations, companies will remain reluctant to move their critical business data to the cloud. Van Diepen: “When it comes to striving for innovation and quality, TelecityGroup and Uniserver just click – each of us in our own discipline. Whilst we are saving on costs and energy by the virtualisation of servers, TelecityGroup is optimalising the energy efficiency of its data centres. TelecityGroup is also supporting us in our extension in to the Cloud, because they understand the role that data centres play in building trust regarding the Cloud. In addition to TelecityGroup’s high technical standards, their processes and security are excellently organised and are clearly supported by accreditations and SLAs. TelecityGroup is transparent in the services it offers and is more than happy to give our clients a guided tour. And there is plenty of demand for these tours. Every two months a group of our clients visits a TelecityGroup data centre.”

And this number may well increase with the introduction of Uniserver’s IaaS Cloud-in-a-box service. This partner program comprises a complete and instantly available package of white label sales tools and services through which IT resellers and service providers can help their clients directly into the cloud under their own name. The organisation can be fully prepared to sell and supply Cloud Hosting within ten days, enabling a quick return on investment. Moreover Uniserver also offers services in which preconfigured virtual server capacity can be made available online to clients and partners within minutes. Leading companies such as VMware, Microsoft, HP, Dell and Juniper Networks supply the hardware and software. The generated interest in these new Cloud services come as no surprise to Van Diepen: “We are able to give our clients and partners a perfectly clear overview of our services, which leaves no debate about our unique selling point: our clients can use our fully maintained high quality IT infrastructure for a SMB-sized price / a SMB-budget. We are ahead in the constantly changing Cloud Hosting market, also thanks to TelecityGroup, and we intend to keep it that way.”

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