BT pushes private cloud for virtual datacentre

BT has expanded its virtual datacentre package with an option to manage private cloud environments, whether on or off-premise.

Virtual Data Centre (VDC) Private will allow businesses to manage applications and data on a virtualised infrastructure, mounted on their own or BT's hardware, BT announced on Tuesday.

"What we can offer is a range of capability from delivery of infrastructure into the customers' own datacentre, right through to a managed dedicated infrastructure in a BT datacentre, to ultimately VDC On-Demand, which is a pre-provisioned portal-based consumable service," Rob Jones, senior marketing manager for BT Global Services' IT services practice, told ZDNet UK.

"We can put [VDC Private] into a customer's datacentre; we can similarly put it into a third-party datacentre, whether that's BT-branded... or not," Jones added.

VDC Private expands on VDC On-Demand, which BT launched in the UK in June 2009. Prior to launch, VDC On-Demand was used by BT internally to help it cut costs in its corporate services division, Global Services.

The product will debut into a crowded market, as competitors such as Verizon Business, AT&T, Savvis, Orange Business Services (OBS), Terremark, HP and IBM already provide similar cloud services in Europe.

BT believes its service can be differentiated by having local infrastructure — 35 datacentres across five European countries including the UK — in place to conform to data governance and security needs, Jones said.

When asked whether data stored via BT's private cloud service will be able to conform to EU data protection laws, a BT spokesman said: "VDC Private will conform to all relevant compliance and data privacy regulations."

Companies such as Orange Business Services and HP also have local UK infrastructure, and Verizon Business is due to launch in the UK with local infrastructure in 2011.