Nutanix has assisted South African ISP CipherWave with the upgrade of the infrastructure of its private cloud environment. CipherWave selected Nutanix on the merit of its product roadmap, view of the future of cloud computing, ease of extensibility to public cloud, and its ability to deliver a fully managed service offering that would support the ISP’s technical team.
CipherWave is a South African Tier 1 ISP offering connectivity, cloud, voice and security services, with a network footprint that connects into all major FNO and WNO networks with coverage across the country. The company has core network POPs located at the CipherWave data centre in Midrand, and the Teraco Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban data centres. CipherWave’s Tier 1 voice network has direct interconnects into all the major Tier 1 voice value-added service and mobile network operators. CipherWave’s cloud offering is built inside its own Tier 2 data centre in Johannesburg, with dual dark fibre links to its disaster recovery site hosted in Teraco Isando, with direct interconnects into all major public clouds. The company’s security services include email, firewalls, end point and server protection and its clients extend across all vertical industries, ranging from small businesses looking for a private cloud through to multi-branch multinationals needing to connect multiple sites, offices and facilities.
"When we identify partners that are a good fit for our business, we always align to market-leading technologies and partners. It's a methodology we apply right across our technology stack," says Wayne D’sa, CEO at CipherWave. “So, when we looked for a partner to support a refresh of our cloud technology, they had big boots to fill. After all, we have successfully run our cloud for nine years, with 100% uptime and availability. Nutanix offered a modern approach to infrastructure, the managed services we needed, and the assurance that they could emulate and even improve the success of our existing cloud at an uncontested cost.”
According to CipherWave, the need to refresh the infrastructure supporting its private cloud was multi-faceted; firstly, it wanted to modernise the environment for its own needs and answer the calls of its reseller partners for a private cloud or virtual data centre environment they could self-manage and build solutions around to on-sell to its own customers. It also says the company has seen a growing need amongst customers for DRaaS services, hybrid cloud solutions, offsite back-ups, data replication services and interest in its IaaS offerings – all of which Nutanix can support.
“Nutanix just made sense. The company offers us managed services via a Platinum Support agreement for our cloud infrastructure that we need to support our technology investments. They deliver on our partner’s need to have a cloud environment that supports a multi-cloud approach and directly interfaces with a private cloud like AWS or Azure and their SaaS products. It’s really a solution that integrates into any cloud, and it is one we can bolt onto our own services, for example our extended security portfolio," adds D’sa.
Another major factor supporting CipherWave’s move was its ability to maintain the flexible cloud pricing it offers clients, as the Nutanix environment doesn't add any additional complexity to these structures. To date, CipherWave’s customers have migrated to the new environment without any disruption to their operations. D’sa says the data migration has been so seamless for clients that it’s been a case of moving houses without realising your furniture is already in your new home.
