Umbrellar Group to launch Umbrellar Cloud

Umbrellar Group to launch Umbrellar Cloud powered by Microsoft Azure Stack and Microsoft Azure, enabling businesses to thrive in the cloud economy

Kiwi businesses will be able to harness Azure Public Cloud through locally hosted Azure Stack

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – Thursday 25 January 2018 – New Zealand online and cloud company Umbrellar Group is ramping up its cloud offerings early this year with the launch of new Microsoft-powered offerings, to drive New Zealand businesses’ digital transformation efforts and enable them to thrive in the cloud economy.

One of New Zealand’s largest web and cloud hosting providers, 21-year-old Umbrellar Group, will launch a new multi-cloud management portal to enable consumption of Microsoft Azure Public Cloud. This, along with Umbrellar’s own locally hosted ‘Umbrellar Cloud’ powered by Microsoft Azure Stack, an extension of Azure, as well as Microsoft 365 productivity services.

The new offerings will enable Kiwi businesses to harness the power of cloud with their own Umbrellar Cloud providing, a locally-hosted Azure-consistent cloud platform via Azure Stack. Both offerings will be available through a new multi-cloud self-service portal, enabling customers to access and manage services from a single Azure consistent environment, including workloads deployed in New Zealand through Umbrellar Cloud, and those wanting to take advantage of Azure Public Cloud globally.

The offerings will be backed by local cloud expertise and Umbrellar’s 90-strong local team.

David Howden, Head of Cloud for Umbrellar Group, says a consistent approach to consuming cloud is vital to realise the benefits of the technology in an economy of cloud services. A consistent Azure experience across both New Zealand-hosted Azure Stack and Azure public cloud are a key component to delivering a successful cloud strategy. Unified identity, deployment consistency and continuous innovation are all foundations of the Umbrellar hybrid platform strategy, and Azure Stack is pivotal in that strategy.

“We are evolving our product line to give more to our customers,” Howden says. “We will be executing our Microsoft relationship with Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack, and evolving the collaboration services offered to customers through Microsoft 365.”

The deployment of Azure Stack, which allows service providers to build their own Azure consistent hosting platform in their data centres, will be one of the first in New Zealand.

It enables customers a way to use the familiar cloud platform, without shipping data offshore, so avoiding data sovereignty issues and international bandwidth fees, and enhancing application performance.

Michael Foley, CEO for Umbrellar Group, says the offerings open the doors for New Zealand businesses to reinvent themselves using the agility and flexibility of the cloud - just as Umbrellar Group itself has.

Historically known as New Zealand’s largest domain management and web hosting company trading under well-known brands like FreeParking, OpenHost and Domains4Less, over the past five years Umbrellar Group has developed a sister business focused on delivery of a VMware-based private cloud that powers 600-odd business customers and its own services.

“This is an opportunity for medium to large businesses to take the future into their own hands and reinvent themselves,” Foley says. “We have done that ourselves, building on our virtualized private cloud to create an entirely new business from the ground up. As a traditionally server-based business, we have taken the bold step to digitally disrupt ourselves by building a server-less cloud business with automation and self-service at the core. We are a proof statement to our customers that this is entirely doable”

Vijay Tewari, Microsoft Principal Group Program Manager for Microsoft Azure Stack, says, ‘It is great to see New Zealand partners delivering Microsoft Azure Stack solutions to customers. It offers a robust hybrid cloud solution, essential for customers who require something that is on-premises to complement what they put in the public cloud. As a managed service provider, Umbrellar makes it easier for customers who can get the hardware, the deployment services, integrated support and the software all in one bundle.’

Umbrellar is one of 16 global service providers who are working with Microsoft on planning, testing and proving Azure Stack use cases as part of a Microsoft Azure Stack programme.

Umbrellar are now in a private preview phase of their multi-cloud management portal that is delivering Azure, and Azure Stack services. General availability of the multi-cloud portal will be next month, February 2018. Early adopters are encouraged to contact Umbrellar to join its private preview programme.

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