New cloud grouping aims to help customer migration

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Hosting company Star has joined forces with several other suppliers, claiming to offer a new way of buying services to help organisations move to the cloud.

The UK Cloud Alliance is a group of technology companies, each with separate areas of expertise, set to work together to provide a way for customers to pre-assess vendors for cloud projects.

The alliance was formed to make it easier for customers to move to a cloud implementation, according to Martino Corbelli, Star’s marketing director. He said his firm had thoroughly assessed each member of the alliance to ensure that it fitted in with some stringent requirements.

“Over the years our customer demands became more and more complex and needed something more than can be supplied by just simple services,” he said.

But that led to problems for the company when it came to fulfilling orders. “We found that our customers had specific demands that didn’t fit into our box and we don’t have all the answers,” Corbelli added.

The UK Cloud Alliance is based around the concept companies would be pre-screened so customers would know the members of the Alliance had the relevant technical expertise.

Corbelli said it had been an easy task to pick the partners. “We got a lot of interest but as soon as we said that this wasn’t about margin but about building relationships, a lot of that interest died away – but then, we wouldn’t have been interested in companies that were only interested in margins,“ he said.

He stressed the new alliance was not competing with the existing Cloud Industry Forum. “We’re not a talking shop, we’re not a lobbyist and we have a stringent examination of our members, it’s not a question that anyone can join.”

The Alliance currently has 15 members (including Star) but two additional members are expected to be announced shortly, said Corbelli.

“I don’t expect there to be too many more,” he said. “This is not about having a large membership, it’s finding the companies with the right skills. I can see more than two or three more companies joining the alliance,” he added.

The other members of the Alliance include Concentra, Digirati, Glasshouse Technologies, Itica, LinuxIT, Maindec, Modern Networks, New Voice Media, Nexus, Plan B, Pythagoras, RedStor, Total and Ubertas. Corbelli said all vendors were independent and could work with any other member of the alliance.

”It’s perfectly possible that Star would not be involved in a contract,” he said.

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