Press releases

Steria, a leading European provider of IT-enabled business services, today unveiled Infrastructure On Command enabled by Cisco, the result of a groundbreaking collaboration between Steria and Cisco to deliver dynamic, cloud services that will enable enterprise customers to access highly secure and cost-effective computing power in less than 30 minutes. The service will be immediately available in June 2010.

Commenting on the collaboration with Cisco, Steria Group CEO, Francois Enaud, said: “Steria has earned a reputation for expert implementation and management of a full range of complex IT services projects. Our collaboration with Cisco to enable us to deliver Steria “Infrastructure On Command” is a strategic evolution of our multi-tiered service delivery model. For the first time, utilizing the automation of Steria’s outsourcing operation and the innovation embedded in the Cisco Unified Computing System platform, customers will have access to incremental computing power and associated infrastructure services “on command”, at the click of a button.”

Infrastructure on Command enables IT platforms to be purchased as a straightforward ‘pay as you need’ service – requiring no investment in physical IT infrastructure – which is automatically provisioned via an online portal affording customers a flexible and adaptable platform that can be scaled up or down to reflect changing business requirements. Infrastructure On Command allows customers to pay for the computing power they use, when they need it, whether they are looking for a short-term solution to rapidly develop, test and deploy new applications and services in the cloud, or a longer-term production environment over a fixed period.

“The combination of Steria’s global service delivery model, our associated automated service management framework, STARS (Steria Advanced Remote Services), and the strength of the new Cisco Unified Computing System platform gives this offering a unique market differentiator,” commented Karine Brunet, Steria Group’s Director of Industrialised Service Lines.
”Infrastructure on Command enables us to provide secure and reliable platform access, while enabling our customers to address their business challenges in terms of cost containment, cash optimisation and time-to-market.”

Brunet added: “We are excited to offer this cloud-based, business services launch pad in conjunction with Cisco, who share our vision for a highly agile platform that can continually evolve alongside customers’ needs.”

Laurent Blanchard vice president for European markets, general manager of Cisco France, added: “Cloud computing profoundly transforms the way in which information and IT services can be consumed. Our collaboration with Steria in bringing this service to market is unique; together, we are putting intelligence into the infrastructure which will create dynamic, powerful cloud computing services that put the customer back in control.”

Infrastructure on Command delivers multiple benefits to enterprise customers; key amongst these are:

• Security – robust security features helps provide assurance that valuable data is isolated and highly secure, and that services are delivered in keeping with regulatory compliance measures
• Responsiveness – ‘on the fly’ service provisioning in less than 30 minutes helps ensure that business services can be delivered when customers need and want them
• Cost efficiency – the variable, consumption-based pricing model means customers pay only for the services that they use while removing the need for capital expenditure. They will further benefit from infrastructure at a lower TCO
• Flexibility – elasticity and ‘click-to-buy’ functionality lets customers experience Infrastructure On Command as easily as an e-commerce transaction
• Reliability – provides access to a best-in-class IT infrastructure platform and ongoing operational services backed by Steria Advanced Remote Services (STARS)
• Sustainability – Infrastructure on Command can lower energy consumption and emission by up to 30% for a “greener” IT