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UK IT services provider Block has announced a suite of hosted services aimed at the UK healthcare market, timed to take advantage of a growing enthusiasm among organisations within the sector for hybrid IT solutions. The firm is leading with a datacenter as a service offering, and said a wider range of services taking in networking and workspace solutions would follow in quick succession.
While the new services target both UK National Health Service (NHS) and private providers, Block said that NHS trusts in particular face challenges around limited space, resilience, power and security that can be addressed in part by shifting certain assets off site and into the cloud. Nonetheless, said CEO Jon Pickering, Block is not trying to steer health sector customers into the cloud at exclusion of alternatives.
“We’re not changing what we offer; we’re changing how it can be consumed. Having said that, we’re not now prescriptively pushing services through the cloud as the only option to customers. We’re providing a choice.”
The firm’s new datacentre platform will also be used to offer services tailored for the finance and retail sectors, where large amounts of data, lack of physical space and procedural and regulatory security are also business concerns, Block said.
Pickering continues: “Working closely with our partners and customers, we’ve recognised the need to create tailored services that help our customers overcome specific challenges and problems in their industries. Over the coming months we’ll be releasing a range of new products and services that wholly identify with what our customers require. It is this value-rich, services-led approach that we believe will make the most difference.”
“DCaaS, for example, has been designed to give customers ‘breathing space’, when and where needed,” Pickering said. “Making a hybrid infrastructure like this has immediate benefits. Strategically, organisations can choose which critical applications and sensitive datasets they keep on-premise, and which they divest off-site. Financially, using DCaaS, a customer only pays for what they use, but can expand that with great flexibility, which gives them tighter control without impacting capital investment.”
