UK Zynstra Offers SMBs Remotely Managed, Enterprise Class IT on Pay-as-you-Go, Per-User Basis

Zynstra Ltd. has launched a solution designed to redress the balance between SMBs and larger companies when it comes to IT.

For a monthly fee and with no up-front cost, it gives SMEs with up to 250 employees a managed IT solution that combines the reliability and security of on-premise IT with the economics and flexibility of the cloud. This hybrid approach to the cloud is already favoured by many large enterprises but to date has not been economically viable for smaller companies.

Rather than offering SMEs a ‘hand me down’ enterprise product scaled for smaller companies, Zynstra has reimagined a hybrid cloud solution for SMEs. Its patent-pending technology sits at the heart of the solution and is the key to making hybrid cloud affordable and giving SMEs hassle-free, enterprise IT with built-in reliability.

The solution is delivered on HP hardware and managed by IT service providers. It comes with the fundamental IT capabilities including storage, security, backup, recovery and optional applications such as MS Exchange and SharePoint, and the flexibility to handle other applications required by the business.

"SMBs often get a raw deal when it comes to IT," said Nick East, CEO, Zynstra. "For them, IT is more often than not a drag on the business rather than a source of competitive advantage. Not to mention the fact that they typically pay more per person than a large enterprise for their IT and get an inferior product. We wanted to change all of that. We’ve built a product that is designed specifically for SMEs and doesn’t force them to choose between cloud and traditional IT. With Zynstra, they get the benefits of both, delivered by IT service providers. We believe this is the future of how small and medium sized businesses will manage IT."

Economic model for SME IT
At the heartthere is a technology that standardises all deployments. By keeping every single customer implementation standardised, it removes the high costs and reliability concerns associated with IT implementations that over time become increasingly customised and prone to failure. The technology also enables Zynstra to keep every IT implementation current and consistent, ensuring that all software is up-to-date and the customer’s experience is as good years later as it is at the beginning.

Michael Clifford, cloud director, HP UK and Ireland, Zynstra’s hardware supplier, commented: "Zynstra is changing how SMEs can buy IT, giving them choices that they didn’t have before. In conjunction with HP hardware, Zynstra’s technology enables the company to provide SMEs with the functionality, cloud capability and low per-user cost that, until now, only large enterprises could enjoy."

Built-in reliability
Zynstra’s IT solution for SMEs is delivered by IT service providers and installed on HP ProLiant servers that are delivered to the customer’s premises. The service providers manage the customer implementation remotely via the cloud using Zynstra’s management solution. Zynstra keeps all IT systems current by rolling out software updates via the cloud only once they’ve been fully tested in its lab and guaranteed conflict-free.

As a result, SMEs get the benefits and functionality of an IT solution without any of the headaches, reliability issues and high costs. It also means that IT becomes scalable and SMEs can add or remove users as required. As with the initial installation, there is no upfront or set-up cost and SMEs pay only a per-user per-month fee for all required hardware and software.

Cycell has been using Zynstra prior to its official launch.

"With Zynstra we have found that IT doesn’t have to be complicated and expensive. For a monthly fee we get all the functionality that we need and our IT service provider manages it all for us," said Bill Darley, CFO for Cycell Limited. "The all-OPEX model gives us predictable IT costs so I know what to budget for as we grow. It’s kept-up-to-date and is scalable so we are sure there will be no unexpected upgrade requirements."

Solution delivers infrastructure and applications including:

Sophisticated security with firewalls, anti-malware, anti-phishing, anti-spam and intrusion detection
File storage
Domain control and authentication with MS Active Directory
Backup and recovery
Internet gateway with content filtering
Applications including MS Exchange, MS SharePoint, Sage 50 and integrations with remote cloud based services such as MS Office365

Pricing and availability
Zynstra is available from partners including Easynet and voxclever. Pricing varies according to the specific package offered by each service provider, but is equivalent to the cost of a typical monthly mobile phone contract per user.

Headquartered in Bath, UK, Zynstra has developed patent-pending technology that gives SMEs hassle-free, enterprise IT with built-in reliability. It announced it raised $2.4 million in angel funding on September 28, 2012. The firm was founded by the software entrepreneurs behind Cramer Systems, the telecoms software company founded in 1996 and sold ten years later for $425 million.