Summary: TierPoint rolled out a managed Azure cloud infrastructure service across its US footprint. It will also support the Office 365 messaging and collaboration service.
Details: The service builds on work Cosentry had already kickstarted before becoming a part of TierPoint (acquired in January this year) and was seen as one of the benefits in the deal. TierPoint has now built out the resources necessary for helping customers with assessment, design, implementation, optimization and ultimately, migration to cloud. It will then layer over its various managed services capabilities.
Customer: TierPoint brought on a customer – Lansing Trading Group – for managed Azure in a hybrid configuration.
Angle: TierPoint has its roots in colocation but through a series of acquisitions has built out a managed services and managed hosting capability. It is betting that hybrid will be the primary deployment model and is building the mixed services portfolio – now inclusive of key building block: massive-scale public cloud – that will allow it to create a best-fit infrastructure value proposition. The shift to managed third party cloud future-proofs TierPoint as many of its customers and leads in the pipeline want to know how they might take advantage of public cloud. They might not be doing it now, but at some point they want to know their primary outsourced infrastructure provider has a plan and can help. Moving to third party cloud is also a good way to expand an existing relationship with a customer without outlaying OpEx. TierPoint’s presence in a number of local markets plays into the ‘trusted advisor’ role it is increasingly taking on.