WFT Cloud, an SAP-certified provider of cloud services for SAP® solutions, announced a new initiative which involves migrating existing data centers to a Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) concept for enterprise software landscapes.

WFT recognizes that customers are tasked every day to find ways to improve their business agility and speed of innovation, increase their service quality to both internal and external customers, improve their business continuity and reduce/minimize downtime, and ultimately drive down their total cost of ownership (e.g., both capital expenses (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx).

WFT strongly believes this can be achieved by leveraging solutions that provide standardization, visualization, orchestration, and most importantly automation. Automation will be a key factor to help achieve lower operating costs, increased productivity (agility), higher availability and reliability (quality), and better performance (speed).

The increasing demand for cost-effective and flexible data-center solutions along with the requirements for resource pooling, break down of vendor lock-ins and automatic networking configurations are playing an important role in shaping the future of the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC). Even though the solutions can be independently operated, they can be integrated together to provide an overall cost-effective solution for the data center.

According to a recent IDC report, the major forces driving enterprise customers are the innovations in processing power and memory, high demand for resource pooling, and manual/custom networking configurations. Customers that are already running solutions in a virtualized environment or are in the process of virtualization are looking forward to gaining a better competitive advantage within their data center, by extending intelligent and integrated management platforms through SDDC for better automation.

Ganesh Radhakrishnan, CEO of WFT Cloud (Wharfedale Technologies), stated that technologies like SDDC will provide tangible business benefits for enterprise customers with improved agility and reduced operational costs.

WFT, a pioneer of infrastructure delivery for decades, strongly believes the SDDC concept will enable customers to benefit from a higher level of automation for their landscapes, including those with applications from SAP and other vendors. WFT works closely with vendors to achieve better ROI with SDDC for use with SAP solutions.

IT infrastructure for typical enterprise customers has often become distributed and complex. Companies also end up with disparate infrastructure because of mergers and acquisitions. Moving to a SDDC architecture can help increase usability, making the infrastructure more resilient and agile and provides a global view of systems when new applications are deployed, while reducing operational costs.

WFT Cloud implemented server virtualization in-house, seven years ago to reap the benefits of consolidation. The next phase in the roadmap for SDDC was network virtualization, which was achieved with implementation of software-defined networking, which currently provides the core routing, VPN and firewall functionalities for the instances of SAP software in WFT Cloud. The next logical step is storage virtualization, which is currently in the process of being rolled out. WFT Cloud gained valuable experience in deploying this architecture internally for SAP solution landscapes and intends to use this knowledge to solve customers’ business problems and provide automated service provisioning capabilities.

About Wharfedale Technologies Inc.

Wharfedale Technologies Inc. (WFT) is a leading technology consulting firm specializing in infrastructure integrations and services for SAP® solutions, as well as private/public/hybrid cloud solutions. As an SAP-certified provider of cloud and hosting services, Wharfedale also offers solutions around high availability, disaster recovery, advanced sizing for virtualization, backup/recovery integration, systems refresh automation and landscape optimization.

For more information on Wharfedale and WFT Cloud services, please visit http://www.WFTCloud.com or call us at (888) 533-3113.

SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

EasyVista Inc. (http://www.easyvista.com), a global leader in cloud-based IT Service and Asset Management, is proud to be a silver sponsor and exhibitor at the HDI 2014 Conference & Expo. The 24th annual world conference for technical service and support, HDI 2014 is being held at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando (April 1-4, 2014).

The conference is organized by HDI, a global IT service and technical support association, and the industry’s premier certification and training body. Guided by an international panel of industry experts and practitioners, HDI is the leading resource for IT service and technical support, emerging trends, and best practices.

This year’s conference aims to draw more than 2,300 IT service and support professionals with briefings and speaking sessions from industry thought leaders, practitioners and process experts from around the world. EasyVista, will be on-site in the expo hall to deliver presentations on how EasyVista can improve ITSM within an organization and the various departments that IT has a positive impact towards. Those that visit the EasyVista booth will see the latest developments EasyVista is making within its cloud-based solutions and how they aim to further revolutionize the market.

“More and more organizations are striving to deliver a richer IT experience to end-users and customers. We aim to continue to deliver that experience and the HDI 2014 attendees will get a glimpse of the next evolution of this within EasyVista,” explained Andrew White, General Manager (Americas) and EVP of Marketing at EasyVista. “We’re greatly looking forward to our participation at HDI 2014, as each year it draws in the best and brightest IT service and support professionals from around the world and allows us to further educate on how EasyVista can help their organizations.”

EasyVista can be found in the expo hall at booth #618 and will present demonstrations throughout the event, have staff available to answer any questions, and hold a prize raffle.

About EasyVista

EasyVista Inc., a leading provider of IT Service and Asset Management software, has more than 25 years of experience as a pure player in the IT Management space. The company has a direct presence around the world with offices in the US, Canada, France, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain and Portugal. EasyVista is quoted on NYSE Alternext exchange. For more information, visit: http://www.easyvista.com.

VMware vCloud Hybrid Service has recently become generally availability in Europe, providing customers the flexibility to stretch their IT resources across their on-premise infrastructure and an off-premise data center in Slough, UK, that meets UK and EU compliance and data sovereignty demands.

vCHS is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud operated by VMware and built on VMware’s vSphere virtualization platform for cloud infrastructure. By providing a secure off-premise environment, it adds an easy route for private clouds to become hybrid clouds. VMware launched vCHS in the US in 2013, and the company plans on launching more locations across Europe in 2014.

For the users of its UK cloud, VMware provides fully-redundant server infrastructure using VMware vSphere vMotion and VM availability guarantees.

VMware’s cloud uses flash-accelerated disk storage, 10G networking and congestion control to meet performance demands. And, because vCHS uses network virtualization, VMware customers can deploy load balancers, firewalls and VPNs to replicate their physical networking configuration.

Data residency, compliance, privacy and security concerns are paramount for companies considering using cloud services and third-party data centers. Given this concerns, many local companies like Germany’s Deutsche Telekom have used security as a selling point, and has caused major international cloud service providers establish local presences.

Concern over data residency and compliance are also high among UK enterprises.

In a recent poll of 200 VMware enterprise customers in the UK, VMware found that 86 percent said it was important to be able to store data in UK-based clouds to comply with residency regulations, and over half said they were legally required to meet these residency requirements. Meanwhile, VMware also found that 20 percent of those surveyed were unaware of where all of their data currently resides.

“VMware vCloud Hybrid Service provides VMware customers with the flexibility to dynamically move workloads into a VMware public cloud as business and market opportunities dictate, whilst ensuring they’re in control of compliance and security within their region,” VMware EMEA Cloud Services VP and GM Gavin Jackson said in a statement.

Customers will have term-based subscriptions based on capacity. Specific pricing information has not been released.

Vocus, Inc. (NASDAQ: VOCS), a leading provider of cloud-based marketing and public relations software and consulting services, today announced that PAPCO, a proven leader in innovative fuel solutions, has selected Vocus Marketing Suite and the company’s consulting services to launch its brand into competitive new markets in the petroleum industry. The energy company chose the Marketing Suite because of its comprehensive, integrated marketing automation tools and the easy-to-analyze dashboard metrics.

Based in Virginia Beach, Va., PAPCO serves a wide customer base of mid-to-large fuel consumers throughout the Eastern United States including gas station owners, large commercial transportation companies and federal, state, and municipal government agencies. For over 30 years, PAPCO has offered an exceptional and diverse portfolio of energy-related products and services by leveraging its vast industry expertise and market knowledge, making it a widely trusted energy partner. The company turned to Vocus to achieve its marketing goals of building awareness, enhancing brand value, improving the customer experience, and increasing sales and market share.

“PAPCO cultivates strong relationships with our audience to succeed in the volatile energy marketing industry. The Marketing Suite will help us deliver exemplary customer service and build trust with our audience,” said PAPCO Director of Marketing Frank Daniels. “As we expand into new markets, having an integrated tool that automates and optimizes our social media, PR, email and analytics activities will help us communicate with our growing audience and aid in increasing our market share.”

To further PAPCO’s mission of being recognized as an industry leader in providing innovative solutions through personalized customer care, the company’s marketing team will rely on the Suite’s Social CRM to create robust profiles of its customer base and the Recommendation Engine to aid them in engaging with customers online.

In addition to the Marketing Suite, PAPCO’s marketing team will also engage with the Vocus Marketing Consultants. “We’ll be relying on the Vocus Marketing Consultants to answer our questions about best practices and tactics in the business-to-business space and help guide our development of content marketing strategies for our target audiences,” said Daniels.

About PAPCO

PAPCO is a leading petroleum and energy supplier in the Eastern United States and markets refined fuels, lubricants, risk management products and fuel card fleet management programs to a broad customer base which includes industrial, retail, marine, commercial transportation companies (trucking, transit, railroad, marine) and federal, state, and municipal government end users in the Eastern United States. PAPCO backs their value-added services with its secure fuel supply capabilities through proprietary fuel storage locations and supply agreements with an established network of refiners, pipelines, terminals, and transportation providers that have been expanding since 1976.

PAPCO leverages over 30 years of experience in petroleum hedging and product trading to offer innovative price risk management solutions, allowing fuel users to better manage operating budgets and fuel cost. Additionally, PAPCO offers a diverse menu of other product and service solutions including fleet card services, fuel inventory management, on-line account management and storage systems. Through the use of the industry’s latest technology, PAPCO provides seamless fuel procurement and inventory management solutions to its clients that bring efficiencies and cost savings to their businesses.

About Vocus

Vocus (NASDAQ: VOCS) provides leading cloud-based marketing and public relations software and consulting services enabling companies to acquire and retain customers. The company offers products and services to help clients attract and engage prospects, capture and keep customers, and measure and improve marketing effectiveness. More than 17,000 annual subscription customers across a wide variety of industries use Vocus software. The company is headquartered in Beltsville, MD with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit http://www.vocus.com or call (800) 345-5572.

Forward-Looking Statement

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The risks and uncertainties referred to above include, but are not limited to, risks associated with possible fluctuations in our operating results and rate of growth, our history of operating losses, risks associated with acquisitions, including our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses, risks associated with our foreign operations, interruptions or delays in our service or our web hosting, our business model, breach of our security measures, the emerging market in which we operate, our relatively limited operating history, our ability to hire, retain, and motivate our employees and manage our growth, competition, our ability to continue to release and gain customer acceptance of new and improved versions of our service, successful customer deployment and utilization of our services, fluctuations in the number of shares outstanding, foreign currency exchange rates and interest rate.