Virtustream Announces New Services to Streamline and Simplify Management of Mission-Critical Applications in the Cloud

Virtustream, an enterprise-class cloud company and Dell Technologies business, today announced new xStreamCare Services for the Virtustream Enterprise Cloud platform designed to streamline and simplify migration and management of mission-critical applications in the cloud.

To help customers more quickly and efficiently realize the full benefits of Virtustream Enterprise Cloud as well as their mission-critical applications like those from SAP, Virtustream continues to expand its portfolio of Virtustream xStreamCare Services, a full suite of professional and managed services. The new services span a broad set of enhancements, from simplifying core processes related to SAP system copies and client refreshes, to accelerating virtual machine (VM) creation with custom operating system (OS) image management. Migrating and managing mission-critical applications in the cloud can require special technical skills and tax the limited resources of internal IT organizations with labor-intensive, time-consuming tasks. The new and expanded services are designed to address those pain points.

New Services Address Common Pain Points for Customers to Simplify and Accelerate IT Processes and Projects

• System Copy Services:Large enterprise application environments often present unique technology and resource challenges resulting in a growing need to simplify processes and reduce manual efforts. Enterprises hosting SAP applications on Virtustream Enterprise Cloud can now take a step toward simplifying their environments with the new System Copy Services for SAP applications. As part of this service, Virtustream implements a simplified, four-step process to deliver homogeneous system copies and client refreshes, resulting in fast, efficient and predictable copying. The homogeneous copy process uses bit-for-bit replication of the source system, with no requirements for data-slicing which can often be time consuming and more expensive.

The new services also allow enterprises to perform quality assurance in the test and development phase against exactly what is running in production — without the risk of impacting live data. Additionally, enterprises can use copies to create net-new systems for production, non-production or disaster recovery environments. Virtustream’s SAP-certified experts handle all of the necessary software installation and environment setup, so the customer’s IT staff can focus on more pressing business and IT priorities.

• Operating System Image Management Services:Enterprises that are required to spin-up VMs on a frequent basis have an essential need for rapid, easy VMs creation without the burden to manually customize an entire OS each time. With its new OS Image Management Services offering, Virtustream experts draw on their decade of cloud-based VMs experience to work with customers to develop dedicated OS Images for VM provisioning. By determining a customer’s unique customization needs, these tailored services deliver a simple, flexible method to deploy customized, easy-to-use OS images directly into the xStream portal. As a result, enterprises can more rapidly spin-up new VMs without requiring specialized skills from their existing IT staff. Customizations for an OS image can include settings, configuration, security, patch application, or staging of executables and binaries. This service enables enterprise IT staff to easily create VMs with the option to deploy multiple OS images, supporting different requirements.

“We’re in the business of listening to our customers to solve their most pressing IT business needs,” said Rob Scott, Vice President of Professional and Managed Services, Virtustream. “At Virtustream, we’re focused on continuously adding new offerings to our xStreamCare Services portfolio to directly address our customers’ top pain points through end-to-end solutions that can streamline, simplify and accelerate IT processes, while also reducing costs and increasing application performance and flexibility.”

Additional enhancements to existing services are aimed at further accelerating projects and improving business flexibility. To keep organizations on schedule during short-term IT projects or migrations, Virtustream has updated its Professional & Application Managed Services (PS/AMS) to be available during off-hours (5:01 p.m. – 8:59 a.m. based on the customer’s primary datacenter time zone). Enterprises can now use PS/AMS Services to address their off-hours needs, including skill and resource gaps, prioritizing smaller projects, leveraging workers with diverse skills, and completing projects that require work outside of normal business hours.

Find more information on Virtustream Enterprise Cloud here, and more information about xStreamCare Services here.