Phoenix cuts through the confusion of the IT landscape with new Technology Innovation Centre

Scheduled to open in May 2014, the new centre is designed to address the challenges faced by mid-market organisations, when it comes to managing their IT infrastructure, as well as providing an environment for decision-makers and C-level execs to understand the impact and benefits that potential technologies can have on their organisation.

Unlike large enterprises, mid-market firms don’t necessarily have the financial resources or technical expertise to respond rapidly to dynamic technology changes. They are often forced to build on top of legacy IT systems that do not have the power or flexibility to keep pace with the modern-day requirements of an ever-changing user, customer and competitor landscape.

Created with support from industry practitioners and leading IT vendors including Asigra, Citrix, HP, NetApp and Microsoft, Phoenix’s unique offering will enable organisations across the mid-market to meet with IT, business continuity and resiliency experts, to see how these technologies can be applied to real-life scenarios using replicas of their own servers, applications and data.

The centre enables a range of voice & data technologies including cloud, virtualisation, and mobility services to be investigated and tested in order for organisations to understand how these can be implemented into their existing infrastructure. Visitors will have access to a range of customer experiences, design facilities and live demonstrations that ultimately allow them to plan and build their future infrastructure, including:
· - Server, storage area network and communication equipment
· - BYOD impact testing
· - Network services
· - Hosting and cloud services
· - Infrastructure monitoring & management
· - Recovery proof of concept
· - Backup and archiving
· - Resiliency Solutions Design Centre

Mike Osborne, managing director of Business Continuity services at Phoenix, explains that the new centre aims to provide an outlet that addresses the concerns and complexities experienced by mid-market firms who are looking to cut through the risk & confusion when it comes to transforming their IT infrastructure:
“Managing a diverse IT infrastructure across multiple sites or disparate systems each with different data availability requirements is a challenging process and can put a huge strain on an organisation, regardless of size.

“For SMEs and mid-level firms the impact of this strain is often compounded by financial restrictions – they don’t have the luxury of spending vast amounts of money on solutions which may be outdated or underperforming in a years’ time, and therefore it’s imperative they make the right choices first time when it comes to investing in their IT infrastructure.

“The purpose of our new Technology Innovation Centre is to provide a testing ground to find the best fit for the latest trends, approaches and solutions to develop, maintain and protect, an organisation’s IT estate.

“Visitors can design their own individual journey to plan, test and understand the true impact of change and how to achieve assured performance, efficiency and resilience for their business operations and IT infrastructure. For senior decision makers of a business who do not have the technical know-how, our centre provides an outlet to learn and understand how new technologies fit their business without risk to their production infrastructure.

"We believe this is a unique and significant development, with the potential to change how businesses understand, assess and commission the most appropriate IT solutions to fit their business needs.”