Since first opening its doors in 2001 iCONX Solutions has pioneered the delivery of Cloud based services. From day one we have designed and built our carrier software and services for consumption via the Internet. In this piece we shed some light on Cloud Computing, highlight our track-record in delivering Cloud services, and explain how our accumulated knowledge and expertise in virtualisation technologies may benefit customers.

What are Cloud services?

According to NIST (2011), Cloud Computing is “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources”. In simple terms this means that Cloud Computing offers users 24/7 access to resources such as applications (e.g. iCONX ASP) or storage (e.g. Dropbox) that are delivered securely and consumed as a service via a network such as the public Internet or a private corporate network. Very often, a virtualised computing environment is behind the scenes, providing the platform that enables the presentation and delivery of such Cloud services.

What is Virtualisation?

According to NIST (2011), Virtualisation “is the simulation of the software and/or hardware upon which other software runs”. Put simply, this means that through the use of virtualisation software, one physical computer may be utilised as multiple, independent ‘virtual’ computers, thereby enabling the efficient sharing of the physical computer’s resources such as processing power, storage and networking among the virtual computer systems. This results in greater utilisation of hardware, lowered energy requirements, a smaller hardware footprint, and a significant decrease in the time allocated to systems administration.

The benefits of virtualised on-site implementations

Virtualised environments are becoming the norm – circa 40% of server workloads were virtualised by 2011, with that percentage doubling by 2016 according to Gartner (2012). iCONX supports the objectives of customer virtualisation initiatives by offering on-site implementations of iCONX carrier solutions within customer virtualised infrastructures rather than requiring additional and dedicated stand-alone servers and storage.

Key benefits:

  • Agility: Provisioning times are reduced ensuring quick and efficient iCONX server implementations, while the scaling-up and scaling-out of iCONX servers to improve throughput and accommodate growth is simplified.
  • Service Levels: Out of the box High Availability and Disaster Recovery solutions provide greater flexibility and reliability, enabling improved service levels to both internal and external consumers of iCONX carrier solutions.
  • Productivity: Through centralised management of virtualised infrastructures IT can manage more iCONX servers and services with fewer administrators
  • Total Cost of Ownership: Greater utilisation of computing infrastructure through virtualisation ensures a reduced overall spending on new hardware. Couple that with a significant decrease in administration overheads, which according to IDC (2008) cost more than hardware, power and cooling combined, results overall in an improved TCO.

What does this mean to my business?

Acquiring a new wholesale billing or routing optimisation solution is more affordable than ever. Carrier solutions are traditionally resource hungry. However, delivering iCONX carrier solutions to a customer site within an existing or new virtualised infrastructure significantly reduces TCO while simultaneously providing improved service levels. Alternatively, our solutions may be delivered as true Cloud services through our tried and trusted iCONX ASP hosted service. And at any time a customer may choose to migrate from an on-site hosted solution to our Cloud service or vice-versa.

Cloud & Virtualisation professionals

Twelve years of rapidly and successfully delivering software and services both on-site and in the Cloud to carriers worldwide speaks for itself – iCONX solutions are not only experts in interconnect billing and routing optimisation – we are Cloud and Virtualisation professionals.