Avanade Releases Cloud Services Manager to Help Businesses Simplify and Integrate the Management of Multiple Private Cloud Services

Avanade Extends Microsoft(R) System Center 2012 to Create an Integrated View of Disparate Private Cloud Services in the Enterprise


SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwire - Apr 24, 2012) - Avanade®, a business technology solutions and managed services provider, today announced its new solution to help companies manage private cloud environments. Extending the capabilities of Microsoft System Center 2012, Avanade's Cloud Services Manager enables companies to deploy and manage cloud services across multiple cloud vendor environments including Microsoft, VMware® and Citrix®. Avanade can also extend support to other cloud services including Microsoft Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services™ based on company needs. Cloud Services Manager delivers a single view of all private cloud services that is automatically customized for a person's role, giving them the most relevant information to scale up or down a private cloud service.

Tyson Hartman, Avanade's global chief technology officer, said, "There is significant demand for private cloud services by enterprises that want to take advantage of the scalability and elasticity benefits of cloud services while providing IT managers with tighter control. However, companies need strong, integrated management tools in place to avoid the unmanaged proliferation of cloud services. This service sprawl can lead to huge potential risks around security, costs and governance. Avanade's Cloud Services Manager puts a cohesive service management layer on top of private cloud services so that companies can see the full picture and get ahead of the curve on their cloud deployments."

Demand for elasticity without sacrificing control is driving rapid adoption of private cloud services. In fact, Forrester Research, Inc.1 predicts that the market for private cloud solutions will grow from $7.8 billion in 2011 to $15.9 billion in 2020. With Avanade's Cloud Services Manager, companies can create cloud environments that are standardized across the enterprise, making it easier for IT to manage requests for new services, gain greater visibility across services and maintain governance. It also provides a single portal for users to design, organize and manage IT services across cloud environments in a way that is more meaningful for their business.

The solution brings together multiple self-service activities, such as provisioning or changing new services and monitoring costs. Cloud Services Manager's drag-and-drop graphical interface provides a simple and intuitive way to design and validate new private cloud services more quickly.

"Cloud Services Manager has been designed and built around business needs, such as increasing efficiencies and controlling costs, and presents information in a language that business people understand," adds Hartman. "By managing cloud services in a business context, Avanade's Cloud Services Manager empowers IT and business people to dial up or down the cloud services they need at any given time."

Early adopters of Cloud Services Manager are already seeing the benefits of highly-automated, self-service tools. For example, one large enterprise was able to reduce its provisioning time to deploy a new cloud environment from more than 22 days with a traditional, more manual process, to less than 22 minutes with Cloud Services Manager. By designing, deploying and validating the environment quickly and simply through Cloud Services Manager's interface, the company saved valuable time, eliminated delays and utilized existing capacity to create the new environment.

Avanade's Cloud Services Manager is part of Avanade's holistic approach to cloud applications and services that help companies focus their IT spend to accelerate their business while achieving predictable service levels and costs. Avanade provides cloud-ready services that can be delivered via public, hybrid or private clouds for key enterprise applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence and collaboration. For more information, please visit: www.avanade.com/cloud.

About Avanade
Avanade provides business technology solutions and managed services that connect insight, innovation and expertise in Microsoft® technologies to help customers realize results. Our people have helped thousands of organizations in all industries improve business agility, employee productivity, and customer loyalty. Avanade combines the collective business, technical and industry expertise of its worldwide network of experts with the rigor of an industrialized delivery model to provide high quality solutions using proven and emerging technologies with flexible deployment models -- on premises, cloud-based or outsourced. Avanade, which is majority owned by Accenture, was founded in 2000 by Accenture LLP and Microsoft Corporation and has 15,000 professionals in more than 20 countries. Additional information can be found at www.avanade.com.

1 Forrester Research, Inc., April 2011: "Sizing the Cloud"

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