BrandPost: Otava Is on a Mission to Make the Cloud Easy for Customers

Otava is on a mission to make the cloud easy for its customers. So says TJ Houske, Vice President of Operations and Solutions Architecture, at the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based cloud provider. We spoke with Houske recently to learn more about Otava’s approach, what it means to be VMware Cloud Verified, and the challenges today’s organizations are facing. 

Source: Original Postress-this.php?">BrandPost: Otava Is on a Mission to Make the Cloud Easy for Customers

“To [make the cloud easy], we provide service provider, public sector, and enterprise organizations with fully customizable, hybrid cloud solutions with hands-on, accessible, and collaborative support before, during, and after migration,” he says. “Our portfolio includes secure and Hybrid Private Cloud Hosting, Colocation, Disaster Recovery, Backup, Desktop as a Service and Security offerings that are available globally and are backed by a 100% uptime SLA.

Otava’s specialty is working with companies that require a high degree of compliance, including those in finance, healthcare, and retail. All of the company’s facilities – including 18 data centers located in Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Cleveland, New York, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Ann Arbor, Flint, Las Vegas, Austin, Washington DC, as well as Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, Germany and Manchester, United Kingdom – are compliant with HIPAA, HITECH, HITRUST, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, and SOC 1, 2, and 3 certifications.

“Otava’s Gen³ Cloud platform is built on VMware Cloud Director and is optimized for industries with advanced security and compliance requirements,”  he adds.  “It can be consumed on a self-service or fully managed basis in public, reserved, or private cloud deployment models – giving IT teams more agility, control, and autonomy over their cloud operations and an easy path to a hybrid model.”

The company’s standard private cloud offering also includes a self-managed version that enables customers to focus on the cloud capabilities they want – including the ability to focus on application development rather than the management of servers. It also offers a fully managed cloud that gives enterprises the option of benefiting from a customized cloud that meets their unique needs, but is fully monitored and maintained by Otava’s experts.

Customers who need public cloud infrastructure are also covered. Otava provides everything enterprises need to plan, build, and deploy software-defined infrastructure with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

Houske notes that, increasingly, many customers require a multi-cloud or hybrid approach.

“Most organizations recognize that one cloud platform will not fit all of their needs,” he says. “Multi-cloud environments are required to handle various workloads and achieve optimal results, but orchestrating multiple environments can be complex to manage. We dramatically simplify that process for our customers.”

Houske says being VMware Cloud Verified helps that effort significantly.

“Our entire Gen³ Cloud portfolio is VMware Cloud Verified,” he says. “It’s important because it gives our customers a standard benchmark to measure against when creating a cloud environment. Our complementary services all flow through our core cloud platform, providing clients with a simple and frictionless route to achieve maximum benefits. Ultimately, it means that when customers are creating a hybrid environment, they have certainty that they are building on validated reference architecture. For current on-premises VMware users, it becomes extremely simple to snap into the Otava cloud environment.”

This is particularly relevant to organizations that face what Houske sees as the four most common challenges today: managing an increasingly remote workforce, handling the complexities associated with multi-cloud environments, the need to optimize resources and do more with less, and the imperative to reduce the complexities of day-to-day IT operations.

Otava offers a complimentary demo of its cloud solutions and services at www.otava.com/contact.

Learn more about Otava and its partnership with VMware here.