ThinkGrid offers partners ready-made clouds

Cloud services vendor launches private cloud platform for partners

Rob Lovell: Resellers will benefit from access to proven technology

ThinkGrid has launched a ready-made and customisable private cloud platform for VARs daunted by the cost and complexity associated with building their own.

The platform can be hosted in partners’ own datacentres for a monthly fee to provide customers with a choice of ThinkGrid cloud services.

These include the firm’s virtual desktop, hosted Microsoft Exchange and voice over IP offerings, for which partners are free to set pricing.

Rob Lovell, chief executive of ThinkGrid, said: “Having built our own cloud platform from the ground up, we know what it takes to create a reliable and scalable infrastructure serving thousands of end users.

“Resellers benefit from our proven platform, which is based on a range of interoperable standards and technologies.”

Lovell said the maintenance and development of the platform will be handled by ThinkGrid, freeing up partners to recruit more customers. “There is clearly an increasing appetite for cloud services and subsequently a huge amount of opportunity for the channel,” he explained.

Lovell said the firm is considering supporting the platform with a buy-back scheme to support partners struggling to cope with the demand for cloud services.

He explained: “Our private cloud partners will invariably experience times where there is excess capacity in their datacentre and we could consider buying some to help increase capacity for another who needs to fulfil a surge in demand."