Investing in communications technology can be a lot like buying a car.
Although you’ve invested time and money in the autonomy to drive anywhere, at any time, you have also bought the responsibility of the maintenance and periodic repair of the car, and when it breaks down entirely it’s expensive to replace it. Which is why buying a beaten-up old jalopy for a long road trip is a bad idea.
Challenge: Healthcode handle important and sensitive data within a strict regulatory framework and need guarantees on data location, security and uptime.
Solution: A secure Managed Hosting solution, featuring enterprise grade disaster recovery and data protection measures, all underpinned by Claranet’s core MPLS network.
Result: Claranet has enabled Healthcode to accommodate growing customer demand, without surrendering the tight control it requires over its customers’ personal data.
Healthcode’s core business is electronic billing and the company processes approximately 18,000 bills from providers to insurers on a daily basis and around 600,000 clinical records annually. Its services and applications are critical to the functioning of private hospitals, insurers and consultants up and down the country, who entrust them with extremely confidential, personal and commercially sensitive data.
Given the sensitivities of the data that Healthcode handles and the regulatory framework governing the health industry, data sovereignty is a key issue for its clients who stipulate
that their data should not leave the UK.
To meet its clients’ service delivery and data protection requirements head on, Healthcode required a secure, resilient managed hosting solution delivered only out of UK-based data centres, explained Peter Connor, Managing Director at Healthcode:
A lot of very sensitive data goes through our systems, and we’re held directly accountable by our partners and their customers in the case of an outage or data breach. Our customers rely on our services to function day-to-day, so in order to support their businesses, it’s critical that they can access our applications at all times. Our stringent compliance to the ISO27001 system in the management of information security is, after all, a core reason our services are chosen above our competitors, so we needed a hosting provider that could offer us all-important guarantees about data location, security and uptime.”
With these key considerations in mind, Healthcode called on Claranet who devised a secure and reliable Managed Hosting solution designed to safeguard the delivery of its applications.
Underpinned by Claranet’s MPLS network, the solution features enterprise grade disaster recovery and data protection measures with 24/7 support from the managed services provider. Claranet also provides Healthcode with a number of other key services, including Internet Connectivity, Web Acceleration and DoS Protection to protect against external threats, Hosted Desktop and email services. Crucially, Claranet is able to meet the Healthcode’s data sovereignty requirements, as the service is delivered exclusively out of UK-based datacentres.
Peter explained the wider significance of the introduced solution:
Having worked with Claranet before, we knew they would go the extra mile to exactly meet our specifications. Claranet proposed a tailored service that met our strict
security and availability demands. Our new infrastructure is so watertight that it would take some sort of force majeure event for us to have to use our disaster recovery environment – but it does give us and our clients’ peace of mind. It was a combination of Claranet’s processes, people and facilities, and their ability to offer a complete end-to-end solution, which led us to choose them as our hosting partner.”
Healthcode’s new Managed Hosting platform has enabled the company to accommodate growing customer demand, without surrendering the tight control it requires over its customers’ personal data.
Peter continued:
Our new platform is more resilient and robust against data breaches with an in-built disaster recovery system so we can offer a truly secure service to the private health sector. Data sovereignty is critically important for our business, and as Claranet operates only in-country data centres, they are able to offer the assurances on data location we – and by extension, our customers – need.”
Claranet’s revamped solution has provided Healthcode with the infrastructure support necessary to cement its position as market leader, though, as Peter explained, the true benefit of the service has been seen in the everyday work carried out with Claranet’s dedicated support team to continually support and improve application delivery:
Both approachable and accommodating, Claranet’s service management team is at the front line, ensuring applications run at their optimum speed, are completely secure, and that changes can be made instantaneously. Their understanding of our plans for growth in turn enables us to deliver our innovative applications, and deliver return on investment to our customers.”
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Jointly owned by AXA PPPh, Bupa, Aviva, Nuffield Health and VitalityHealth, Healthcode is the leading online application software provider for the private healthcare sector in the UK.
Specialising in products that enable private practices and hospitals to manage their insurance and billing processes, the company currently processes in excess of £2.5 billion worth of bills and insurance claims every year.
With the increased use of e-billing and online insurance processing by its clients, Healthcode has seen demand for its range of applications grow rapidly in recent years, prompting the company to refresh its infrastructure.
Claranet acquires Aspaway, Runiso and Morea to strengthen application management capabilities
Claranet, the leading managed services provider in Europe, has completed its third acquisition in France in as many months, having acquired French hosting providers Morea, Runiso and Aspaway. The acquisitions will significantly enhance the company’s application management and public cloud capabilities and position Claranet as one of the most ambitious, capable and dynamic players in the French market.
As part of its corporate strategy, Claranet has been working to establish a larger footprint in France and ensure that it is able to cater to the increasingly complex hosting needs of its customers. The acquisitions of Morea, Runiso and Aspaway go a long way to helping the company fulfil these ambitions, and have seen the Claranet Group grow to over 1,000 employees, with over 5,500 customers. The newly expanded Group will have annual revenues of over €228 million.
The company is leveraging Morea’s expertise with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build out public cloud services across the entire Group, while the secure and high-availability hosting services brought by Runiso and Aspaway will enable Claranet to manage more complex and business-critical applications for its customers.
Olivier Beaudet, Claranet’s Group CMO and Managing Director of Claranet France, commented:
The acquisitions of Morea, Runiso and Aspaway mark a turning point for Claranet France, strengthening our market offering and enabling us to better respond to the changing needs of our customers. We now have an incredibly broad service offering, incorporating managed hosting and DevOps, healthcare specialisation and PCI-DSS compliance, public cloud and the highest levels of security, putting us in a good position to pursue further growth. Claranet France is now the second largest country in the Claranet Group, and we are one of the most capable and dynamic hosting providers in the French market.”
He continued:
Morea’s heritage in managing public cloud environments also stands to benefit the Claranet Group more widely as we are now developing new products and services to help our customers to access the advantages of public cloud but with the support of Claranet’s managed services.
Claranet continues to be a success story in the European technology market, having grown steadily both organically and through acquisition. Adopting an ambitious growth strategy, these acquisitions are the latest made by the company across Europe over the last 18 months, these were preceded by: Echiron (Portugal), Grita (France), NovaData (The Netherlands), Celingest (Spain), Techgate (UK), and LinuxIT (UK).
The network is the backbone of the modern 24×7 digital business.
Your website, your transactions, your communications…everything in your business relies on it.
All the time.
And when network downtime can cost £3,670 [1] a minute, your network performance sets the precedent for your company’s performance.
But, despite this, networks trail far behind other areas of IT infrastructure in terms of their agility and ability to respond to changing business needs.
Claranet was named Managed Services Provider (MSP) of the Year at the Storage, Virtualisation, Cloud (SVC) Awards 2015 last night (3 December 2015) at a ceremony in central London. The award, which is the company’s second major win of 2015, confirms Claranet’s position as the leading independent MSP in Europe.
The SVC Awards were established to recognise the end users, resellers and vendors that are setting the bar for innovation in the storage, virtualisation and cloud industries across EMEA. The MSP of the Year category is one of the most hotly contested categories of the awards, and Claranet fought off stiff competition to be crowned the winner. A two-stage judging process saw entries first assessed by a panel of industry experts, before being shortlisted for a public vote.
2015 has been a significant year for Claranet; a year which saw it enter the Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200 for the first time, maintain its leading position in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, Europe, and make a number of strategic acquisitions across Europe to drive growth and enhance its portfolio of services.
Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK Managing Director, commented:
This award win comes as welcome validation of our corporate strategy and confirms our leading place in the European managed services market as we enter our 20th year in the industry. As a company we have worked hard over the past year to ensure that we can continue to be the services provider of choice for the mid-market, both here and on the continent. The acquisitions of LinuxIT and Techgate in the UK earlier this year have significantly strengthened our disaster recovery and application management capabilities, while acquisitions in France and Spain have boosted our public cloud offering.”
He concluded:
Over the year ahead we will continue to invest in our people, processes and technology to consolidate on our recent acquisitions and continue to enable our customers to do amazing things. We are delighted to have won this award, and would like to thank the judging panel and all those who voted for us.”
Managed services provider (MSP) Claranet has appointed Ian Furness as the Operations Director for its UK business. Stepping into the position, which was most recently held by Wiebe Nauta, now Managing Director at Claranet Benelux, Ian will play a critical role in supporting Claranet’s service delivery and driving improvements in the overall experience of its customers.
Ian joins Claranet with over 15 years’ experience in the telecoms and managed services space. His most recent position was that of Chief Operating Officer at Advanced 365, part of the Advanced Computer Software Group recently sold to Vista Capital for £725 million. During his tenure at Advanced 365, he was directly responsible for driving operational stability and improvements within the company’s managed services division. Prior to that, Ian held a number of senior roles in the industry, working with companies such as Cable & Wireless, 2e2, Ericsson, BT and Energis.
As Operations Director, Ian is responsible for the delivery of services to the UK customer-base, from consulting through implementation and service evolution. Ian will work with the company’s sales and product teams to ensure that products and services meet the needs and expectations of Claranet’s customers.
Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK Managing Director, commented:
Claranet’s Operations Team is responsible for delivering our service strategy and for ensuring that the highest standards of quality are delivered to our customers. The team comprises the frontline in our daily customer interactions so the role of our Operations Director is critically important. Ian brings with him a wealth of operational experience in the managed services industry and his skillset will serve us well as we strive to continually improve the service we provide to our customers.”
Claranet’s Operations Director, Ian Furness, added:
Claranet has established a reputation for providing strong customer service, something that has contributed heavily to the company’s continued and growing success. The services that we provide for our customers are increasingly business critical and are growing in complexity, but working alongside the team I am confident that we can improve further upon the standards for which we are known.”
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