Memset, Dedicated Hosting

The Cabinet Office Signs Up Memset To Host The New CloudStore Website

Wed, 01 May 2013 12:15:04 +0000

The Cabinet Office Signs Up Memset To Host The New CloudStore Website

Guildford, Surrey - 15th May 2013 - Award-winning, IL2 accredited IaaS provider, Memset have today revealed that they have been signed up by the Cabinet Office to host the G-Cloud's new CloudStore website.

The new CloudStore website offers greater visibility of suppliers and services and fast availability of new offerings through a refresh of the framework.

Jonty Sutton, MD at Redbox Digital who designed and developed the new site alongside and Transform (part of Engine Partners) said: "As the CloudStore is essentially a shop front for hundred's of pre-approved suppliers to show off their products and services we considered Magento to be the best open source ecommerce platform on the market to achieve this."

Transform and Redbox have worked on splitting existing services into the constituent parts that can be purchased through the CloudStore and ensured that users have access to more detailed information about services and suppliers as well.

The G-Cloud team are leading the way by choosing UK SMEs like Redbox Digital to design and build the site and Memset to host it on a cluster of their Xen based "open standard" Miniserver Cloud Servers.

Kate Craig-Wood, MD of Memset said: "We're very excited to be hosting the new CloudStore website and the new sites' look and feel is representative of the dynamic and progressive nature of the G-Cloud programme."

Denise McDonagh, Programme Director G-Cloud said: "G-Cloud is the cornerstone of a new Government mandate to consider Cloud solutions before any other option. To facilitate this a revamp of the CloudStore was a necessity. We now have the platform in place for the CloudStore to continue that evolution."

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Memsets G-Cloud Revenue Increases by 38%

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:17:19 +0000

Memsets G-Cloud Revenue Increases by 38%

Guildford, Surrey – 29 May 2013 – With total G-Cloud CloudStore spending topping £18.2 million, with a spike in sales recorded in March according to the latest statistics, early IL2 accredited IaaS supplier, Memset have revealed that their G-Cloud revenues have too been boasted significantly in the last six months.

With notable wins from The Cabinet Office, GDS and Home Office have seen Memset’s G-Cloud revenues increase by 38% over the last six months. G-Cloud sourced accounts are now responsible for over 4% of the company’s total revenues.

Kate Craig-Wood, MD of Memset said: “It's great that G-Cloud is starting to work. Only a year ago we had negligible public sector business, and the explosive growth we are experiencing in that area is proof that G-Cloud is helping government make good on its promise that 25% of business will go to SMEs.”

With the third iteration of G-Cloud framework, Giii, due in May, Kate Craig-Wood said: “We’re really excited about the third iteration of G-Cloud. There had been some teething problems with the first two iterations, but now those kinks are worked out I hope that we will see an increase in the rate of new suppliers joining the marketplace."

"In relatively slack times with the lingering recession this boost from public sector business is especially welcome. What's even better is that by most accounts our government customers are paying perhaps a tenth of what they would have been charged under the old regime. It really is a win-win for government and SMEs.” concluded Craig-Wood.

Memset is currently pursing IL3 accreditation putting them into a strong position to secure even further business in the CloudStore in the near future, especially with the government’s target for half of all new IT spending to be on public cloud services by 2015.

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Memset Earns Top Environmental Award

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:23:44 +0000

Awarded ‘Innovative Energy-Efficient Project Award’ at the Energy & Environment Awards

Guildford, Surrey – 24 April 2013 – Cloud provider, Memset has been recognised at this year's Energy & Environment Awards for their ongoing innovative energy-efficient project to actively and scientifically lower the energy footprint of their services, in particular, examining the efficiency of their Miniserver VM virtual machines.

Scooping the ‘Innovative Energy-Efficient Project Award’, Memset’s project involved examining the load levels and power consumption of their Miniserver VM^® host server estate for 32 months.

By iteratively refining and fine-tuning the host hardware, Memset have been able to reduce the average power consumption of one Miniserver Compute Unit (MCU) from 26watts mid-2009 to 4.7watts end-2011. Since then, consumption has further improved to roughly 3.7watts per MCU.

Memset have reduced their power consumption faster than Moore’s Law predicts. Helping them maintain their position as Britain’s cheapest virtual machine (VM) provider by delivering a higher performance product through fine-tuning and the elimination of bottlenecks.

The judges said: “Memset have been awarded the winner for their excellent project which has shown how attention to detail on a company’s core business can lead to sufficient energy savings at low cost. The potential to replicate is substantial."

Kate Craig-Wood, MD of Memset, who also headed up the project said: "This is another fantastic achievement for Memset. We're delighted to have been recognised for the efforts we have made in substantially reducing the power of our Miniserver VM® virtual servers. We encourage all businesses to collect and analyse more data about their own power consumption and activities. It is likely that larger businesses will be mandated to do so anyway, so it makes sense to get ahead of the game now!"

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Mayor of Waverley opens new Jigsaw+ service

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:58:16 +0000

The Mayor of Waverley was amongst a number of VIP guests invited to celebrate the launch of Jigsaw+ on Friday, 19^th April, a new adult service provision for individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder or related disability.

Overseen by the Jigsaw Trust, which also operates the Jigsaw CABAS® School for children on the autism spectrum aged 4-19, Jigsaw+ will provide learning support, vocational activities and wellbeing services for adults through their Centre for Lifelong Learning based on Dunsfold Park.

As Adele Grandon, Manager of Jigsaw+, says “The transition from school to adulthood is particularly challenging for young adults with autism. Jigsaw+ offers a safe, autism friendly environment that offers a wide range of vocational training opportunities and encourages the development of essential life skills.”

Jigsaw Trust has spent a number of months refurbishing The Centre for Lifelong Learning and has had an enormous amount of support from many local companies and individuals. In addition to the help provided by Jim McAllister, Chief Executive of Dunsfold Park Ltd, the new leaseholders of the building, Memset, have also been extremely generous in their support, providing essential building installations and valuable advice. A grant from the Big Lottery Fund also enabled the purchase of a wide range of essential IT equipment and software for the new Computer Suite.

Jigsaw Trust Chief Executive, Kate Grant, explains “We have long been planning to extend the Trust’s existing specialist services for children with autism, to include adults. I am absolutely delighted that the day has now come to officially launch the Jigsaw+ Centre for Lifelong Learning. The massive interest shown by parents and professionals since our phased start up back in September 2012, highlights the genuine need for adult services such as this.

Jigsaw+ owes a great deal to its many supporters and I would like to take the opportunity to thank Dunsfold Park Ltd, Memset Ltd, Surrey and Sussex Probation Service, Big Lottery Fund, Mulberry Trust, OW Hospitality, ACT Foundation and all the friends, families, staff and local community supporters who have donated time and money, wielded paintbrushes, steamers and generally got ‘stuck in’ to help….thank you all.”

Jim McAllister, Chief Executive of Dunsfold Park Ltd, said, “I was delighted to attend the opening of Jigsaw Trust’s new adult service. I am full of admiration for what the staff, working together with the parents and pupils, have achieved since Jigsaw moved to Dunsfold Park and am very pleased to see the school going from strength to strength, laying the foundations for what we hope will be a long term home at the site.”

Memset Ltd Managing Director, Kate Craig-Wood commented “As head leaseholders of this building, we have been delighted to be able to offer our support and advice throughout the refurbishment work and to watch the subsequent establishment of such a worthwhile new service. We are especially looking forward to making use of some of the local social enterprises that Jigsaw+ has planned. It’s terrific to see this become a reality for both Jigsaw+ and the amazing people they support.”

Photo L-R: Jim McAllister, Kate Craig-Wood, Kate Grant (CEO Jigsaw Trust), Mayor & Mayoress of Waverley (Cllr Tony & Mrs Cathy Gordon-Smith)

About Jigsaw CABAS® School

The Jigsaw Trust is a registered charity, set up in 1999 by a group of local parents with children with autism spectrum disorders. Its aim is to provide a specialist resource for children diagnosed with this perplexing lifelong disorder. The Jigsaw CABAS® School uses applied behaviour analysis (ABA) as its teaching methodology. CABAS® is an acronym for the Comprehensive Application of Behaviour Analysis to Schooling and since 2003, Jigsaw has been a certified CABAS® school. Jigsaw is able to cater for up to 60 children from the age of 4 through to 19 years. A Life Skills Centre has been established in Guildford which provides a ‘home’ environment for students to increase their levels of independence by learning and practicing essential life skills. Jigsaw is one of only around 10 schools in the UK to use applied behaviour analysis as its teaching methodology and the only fully CABAS accredited school in the UK. September 2012 also saw the establishment of a Post-19/Adult Services provision ensuring pupils are helped with their transition into young adulthood and beyond. This Jigsaw+ Centre for Lifelong Learning is based near the Jigsaw CABAS® School on Dunsfold Park, nr Cranleigh.

Memset Introduces Cloud Migration Service, CloudClone

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:06:58 +0000

Avoids Vendor Lock-In and Enables Data to be Moved Between Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage and Other Sources

Guildford, Surrey – 25 April 2013 – Memset the award-winning IaaS company today announced the launch of CloudClone, an easy to use and innovative application built on open source technology that enables businesses to move data stored in the cloud easily from one vendor to another.

The integrated app lets you copy any containers of your choice from one cloud storage account to another. It can do this between accounts with the same cloud vendor (e.g. for backup purposes), or can migrate your data to a competing cloud service.

Kate Craig-Wood, founder and MD of Memset said: “CloudClone has been designed to help businesses overcome the “data portability” problem that impedes cloud service adoption. The complexities of cloud service migration mean that many customers stay with a provider that doesn’t meet their needs, but with CloudClone business cloud users can easily move data and start to tap into a variety of services.”

CloudClone currently supports the following types of cloud storage account: Memset's Memstore, Rackspace's Cloud Files, Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and Google's Cloud Storage.

Storage clouds are currently highly segregated environments, with vendors adopting different proprietary technologies. Migration can sometimes be difficult or time consuming due to factors like different file naming formats or folder representations, leaving businesses feeling locked-in. With CloudClone, Memset has put the power back in the hand of customers to migrate between cloud storage suppliers in order to gain advantages like better pricing or better support.

CloudClone is completely free to use and can be found here: http://www.cloudclone.com

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Memset Make Cloud Migrations Easier

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:48:57 +0000

- Memset Team Up With SEM Solutions To Make Migrations Quicker & Less Costly Than Ever -

Guildford, Surrey – 6 March 2013 – Cloud hosting provider, Memset have today revealed they hope to move along enterprise adoption of and migration to cloud with a new partnership with SEM Solutions.

SEM Solutions, a company that has eight years experience in migration, is working with Memset to help their customers assess their ability and preparedness for migrating applications to the cloud.

A recent Cloud Survey report published by consultancy KPMG International, revealed that a third of the 650 respondents said that the costs of moving to the cloud were higher than expected, mainly because they belatedly discovered that it involved more changes in their existing business and IT architectures than they'd originally recognised.

SEM Solutions, MD Simon Mohr said: “This report highlights the need to work closely with a migration partner to identify whether upgrades to your current system need to be undertaken prior to migration, minimizing costs and migration times well in advance.”

“In many ways cloud hosting is living up to expectations and can bring both agility and cost savings. I see the Cloud as the coming together of the internet and enterprise – over time it will more than prove its worth. Cloud hosting offers huge and open-ended possibilities, especially for new systems or infrastructure. We’re seeing ever more complex Cloud and hybrid hosting environments being built and conceived. Careful planning is often needed and expectations need to be managed, especially when migrating legacy systems and data rather than starting new projects on the Cloud. Migrating to a new IT infrastructure that is untested can indeed be challenging and this is where unexpected costs can arise along with time delays which can be very frustrating for all involved. Companies often don’t have these skills in-house so working with an experienced migration partner is often essential,” continued Mohr.

Memset have worked with SEM Solutions for the past couple of years and they have successfully migrated a number of Memset’s clients, including; Hitched.co.uk, Oxford Hardware and Conservatory Blinds Ltd.

Kate Craig-Wood, MD of Memset said: “The corporate data centre is undergoing a major transformation, and it isn't just the server platform: the entire infrastructure from top to bottom is seeing major changes as applications migrate to private and public clouds, networks get faster, and virtualization becomes the norm. Our expertise continues to firmly reside in the infrastructure, whilst SEM Solutions focus on application migration.”

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Memset bail out 2e2 customers with free migration

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 13:45:23 +0000

Following the recent collapse of IT contractor 2e2, Memset is sympathetic to the plight of customers who, through no fault of their own, have been left out in the cold. The fact that 2e2 seems to have leased many of its servers and equipment, rather than owning them outright, has meant that what is left of the company is less than attractive for any potential
buyer.

Kate Craig-Wood, Managing Director of Memset, said "This is a bad situation for the customers that rely on 2e2 for their hosted services. You obtain and outsource hosting so that you can sleep soundly at night knowing that someone else is looking after it. To have this rug pulled out from under you must be very stressful for the companies involved. Memset is looking at extending a helping hand to any companies who need server or cloud hosting capacity by offering a free migration service to us, providing that the customer signs up for a sensible period of time.”

It is only natural for cases like this to make people wary of the "Cloud" or hosting in general but, in the same way businesses fail all the time, you just need to make sure that whoever you partner with for these services is debt free, profitable and has sound and experienced management in place.

Memset has been successfully providing managed hosting and dedicated servers for over 10 years, winning many awards for service and reliability, including the 2011 ISPA Best Managed Service award. They are highly profitable and growing at >35% CAGR while accumulating cash. Memset has sold no equity, is debt-free and in the top 10 in the Netcraft survey for reliability. They have been leaders in the UK's virtual server market since inception and have been recognised as providing the Best Public Cloud Solution at the DCS 2012 awards.

Today they are at the forefront of the cloud revolution with their Miniserver VM^®cloud compute and Memstore^TM cloud storage solutions. Memset is also an IaaS/PaaS G-Cloud Foundation Delivery Partner and its Miniserver VM^®virtual servers are IL-2 accredited.

Gamification Meets The Cloud

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:34:54 +0000

Lush Use Memset Cloud To Deliver Gamification Employee Training

Guildford, Surrey – 8 January 2013 – Award-winning British cloud provider, Memset, has provided the cloud infrastructure to enable Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics to roll out their game-based, interactive, digital staff training programme across Europe.

The mobile and online learning game, called Lush Quests, introduces new staff to Lush’s brand and products with challenges and rewards throughout the digital gaming interface.

Memset has provided five Miniserver VM^® virtual servers to host German, French, Italian, Spanish and English versions of the training programme. To date, over 2000 employees have undertaken this exciting new online training programme, based on gamification, which is quickly becoming a successful and favoured trend in marketing and branding campaigns.

Lush Quests takes the form of an interactive story, told in a fast paced manner over the course of about 20 minutes. Following the game’s completion, employees complete a 10-minute quiz to confirm their understanding of the material.

The programme is delivered from the cloud and is compatible with almost any device. Behind the scenes, the application is delivered by leveraging the capabilities of Memset’s public cloud platform. These capabilities include:

• Compute: Common REST-based web services powering the user interfaces and the game's HTML5 user interface itself, both with the ability to scale up and down, allowing several hundred employees to download, install and play simultaneously.

• Storage and Data: Ability to store assets such as images and video leveraged across user interfaces with a centralised SQL database service for storing application data, as well as training results.

• Content Delivery: Increasing performance by delivering international versions to locations around the globe.

Richy Baxter-Freeman, International Support for Lush cosmetics who was responsible for the IT set up of the training programme said: “Using Memset’s cloud service has enabled us to quickly roll out the programme to other countries faster than we anticipated. We’ve been able to take snapshots of the Miniserver and recreate it quickly in the other languages required.”

He continued, “We can monitor traffic and performance via Memset’s control panel and easily scale up or down as load patterns fluctuate, which means we only pay for what we need in terms of compute infrastructure. In addition, we benefit from the maintenance, support, and deployment automation provided by Memset to reduce our operational costs.”

Kate Craig-Wood, MD of Memset, said: “We’re delighted to be able to team up with Lush to provide the necessary platform to deliver their gamification training programme. As a keen gamer myself, I understand how important the reliability, security and responsiveness of the infrastructure is, to ensure the optimum interaction with the programme. We’re very excited to see how Lush Quests benefits Lush staff across the world.”

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About Lush
Since establishing 18 years ago, Lush Cosmetics has been driven by innovation and its ethics. Creators of pioneering beauty products such as the fizzing bath ballistic, shower jellies and solid shampoo bars, Lush places emphasis on fresh ingredients like organic fruits and vegetables. Lush operates a strict policy against animal testing and supports Fair Trade and Community Trade initiatives. Lush leads the cosmetics industry in combating over-packaging by developing products that can be sold ‘naked’ to the consumer. Lush has over 850 stores in 51 countries.

British Provider Memset Undercuts US Heavyweights in IaaS Price War – With Cheapest IaaS Service on Offer

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:24:31 +0000

British-based cloud storage and IaaS provider, Memset, has today become the latest supplier to muscle in on the IaaS price war with a significant reduction of their hourly Miniserver VM® virtual server and Memstore cloud storage solutions.

Memset has reduced the hourly rate of smaller virtual machines (VMs); VM4000; 1x0.8GHz Xeon cores with 2GB RAM and 160GB RAID1 local storage - to just £0.040/hour ($0.060/h) compared to Amazon’s EC2 for a comparable machine (1 ECU with 1.7GB RAM and 160GB storage) of £0.043/hour ($0.065/h).

Kate Craig-Wood, Memset’s MD, said, “Apples for apples, we are keeping our hourly Miniserver VMs slightly cheaper than Amazon EC2's EU (Ireland) pricing, proving that British small businesses with a focus on automation and open source has the ability to compete head-to-head with US heavyweights.”

Memset has only needed to reduce the pricing on smaller VM instances since they have been significantly cheaper than EC2 for extra large (7.5GB) and double extra large (15GB) VM instances for some time - currently 27% and 45% cheaper respectively. The high-end Miniserver VMs do come with about 25% less storage than comparable Amazon VMs but Memset provide it as guaranteed-persistent instance storage whereas Amazon's is non-persistent.

Memset has also reduced the 0-1TB storage tier for Memstore to £0.055/GB/month ($0.089/GB/m) compared to Amazon’s S3 £0.063/GB/month ($0.095/GB/m). Similar reductions have been made across all storage tiers making Memstore's headline price cheaper than Amazon S3 across the range.

“Memstore is not only much cheaper, but we don’t charge for transactions which can mount up alot on S3. Our object durability sits between S3’s standard and reduced redundancy tiers at 99.999999%, a level that most of our customers are very happy with. Memstore prices are now almost the same as S3's reduced redundancy tier for an extra three nines' durability,” concluded Craig-Wood.

As a large number of businesses look for ways to securely store data whilst simultaneously saving on IT infrastructure costs, Memstore will attract more enterprise customers over the coming months, especially those worried about their data being handed over to the US authorities under the Patriot Act. This is bad news for security conscious IaaS consumers using Amazon or Rackspace, but good news for British providers like Memset who are wholly owned and sited within the UK!

Optimising Efficiency

Memset’s IaaS service uses the open source Xen hypervisor together with commodity Dell hardware and big data analytics to optimise efficiency, providing vast economies of scale which are passed onto customers.

Aggressive penetration tests of Memset’s Miniserver VM service has seen them secure IL2 accreditation under the UK G-Cloud project with Government IL3 hosting in their sights. Memset’s revised pricing is also available to public sector customers up to IL2 level and Memset is hoping to limit IL3 to 50% above normal pricing.

Memset has substantial experience in operating a very low margin business, maintaining the lowest pricing for VMs in Britain for many years.

Memset Shortlisted For ‘Green Project Of The Year’ At The TechWeek Europe Awards

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:31:33 +0000

- Recognised For Reducing Energy Consumption From 28W Per Virtual Machine, To 4.7W -

Trailblazers of virtual machines with the launch of their Miniserver technology back in 2002, Memset has been named as a finalist in the TechWeek Europe Tech Success Awards in the ‘Best Efficient/Green Project’ category for scientifically reducing the power consumption of their Miniserver VM^® virtual machines.

The awards, running for the first time this year, aim to recognise the best IT projects in Britain, in specific categories, including Cloud, Efficiency, and Big Data. Where IT only seems to hit the headlines when it fails, the awards hope to highlight the IT projects that are really worth shouting about.

Up against a strong field of more than 80 applicants, Memset was named as a finalist for the ‘Best Efficient/Green Project’ category for displaying massive savings in energy through a collaboration with Surrey University to actively and scientifically lower the energy footprint of Memset’s services, in particular, to examine the efficiency of their Miniserver VM^® virtual servers.

Memset’s entry was shortlisted by a tough judging panel including TechWeekEurope editor Peter Judge, deputy Tom Brewster, QuoCirca analyst Clive Longbottom, Mark Taylor, Sirius, founder of the Open Source Consortium, Liam Newcombe of Romonet and the BCS Data Centre Specialist Group and other industry luminaries, with the overall winners being announced via webcast on 6^th December 2012.

Kate Craig-Wood, MD of Memset, said: "We're delighted to be shortlisted for these awards, especially gaining recognition at a European-level for the efforts we have made in substantially reducing the power of our Miniserver VM^® virtual servers. We encourage all businesses to collect and analyse more data about their own power consumption and activities. It is likely that larger businesses will be mandated to do so anyway, so it makes sense to get ahead of the game now!"

"Winning 'Green Project of the Year', at the TechWeekEurope Awards, would give Memset the platform to share best practice in the hope that other IT companies will follow suit helping to reduce ICT's overall power consumption, which is increasing at an alarming rate," concluded Craig-Wood.

To find out if Memset scoop the overall prize for Best Efficient/Green Project, please watch the live webcast from 11.30am on 6^th December here: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/techweekeurope-tech-success-awards-shortlist-100094