NetKeepers Selects VMware Infrastructure as Cloud Platform for Its SMB Customers

Innovative Provider of Managed Application Services Leverages VMware Platform to Increase Margins and Improve Competitive Position

VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that NetKeepers, one of Canada’s leading providers of hosting solutions and managed application services, is delivering cloud services for small-to-medium business (SMB) customers on the industry-leading virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure 3.

NetKeepers works with hundreds of customers across North America and abroad, focusing mainly on the SMB market. With competition among hosting companies intensifying, NetKeepers identified virtualized cloud services as an opportunity to differentiate itself in the marketplace and increase margins without having to pass on higher costs to customers. NetKeepers has built out a virtualized infrastructure on the VMware platform that has enabled the company to offer a wider range of application services, greater capacity, and increased reliability while actually reducing its cost structure. Despite seeing its revenues remain flat during the current economic downturn, NetKeepers has increased profitability by 30 percent due to virtualization.

“It had become extremely difficult for many service providers to compete with the handful of industry giants until virtualization changed the game,” said Shaul Swartz, CEO of NetKeepers. “With VMware Infrastructure, we can provide our customers with business flexibility, extreme scalability, and unfailing reliability. And just as important, we don’t have to make outrageous capital expenditures, which means we can provide our services at competitive rates. I don’t know if we would have survived without virtualization, but thanks to the VMware platform we’re doing better than ever.”

In addition to reducing capital costs, NetKeepers has leveraged the VMware platform to reduce its operating costs. The best example of this is its datacenter lease. Before going virtual, NetKeepers only had half a cabinet of space remaining in its datacenter and was negotiating to expand its datacenter footprint. However, after deploying the VMware platform, NetKeepers freed up enough space to defer a datacenter expansion indefinitely.

“We considered virtualization offerings from Microsoft, Citrix and others, but the technology and tools that VMware provides are unrivaled,” said Swartz. “In the end, it was an easy decision. VMware helps us ensure the business continuity that customers demand, it enables rapid provisioning of resources to help us maximize revenues, and its high-availability features allow us to perform maintenance and upgrades without having to take applications offline. On top of that, VMware’s roadmap and cloud expertise give us confidence that we will be able to continue offering outstanding, value-added services for many years to come.”

NetKeepers is a member of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP), which was re-launched as part of the VMware vCloud Initiative, to help accelerate the proliferation of innovative cloud services and solutions. For additional information visit www.netkeepers.com.