OREANDA-NEWS. NEC Corporation has provided the NEC Cloud Service Broker, a Carrier Cloud Services platform, for Croatia's leading telecom operator Hrvatski Telekom (T-HT) to bring cloud-based business solutions to thousands of potential business customers in Eastern Europe. T-HT is Croatia's leading telecom operator, which already commercially launched its Cloud Services marketplace in December 2012.

The cloud project sets many standards in the arena; it is the first in Eastern Europe for NEC and NEC's first entry in to cloud services for the Deutsche Telekom (DT) Group, of which T-HT is part. It will provide T-HT's SMEs and enterprise customers with a range of cloud-business applications including video conferencing, email, ERP, CRM and many other solutions "as a service".

The SaaS model not only allows T-HT's customers quick, easy access to the applications they need to boost business, but it also enables them to manage IT expenditure effectively by cutting down the cost of purchasing and maintaining business applications and services. Customers will be able to buy T-HT's self-developed applications, applications from local ISVs (an independent software vendor) and access the portfolio of NEC's global Independent Software and Services Vendors (ISSV) network.

Nicolae Varvara, vice president, carrier business, NEC Europe commented: "With this announcement, NEC takes another important step in the cloud solution marketplace. We hope to expand this service to other DT group operators in Europe, helping them to use the cloud and SaaS solutions to open up new business opportunities. The project will allow T-HT to boost its innovative services with an efficient model that reduces time-to-market and supports SMEs by breaking down the barriers they face when looking to utilise new IT solutions."

The NEC Cloud Service Broker is robust, feature-rich and a proven cloud management and aggregation platform to simplify the delivery of cloud services. Developed by NEC's Cloud Competence Centre in Spain and installed in HT Data Center, the Cloud Services platform has also been integrated with T-HT's back-end billing system. As part of the deal, NEC is also managing the recruitment and integration of selected business applications from ISSVs, focusing on those that are best suited to the Croatian market.

With its Cloud Competence Centre in Spain and Japan, NEC has pioneered the provision of SaaS, Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions for telecom operators by contributing to more than 20 commercial cloud service projects in Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific region. Looking forward, NEC will continue to capitalise on valuable know-how of integrated IT and network technologies in order to globally expand its cloud service business for telecom operators.