OREANDA-NEWS.   Going forward, T-Systems will operate all cloud solutions on a single platform. With the Dynamic Cloud Platform (DCP) customers will have standardized access to all cloud offers such as Infrastructure as a Service, Collaboration as a Service and Software as a Service. The unified platform, which will begin operations in Munich, offers its customers the advantage of unlimited scalability.

"Converting to other systems is generally burdensome and generates high costs and downtime. Thanks to the Dynamic Cloud Platform, this will no longer be a problem for growing customers who need more capacity," says Ferri Abolhassan, Director of Production and Board member at T-Systems. "Customers can combine cloud services flexibly and use them as needed. This means better service and more comfort for the more than 12,000 different customer landscapes that can now be operated in one data center," he says. In close cooperation with customers, T-Systems will gradually migrate systems that were spread over multiple cloud platforms until now to the new environment. T-Systems will launch new cloud solutions exclusively on the new DCP in the future.

Operating costs will be reduced thanks to the consistent standardization of the Dynamic Cloud Platform. Automated processes will make it possible to launch new applications within a few hours or days. Customers will also benefit from the new cloud landscape through improved service levels, since the system can continue running during required maintenance updates and even updates of central components. Technicians can release individual elements for maintenance without causing service disruptions, since the system redirects the traffic on its own. Moreover, the platform can be extended to other data centers.

Because T-Systems now hosts customers’ systems on a physical platform regardless of the cloud model, they will be able to share work processes and data across the previously separated cloud services. This new feature will let customers independently define which types of interaction to allow.

The DCP is fully IPv6-capable. This enables communication with both IPv4 over IPv6 tunnels and IPv6 over IPv6 tunnels. Instead of the one-gigabit infrastructure, the DCP now has a redundant 10GbE fiber optic connection (gigabit Ethernet) between all components with quality of service for data prioritization. To ensure system availability, all DCP locations are constructed according to the twin core principle. Backups are therefore always stored in a second data center, which guarantees disaster recovery for data. If individual systems fail then other systems automatically take over.

Close cooperation with Cisco
T-Systems experts have worked closely together with its partner Cisco to build the platform. They used a holistic approach from the beginning to design the new platform’s architecture, security, network technology and product development. “As far as data privacy goes, we can classify the individual processes for each customer. The platform will automatically detect from which data center the process should be operated. If a customer wants to process critical data exclusively in the EU, then the processing takes place exclusively in our European data centers, or even just in Germany,” Abolhassan explains. Together, the two companies intend to equip more international, strategically important data centers with the Dynamic Cloud Platform. “With this new project in a growth market, we’re building on our many years of successful cooperation with T-Systems,” says Michael Ganser, Senior Vice President Central and Eastern Europe at Cisco. “We also plan on working closely together for the joint marketing of our cloud services,” he adds.

T-Systems plans to roll out the platform to its data center in Houston (USA) later this year, followed by Frankfurt. If demand rises Magdeburg (Germany) will be next, as well as a data center in the Asia-Pacific region.