Uniserver: Creating a Forward-Looking Lifestyle for Holland’s Businesses

When Marc Roeleveld, Cloud Architect at Uniserver, describes the company’s booming cloud business, it’s clear that everything is done with a keen focus on the needs of the managed service providers (MSPs) and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) the company serves.

“We are 100% focused on the channel,” he says. “Our customers rely on the high-quality cloud infrastructure services we deliver from our data centers on Dutch soil to provide the local, hybrid, and private cloud capabilities their customers need. We help those in the channel focus on their businesses and their customers, not the technical work required to realize the full potential of the cloud.”

Roeleveld is also quick to point out that, at the end of the day, the cloud is far more than technology.

“When I think of cloud and the software-defined data center, I’m thinking about flexibility, consumption-based pricing models, pay-per-use, ironclad services that make it possible to work in new ways, and infrastructure-as-code,” he says. “I like to think of cloud as much more than ‘someone else’s computer’ or networks. I consider the cloud a lifestyle for the businesses our customers ultimately serve.”

Judging by Uniserver’s success, MSPs and ISVs in the Netherlands clearly agree. Founded 20 years ago as a hosting company offering websites and domain names to small and medium-sized enterprises, Uniserver in 2009 shifted its focus to delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to MSPs and ISVs working with end users in government, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail.

Today Uniserver is a VMware Cloud Verified provider, and more than 1,000 businesses use its solutions, which encompass IaaS, virtual workspaces, and backup and disaster recovery, as well as a full array of public, private, and hybrid cloud services. Perhaps most telling, the company’s 80 cloud experts have completed more than 1,000 large-scale cloud projects involving many thousands of virtual machines that have enabled end users’ IT departments to take their digital services to the next level.

“We offer VMware Cloud Verified services from each of our four data centers – all of which are located in Holland,” adds Roeleveld. “It proves we are a premium-brand service provider.”

‘Making it less complex’

While use cases for the cloud services Uniserver provides through its channel partners vary greatly from organization to organization and from industry to industry, all benefit from the simplicity the cloud makes possible.

“Our focus is on simplifying IT infrastructure and making it less complex,” says Roeleveld. “For example, we provide our partners with hybrid and multi-cloud solutions based on the technology that suits them, and we make it easy for them to sell those services without having to worry about lifecycle management, data center costs and maintenance, uptime, or finding qualified cloud experts. In turn, their customers gain radically predictable and simple pricing, as well as cloud capabilities that are backed up by a stringent SLA that guarantees business continuity.”

Several notable trends are influencing use cases of all kinds, however. Roeleveld notes that there is increasing demand for services that enable MSPs and ISVs to lift and shift IaaS services to a hybrid cloud, transform monolithic applications to Platform-as-a-Service, deliver container services, and embrace a multi-cloud approach with greater simplicity.

That’s not to say that the entire process is simple. Roeleveld stresses that there are still misconceptions about the cloud, namely that it’s always less expensive, easier to manage, and by default solves all of corporate IT’s problems.

“Like everything in IT, how effective the cloud is depends on a number of variables,” he says. “There is no effective ‘one size fits all’ approach. You need to work with the right partner and the right technology. For those just starting their cloud journey, my advice is to do thorough research before choosing a cloud services provider to work with.”    

Learn more about Uniserver and its partnership with VMware here.