businessinfomag.uk magazine 18 CLOUD ManageEngine, the enterprise IT division of Zoho Corporation and provider of management tools for IT infrastructure including networks, servers, applications and endpoints, has continued to invest in the UK with the opening of two data centres in London and Manchester – its first in the UK and its 15th and 16th globally. The ISO/IEC-27001-certified data centre facilities are hosted by Equinix, the data centre and colocation provider for enterprise network and cloud computing, and will support UK customers that have a growing need for data sovereignty and data residency. ManageEngine’s long-term plan is to host its entire cloud portfolio in UK datacentres, but to start with the London and Manchester facilities will host some of the company’s key products, including ServiceDesk Plus Cloud (for IT and enterprise service management) and Endpoint Central Cloud (for unified endpoint management and security). Accounting for 25% of its global turnover, the UK is ManageEngine’s second largest market after the US, with 6,000 customers, including 1,000-plus that are already using ManageEngine’s cloud suite of products for managing their increasingly complex IT environments. At last November’s UserConf 22 in London, ManageEngine President Rajesh Ganesan announced plans to double the company’s growth in the UK and in April he was still confident of meeting this target despite the challenging business environment. He said: “We have just ended the first quarter and things are a bit challenging, with the economy and Brexit and political factors, but there are still three quarters to go. We are optimistic and still want to double our business in the UK. That remains the goal.” To this end, ManageEngine opened a UK office in Milton Keynes last year and recently announced a UK country head, Shankar Haridas. Ganesan adds that the company’s $1 million investment in UK datacentres strengthens its proposition for UK customers who are moving to the cloud at a faster rate than organisations in other parts of the globe – with 70% growth in cloud adoption year on year since 2018 versus 50% globally. “The UK has always been a leader in wanting to move to cloud,” he said. New facilities UK customers were previously served by ManageEngine’s EU data centres in the Netherlands and in Ireland, but recently there has been increased demand from organisations, including government agencies and the NHS, for data centres to be sited in the UK to ensure data sovereignty and compliance with local regulations. Hence the investment in the new facilities in London and Manchester (for disaster recovery). These have been deployed in accordance with ManageEngine’s tried and tested model, which is a) to provide exclusive data centres for specific regions; and b) to hire datacentre space, power and cooling from a data centre co-location provider, in this case Equinix, but to own, operate and build everything else from the ground up to avoid reliance on third parties. “The alternative option is to ride on top of the infrastructure-asa-service providers, for example Azure or AWS or GCP (Google Cloud Platform). We intentionally did not choose that model because while doing so comes with a lot of advantages, it also puts us in a position where we will not be able to write terms of service for our customers without being dependent on a third party,” explained Ganesan. He adds that cloud providers’ terms of service and licensing terms, which also affect data ownership, can change as often as every quarter or every month. “If we are hosted on such infrastructure, we lose our ability to give any commitment to our customers. That is our primary concern and why we have our own data centres. Our business model is not around selling customer data; it is completely around selling our products and services and solutions,” he said. Complete control ManageEngine makes $1 million investment in UK datacentres to help customers move operations to the cloud and adhere to local data privacy and security standards Rajesh Ganesan
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