NEWSFLASH: INTERXION IS REBRANDING TO DIGITAL REALTY. FIND OUT MORE.

Novatrend - Underpinning innovation for cloud services provider Novatrend

Organisations of all types and sizes trust Swiss company Novatrend to provide secure, reliable, environmentally friendly hosting services, delivered from Interxion’s Zurich data centre. One of Novatrend’s long-standing customers is CRM specialist Nexell. A three-way partnership between Novatrend, Nexell and Interxion has helped Nexell become the first companies in Europe certified to offer the Salesforce.com Data Residency Option (DRO).

novatrend

Categories

22 February 2016

The Challenge

The right colocation environment in Switzerland When it was founded a decade ago, Novatrend chose to colocate at a data centre in the US. Within a couple of years, however, the company started looking for an alternative colocation provider in Switzerland because many of its customers – who are primarily Swiss companies – wanted their data to stay in Switzerland, for privacy or regulatory reasons.

Interxion Zurich’s FINMAcompliant operations fulfil the stringent requirements of the Swiss banking sector, while its carbon-neutral status – unique in Switzerland – helps us meet the increased demand for ‘green hosting’ in many sectors.

Michael Brunner

Co-founder and CTO, Novatrend

The Solution

Novatrend chose to move to Interxion’s Zurich data centre. Co-founder and CTO Michael Brunner explains why it was the right decision then, and why Interxion continues to meet Novatrend’s needs some eight years later: “Interxion’s certified data centres are trusted in Switzerland and throughout Europe. They offer the security, performance and resilience we need to confidently deliver services to our customers.” Discussing the Zurich data centre in particular, he continues: “Its FINMA-compliant operations fulfil the stringent requirements of the Swiss banking sector, while its carbon-neutral status – unique in Switzerland – helps us meet the increased demand for ‘green hosting’ in many sectors.”

Although Novatrend carries out the majority of infrastructure management tasks remotely, the Interxion data centre’s close proximity to Novatrend’s offices in Zurich means it’s easy to get there whenever they need to. “The experience of temporarily losing contact with the US data centre when it was affected by a hurricane made us realise the importance of having our infrastructure in a nearby facility where we have full control over it,” says Brunner. “If we’re setting up new hardware or making changes to existing equipment, our engineers need to be physically present. And if we have to fix a hardware problem, every second counts.” Cloud infrastructure that’s trusted by a Salesforce.com partner Novatrend provides a full range of hosting services, including shared and dedicated hosting, VPS, and a white-label solution for resellers. It also offers shared and private cloud hosting options that run on AppLogic by CA Technologies.

This technology enables the creation of flexible, stable and highly available cloud infrastructure that appeals to many of Novatrend’s customers, including Nexell, a specialist in CRM solutions and a Salesforce.com Certified Cloud Alliance Partner. When Nexell had the opportunity to become the first European partners certified to offer the Salesforce.com Data Residency Option (DRO), it naturally chose Novatrend as its cloud infrastructure partner.

The cloud-based nature of the Salesforce. com CRM solution meant that some customers in highly regulated industries or with concerns about data sovereignty had been unable to take advantage of it. With DRO, an on-premises or hosted private cloud stores the customer’s data, and selected data fields are replaced or encrypted before being transmitted to the Salesforce.com cloud. “To be able to offer DRO as a hosted solution, we had to demonstrate to Salesforce.com that we had a suitable private cloud infrastructure,” says John Sas, Managing Partner at Nexell. “With Novatrend providing the infrastructure, and Interxion giving it a secure, highly connected home, we’ve developed an unbeatable partnership for delivering DRO.”

Novatrend takes advantage of the range of providers drawn by Interxion’s carrierneutrality to ensure the best connectivity solution for each customer. In the case of Nexell and Salesforce.com DRO, Novatrend works with two providers to deliver resilient upstream connectivity to the Salesforce.com cloud. Customers connect to their private DRO cloud in the data centre over a VPN or, if their equipment is in the same data centre, using a cross connect. Support for business growth at home and abroad Novatrend’s business has expanded considerably since it first moved to Interxion, but the company has never had to worry about running out of space, power and cooling. “Interxion offers us all the scalability we need, and its Europe-wide footprint will make it easy for us to expand into other countries to meet the needs of Nexell or any of our other customers,” confirms Brunner. “We know we’ll get consistent levels of security, service and operational excellence in every location, coupled with the convenience of a single contract across all our installations.”

About Novatrend

Swiss company Novatrend provides hosting services – including shared, dedicated and cloud – to companies of all sizes and in all sectors. The company combines state-of-the-art infrastructure with exceptional standards of security and availability, a strong focus on customer satisfaction, and continuous improvement of its products and services. www.novatrend.ch