Iconz launches next-gen cloud services and partner programme

Versa Enterprise and Versa Project offered to partners, along with rewards and services opportunities

Iconz has released a partner programme to encourage and reward resale of its newly-extended cloud services.

The company’s Versa cloud platform was launched in 2008, and it has now released enterprise and project-specific versions of the service.

Iconz CEO Sean McDonald says Versa Enterprise will particularly appeal to IT resellers and integrators who provide cloud services.

“Creating a physical environment within the Versa platform and being able to specify the hypervisor and software layer will present unique options for New Zealand IT resellers,” he says.

The second new release, Versa Project, allows customers to purchase servers in weekly time blocks, with time deducted from allocation only when servers are used. When not in use, customers are not charged and servers are backed up for future use and re-provisioned as needed. This is different from the Versa service, where customers pay monthly.

Versa Project was developed as a result of an internal project at Iconz, for which it required a large amount of computing capacity for only short periods of time. “As in many IT projects, we had a need for a number of test and development servers over many months and didn’t want to incur the capital cost of buying hardware for only a short period of use,” says McDonald.

Under the partner programme, there are varying levels of reward in the form of percentage fees on monthly billed revenue against increasing volumes of business. There are also two partner levels – Accredited, for whose who want Iconz to handle billing and support, and Premium, for partners who want to bill and support customers with the support of Iconz.

“We have aimed to create one of the most compelling partner programmes in our industry,” says McDonald. “Virtual or cloud hosting is a big part of the future of computing, and we’ve set up a programme that allows our partner community to take advantage of this still untapped and nascent opportunity.”

Iconz is also extending its managed hosting and connectivity offerings to partners as complementary services.

“It is our belief that by empowering our partners through this programme, we will drive the adoption of cloud technologies in general,” McDonald adds.