Phoenix officially opens the doors to brand new Technology Innovation Centre

Phoenix, a leading UK provider of business continuity, hosting, cloud and managed IT services is addressing mid-market concerns surrounding the rapidly evolving IT landscape by officially opening its brand new Technology Innovation Centre aimed at providing IT decision makers and C-level execs with the knowledge and the tools to better understand and experience their future IT infrastructure choices.

Located in Aston, West Midlands, the new centre was officially opened on 14th May by Jason Wouhra, the chairman of the Institute of Directors in the West Midlands, with guests attending a series of presentations and live demonstrations that showcased the capabilities of the centre.

The centre aims to address the pain-points often experienced by mid-market firms when it comes to managing IT infrastructure transformation. Traditionally, mid-level firms have not had the deep-dive exposure to modern technology and services to make informed decisions when it comes to upgrading or investing in transformational IT. The concept behind the Technology Innovation Centre is to provide an immersive environment whereby those organisations looking to make changes can experience first hand the impact of new IT capabilities and the positive result this can have on their business, through real-life scenarios using replicas of their own applications, data and servers.

The centre has been created after a significant six-figure investment from Phoenix, alongside the support from industry practitioners and leading IT vendors including Asigra, Citrix, HP, NetApp and Microsoft. Attendees at the launch event received presentations across a range of technologies including cloud, virtualisation, dynamic system monitoring/alerting and homeworking solutions, which demonstrated how these could be implemented into a firm’s existing infrastructure. Phoenix also showcased a range of customer experiences, demo facilities and live demonstrations.

Mike Osborne, managing director of Business Continuity services at Phoenix states that the success of the event demonstrates the concerns felt by mid-market firms when it comes to managing their IT: “For many firms their investment in IT is one of their biggest and most strategic. Yet in the mid-market, firms are not on the radar of the big vendors and therefore are left to pick through options without being fully informed.

“At Phoenix this is the concern we are aiming to address with the opening of the Technology Innovation Centre. We have the ability to use our huge IT recovery inventory to provide a testing ground for customers to enable them to make decisions that lead to a modern, resilient and scalable IT infrastructure with confidence.
These sentiments were supported by Wouhra who expressed his delight and optimism surrounding the new site: “Phoenix’s Technology Innovation Centre represents a unique opportunity for mid-level companies and SMEs to gain a better understanding of what is needed to operate the IT infrastructure more efficiently. For senior decision makers of a business who do not have the technical know-how, the centres provide an honest and ultimately comfortable outlet to learn and understand what works for them without imposing risks across their business.”

Due to high demand Phoenix has decided to run a second open day event inviting organisations to visit the new centre. This is taking place on 5th June 2014 and will include an additional segment assessing the importance of enterprise resilience.