Petroceltic explores five-year IT managed services deal

29 Nov 2010

Unity Technology Solutions, the IT company formerly known as Calyx, has signed a five-year managed services IT deal with the Irish oil and gas exploration company Petroceltic International plc.

The deal will see all of Petroceltic’s IT infrastructure and applications delivered through a private cloud solution provisioned on a Dell server and EqualLogic Storage Infrastructure and hosted in the Data Electronics Group’s data centre in Dublin.

Unity will provide a fully managed IT solution to all of Petroceltic’s main offices across Europe and North Africa, including its Dublin headquarters. The deal will also include a high-end Polycom video-conferencing solution and a MPLS network across all offices, allowing the business to work and collaborate without the need for everyone to be in the same location at the one time.

This is a significant new contract for Unity Technology Solutions, which completed an MBO of the voice, data and security business of Calyx Ireland in September.

Microsoft and Citrix V-Alliance

This solution is one of the first of the new V-Alliance partnerships, a global programme that brings Microsoft and Citrix in alliance with their key delivery partners and showcases integrated virtualised technology solutions from both vendors which includes Microsoft Hyper-V Server virtualisation technology and Citrix XenDesktop to provide the desktop virtualisation for all users, amongst a full stack of state-of-the-art solutions from both vendors.

“As Unity has come to the market following our MBO, this marks a great start for our business,” David Hargaden, executive chairman of Unity Technology Solutions, explained.

“We had a strong belief in the business model and service quality that we were bringing to the market and this has been borne out by securing this significant contract with Petroceltic.”

Petroceltic CEO Brian O’Cathain said the platform will provide secure access to a single IT platform across the company and on-site “state-of-the-art” video conferencing, allowing staff to work together from different locations in real time.

Unity bought the customer contracts, fixed assets and stock of the old Calyx Ireland Limited business. Unity has under the Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment regulations (TUPE) retained the employees of the Calyx Ireland business. Direct employees now total 75 people with an additional 50 full-time contractors employed.

Declan Hughes, Unity’s CEO, said: “There is still a strong market for Irish IT services companies who demonstrate business value are innovative in the solutions they offer to customers, and who will deliver high quality customer service. This is why we believe we are the company of choice for Petroceltic.”

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John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com