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On the heels of adding a fifth virtual data center and teaming up with Arrow Electronics (News - Alert) to offer virtual data center (VDC) services, Interoute has launched Interoute CloudStore, a converged compute and network platform, appliance marketplace and education center for enterprises seeking scalable ICT infrastructure.

CloudStore combines a scalable network, compute and storage infrastructure with all the necessary appliances needed to run an IT environment, according to Matthew Finnie, CTO at Interoute.

“The difference with CloudStore is in the delivery. If you buy and run an enterprise application without the right platform and SLAs to support it, you are effectively placing the productivity and security of your business data in the wild,” Finnie explained in a statement. “Appliance marketplaces perfectly complement the platform and are the future of the ICT purchasing model, but it is important for enterprises to understand what sits beneath them.”

CloudStore is designed to replace the need to buy the physical equivalent of a firewall, load balancer or operating system, and eliminates the need to power these services, connect them up and make them work with the existing infrastructure.

Company officials said it takes minutes rather than months to provision.

The London-based company’s cloud services platform encompasses nine hosting data centers and 32 collocation centers, with connections to 140 additional third-party data centers across Europe.

Earlier this month, Interoute expanded its virtual data center into its Paris Data Center, and is now available from five data center zones: Paris, Amsterdam, Geneva and Berlin.

The addition of Paris to Interoute’s VDC platform extends Interoute’ ability to offer fully automated private and public cloud computing in more locations than any other provider in Europe, according to Finnie.

In addition, Interoute is working with Arrow Electronics Inc. to offer its VDC on ArrowSphere, an online platform that connects cloud service providers with resellers.

Interoute’s successive cloud development show what the company’s focusing on for 2013 with a three-pronged expansion of their cloud presence, noted Telecom Ramblings’ Robert Powell.

“There are many more pieces to the cloud puzzle left to put together, but a picture of Interoute’s overall setup is definitely starting to take shape,” Powell said. “As they fill out their cloud offerings though, they may also see themselves as a platform for consolidation if the European M&A market does start to heat up further.”