iomart Hosting Answers Questionmark®'s Need for Secure European OnDemand Assessment Cloud

LONDON, July 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

iomart Hosting has been chosen by Questionmark, one of the world's leading providers of assessment management technologies, to create a platform to provide a European based OnDemand service that meets the data security needs of its customers in Europe.

iomart Hosting, one of the UK's leading providers of cloud computing and managed hosting services, was selected by Questionmark to provide a secure and flexible cloud hosting platform with dedicated network firewall perimeter in its secure, resilient Tier 3 London data centre.

Eric Shepherd, CEO of Questionmark, said:  "Questionmark's European assessment cloud reflects our commitment to meeting the needs of our many European and global customers for whom compliance with EU data privacy and security directives is paramount.

Questionmark's customers deliver high-stakes tests and certification exams and they simply cannot compromise on the availability, reliability and security of their assessment management. They rely on Questionmark to provide 24 by 7 service, global support, service continuity, measures that target 100% uptime and a decades-long track record of providing trustable results to clients worldwide and we selected iomart as they share those same high standards."

Questionmark, which is headquartered in London with offices in the US (Norwalk, Connecticut), Canada and Europe, will now be able to offer its customers the security, availability and flexibility of a platform which combines iomart's private CloudSure environment with a physical VMware Enterprise Plus cluster to segregate its database servers to ensure the platform satisfies EU data privacy laws and customer's requirements.

Sarah Haran, managing director of iomart Hosting, said: "Users of Questionmark's European OnDemand service want to know that their data is stored securely and that the data centre in which it is hosted is fully resilient and meets data regulations in the UK and Europe. iomart Hosting is providing Questionmark with a fully redundant N+1 hybrid infrastructure to provide them with this peace of mind as well as the ability to burst workloads into the cloud."

Questionmark® OnDemand enables learning and assessment professionals to create, deliver and analyse surveys, quizzes, tests and exams. Users benefit from collaborative authoring features, multilingual assessment management, blended delivery options including mobile devices, and extensive reporting and analytics capabilities.  There are currently more than 1500 corporate, governmental and academic organisations worldwide relying on Questionmark technologies to measure knowledge, skills and attitudes for certification, regulatory compliance, successful learning outcomes, performance improvement and talent management.  

The company's new European-based OnDemand service complements Questionmark's existing OnDemand services, which have been available globally for several years in compliance with the  US-EU Safe Harbor program via a US-based Cybertrust-certified, SSAE 16 audited datacentre.

iomart Hosting's data centres are ISO: 27001 and ISO: 9001 accredited and fully compliant with the relevant requirements of PCI DSS v1.2. They have full intrusion protection and fully disclosed technical staff and are operational round-the-clock 365 days a year.  

"We are seeing an increasing number of customers opting for OnDemand as opposed to deploying our technologies on-premise -- and the reasons extend beyond the speed and ease of deployment," Eric Shepherd continued. "On-premise deployment requires more than the initial investments in server and network hardware, both of which depreciate over time; it also entails constant monitoring, daily backups, patching and updates that can be staff-intensive and costly.  Customers are increasingly looking to OnDemand as a secure, reliable and more cost-effective alternative."  

For more information contact iomart Group PR Manager, +44-141-931-6400, jane.robertson@iomart.com