Insurer Argus Group has selected fellow Bermudian-based company QuoVadis Services to provide a cloud hosting solution for its European operations.

Argus’s operations in Malta and Gibraltar will be supported by the QuoVadis platform based in a state-of-the-art, Tier-IV data centre in Switzerland.

QuoVadis, a data-centre and cloud-hosting company, beat competition from large public cloud-services providers for Argus’s business with its private cloud offering.

Gavin Dent, chief executive officer of QuoVadis, said: “Argus determined that the global public clouds could not provide the exact fit for their business needs.

“QuoVadis has supplied a private cloud solution that provides Argus with more control over their IT systems, with a higher overall level of customer and technical support.”

QuoVadis’s competitors include global giants of the cloud business like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure.

Mr Dent said he believed the Bermudian-born company had an edge in several areas.

“We can give a higher level of service — our clients get a close relationship with an IT expert, rather than having to call a 1-800 number,” he said. “We can customise solutions specific to a client’s needs.

“People always assume the big public clouds are cheaper, but that’s not necessarily so. By engaging with a company like ours on a three- to five-year basis, it can work out less expensive. It depends on a company’s needs.”

The ongoing shift from in-house IT management to systems that use cloud-based services is a major driver of business for QuoVadis Services.

“The private cloud business has been the fastest-growing part of our business for the past two or three years,” Mr Dent said.

“I started here in 2010 and the major concern then was security. Over the years, we have proved that because this is all we do, quite often the level of security that a customer can achieve through a managed cloud-services provider is much higher than they can get internally.”

Mr Dent said QuoVadis Services was aiming to build on its Bermuda business by growing its cloud services and infrastructure operations in Europe, particularly in Switzerland, the Netherlands and also, potentially, Belgium.

He said some of the European growth was coming about through existing international clients in Bermuda, such as Argus, and some through its relationship with sister company WISeKey QuoVadis, which offers digital certificates and signing solutions.

Argus chose QuoVadis after a lengthy process to find a solution for hosting software applications and computer data. The arrangement will mean Argus can take advantage of QuoVadis expertise to maintain and monitor hardware and global networks.

Nik Smale, Argus executive vice-president of Group Innovation and Technology, said: “As Argus continues to expand its presence in Europe we need a regional IT platform that will meet the data processing needs of our European offices. The QuoVadis solution is an ideal fit for these business needs.”