Block Solutions

Overview

About

Block Solutions is a technology and managed services company based at 14 Shepherdess Walk, London, N1 7LB, in north-east London near Hoxton. The company was founded in 2006, giving it around twenty years of operating history, and it employs between 51 and 200 people. Its chief executive is Chris Willetts. The company's published services are virtualization, cybersecurity, data storage, IaaS, IT consulting, and managed IT. Its vendor partners are VMware, Veeam, EMC², Citrix, and Cisco. It can be contacted on +44 (0)84 4967 1650, and its website is block.co.uk. Block does not publish links to any social media accounts on its site, and none could be verified elsewhere. The Shepherdess Walk address is in a former industrial area turned office district, popular with technology and media firms. Twenty years in business means Block was founded when virtualization was just starting to change how companies ran servers, and it has built its practice around that shift. A team of 51 to 200 people is a healthy mid-sized operation, enough to staff specialists in virtualization and security alongside general support engineers. The chief executive, Chris Willetts, leads a company whose service list is heavily weighted toward infrastructure and security rather than end-user devices.

Virtualization is at the heart of what Block does: running many virtual servers on fewer physical machines, which lowers hardware spending and makes systems easier to manage and move. IaaS takes this further by providing virtualized computing resources as a managed service, so clients can use server capacity without owning the hardware. Data storage covers the disks and systems where company information is kept and how they are protected. Cybersecurity covers the defenses around all of this: firewalls, endpoint protection, and monitoring for attacks. IT consulting covers advisory engagements such as infrastructure reviews and technology planning. Managed IT is the ongoing arrangement where Block looks after a client's systems day to day. Its partners fit this profile closely: VMware for the virtualization platform itself, Veeam for backup of virtual environments, EMC² for storage hardware, Citrix for virtual desktops and application delivery, and Cisco for the networking underneath it all. For clients, the appeal of a provider like Block is a single team that understands the full infrastructure stack, from the storage array to the virtual desktop, with one support route when anything needs attention. The phone number +44 (0)84 4967 1650 and block.co.uk are the published contact points.

The distinction between Block's infrastructure services is worth spelling out. Virtualization runs many virtual servers on fewer physical machines. IaaS goes a step further, providing that virtualized capacity as a managed service so the client never owns the hardware at all. IT consulting sits alongside both: reviewing what a company has, planning what it needs, and designing the path between the two. For a business outgrowing its current setup, that combination means one provider can assess the situation, design the new environment, build it, and then keep running it. The partner list of VMware, Veeam, EMC², Citrix, and Cisco covers each layer of that work, from the hypervisor to the backup software to the network underneath.