Colocation Strategies for Scalable Data Centre Operations

Inter.link partners with Telehouse and London Internet Exchange

Inter.link has announced its partnership with Telehouse and membership with the London Internet Exchange (LINX).Following the introduction of its first UK point of presence, and an ongoing mission to provide sustainable, automated connectivity to the internet, Inter.link has strategically chosen to collaborate with two network powerhouses with strong presences in the UK: Telehouse, a provider of leading data centre colocation services, and LINX, one of the largest internet exchanges. Together, they create one of the most important interconnection locations in the world.Telehouse’s London Docklands site is the primary home of LINX and Europe’s most connected data centre campus. Along with growing its UK presence, Inter.link and Telehouse share mutual commitments towards sustainability, with the London Docklands site also powered by 100% renewable energy. As part of its continued expansion, Inter.link has also connected with Telehouse in Paris."We are pleased to welcome Inter.link to the LINX member network in the UK,” says Jennifer Holmes, LINX, COO. “The organisation is a new and fast-growing Network-as-a Service provider, and it's great to hear that peering at LINX in London was top of the agenda when building a new point of presence in the UK." Will Scott, Telehouse Europe, Head of Sales, adds, “We’re delighted to welcome Inter.link as our valued customer at Telehouse London Docklands. It’s exciting to play pivotal role in their expansion into the UK. Together, we look forward to fostering innovation, facilitating seamless connectivity, and driving the future of digital transformation worldwide. We look forward to developing this partnership to further support Inter.link’s plans for global network expansion.”"As we've expanded into the UK, it only makes sense for us to partner with Telehouse and LINX given their strong presence in the region," says Interlink's Co-Founder and CEO, Theo Voss. "Working with them will help us to provide sustainable connections to our customers in the UK and beyond."

Neterra launches Startup Accelerator program

Neterra has initiated Startup Accelerator program with the aim of nurturing and supporting start-ups. Under this program, it is providing complimentary or substantially reduced services encompassing cloud, colocation, connectivity and cyber security. The neterra.cloud offering is built on cutting-edge Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum processors, offering unlimited data traffic and scalable enterprise-class storage solutions. This package also includes free backup, disaster recovery solutions, and DDoS protection for the initial six months. In a bid to further assist innovative start-ups, it grants access to colocation services in its Tier III+ data centres, including EU based Sofia Data Center 1 (SDC 1), Sofia Data Center 2 (SDC 2), SDC Stolnik, and SDC Ruse, coupled with their high-quality carrier-grade connectivity and global internet exchange through the NetIX platform. For the first six months, Neterra covers the expenses, while start-ups are responsible for their electricity costs. Following this initial period, the global telecom extends discounted colocation services starting at starting at 12 euros/1U rack unit/month. Additionally, Neterra is extending consultancy services to program beneficiaries, offering expertise in network architecture, hardware and software recommendations, configuration, best practices, and managed services for cloud, application servers, hosting providers, and more. The current start-up support program is a continuation of its longstanding commitment to assisting start-ups, a tradition that has been upheld since the company's inception nearly three decades ago. Back then, it played a pivotal role in helping numerous internet providers launch and prosper.  In more recent times, Neterra has demonstrated its dedication to supporting start-ups, as exemplified by its involvement with ucha.se, an online learning platform. Founder of ucha.se, Darin Madzharov, crossed paths with Neven Dilkov, Founder of Neterra, through a mentoring program aimed at nurturing and guiding young talents. In the early stages of development, it extended its support by offering complimentary services during the initial months.

Telehouse begins construction of new administration building in London

Telehouse International Corporation of Europe has been given the green light to construct a pioneering new administration building at its London Docklands data centre campus. The development will significantly enhance service excellence for Telehouse’s docklands-based clients, providing an end-to-end space for reliable, secure, and flexible colocation at Europe’s most connected data centre ecosystem. International construction firm, Flynn, has been selected as the contractor responsible for executing this project. The new building will include a centralised control area, comprising new adjacent building and security control rooms, as well as a service desk location to support customers. This three-way information flow will maximise response times and enhance communication clarity during critical events. High-quality office spaces will also form part of the building. These will provide Telehouse operations employees with collaborative workspaces, dedicated meeting rooms and leading-edge welfare facilities, including a cafeteria for customer and staff use. The office will bring a unified, one-team approach, ensuring that key delivery support divisions are brought together in a visible and streamlined space. Designed to meet BREEAM Excellent criteria, the building will showcase the highest standards for sustainable design and environmental performance, which aligns with Telehouse’s continued commitment to corporate social responsibility. Coupled with world-class technologies that improve efficiencies and encourage positive behaviours, this latest development serves to create a positive social impact and support economic growth.

Vertiv expands operations in Norway

Vertiv has announced the establishment of a new legal entity in Norway, further strengthening its partnership with colocation provider, Green Mountain, and supporting its rapid growth in Northern Europe. This strategic move is testament to its commitment to delivering sustainable and scalable infrastructure to meet the increasing demands of customers and end users. As part of its expansion plans, Green Mountain has embarked on the ambitious OSL2-Hamar project, which involves the construction of a cutting-edge data centre in Hamar, Norway. This site will be powered by 90MW of renewable hydropower energy, with the potential to scale up to 150MW to accommodate future growth, and will be enabled to provide balancing services to support the grid. The facility is scheduled to deploy its first 30MW building in November 2023. Green Mountain boasts impressive credentials, including a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.25, 100% hydropower energy sources, Tier III certifications and a flawless record of 100% uptime and SLA compliance. Additionally, the data centre facility incorporates innovative, environmentally friendly features, such as pilot projects on waste heat utilisation for fish farming, circular economy initiatives, smart lighting, and innovative cooling solutions. As part of the latest expansion, Green Mountain has deployed Vertiv Liebert EXL S1 UPS with dynamic grid support and advanced battery storage systems, supporting the adoption of on-site hydropower energy and enabling grid balancing services. Each site is carefully designed and tailored to meet specific customer needs while constantly raising the bar for energy efficiency and sustainability initiatives. Vertiv has been a trusted partner of Green Mountain since 2020, providing highly efficient thermal management and power solutions, even amidst the challenges posed by the global pandemic. Click here for more latest news.

atNorth announces shortlist selection for the Energy Awards

atNorth has announced that its Sweden data centre is on the shortlist for the ‘Physical Technology of the Year – Heating and Cooling’ category at the 2023 Energy Awards. atNorth’s SWE01 data centre launched in 2022 and is specifically designed for high-density workloads, such as advanced calculations for AI, simulations, and risk analysis. It is one of the world’s first +10MW data centres with a primary cooling system designed for heat recovery. This enables 85% of the electricity used in the DC to be captured and passed on as heat to the district heating system. This residual heat can heat up to 20,000 homes.  The entry showcased the company's strategic alliance with CoolIT. Its bespoke cooling system further enhanced the existing infrastructure cooling process for its high-density servers, significantly improving overall data centre efficiency.atNorth now operates six Nordic data centres, following the launch of its third site in Iceland, ICE03, and with a seventh site due to open in Finland in 2024. The business is committed to building best in class data centres to meet the continued demand for energy efficient, data-intensive computing.  “We are delighted that our innovative data centre design has been shortlisted by the Energy Award judges,” says Steve Donovan, Chief Development Officer, atNorth. “As the environmental and economic advantages of our services continue to gain traction in the industry, we are thrilled to be recognised for the quality of our offering.”The Energy Awards aim to celebrate the energy industry’s innovations and achievements in best practice, business excellence and industry collaboration.

CapitaLand completes acquisition of data centre in the UK

CapitaLand Ascendas REIT Management has announced the completion of the acquisition of a high-specification Tier III colocation data centre from an unrelated global data centre operator. The property is situated in Watford in North West London, UK. The purchase consideration for the acquisition after taking into account the agreed value of the property of £119.4 million is £125.1 million. Mr William Tay, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, says, “As the demand for cloud and digital services continues to rise, we are capitalising on favourable market dynamics to significantly scale up our presence in the data centre sector. London ranks among the top three global data centre markets and is also Europe’s largest colocation data centre market. This Acquisition complements our data centres around London, deepening and boosting our data centre investments in the UK by 54% to S$569.8 million, as well as increasing our exposure in London to 96% of our investments in the UK. Given its strategic location and Tier III specifications, along with its robust tenancy, the property will serve as a strong catalyst in delivering additional value to the REIT.    “We expect our enlarged data centre portfolio valued at S$1.5 billion to contribute a continuous income stream towards our overall DPU growth.” Rationale and merits of the acquisition Strategic FLAPD3 location in London, UK to capture growing demand for cloud and digital services Significantly expands CLAR’s data centre footprint in Europe Resilient income stream with investment grade tenants Distribution per Unit accretive acquisition

Pulsant delivers cost savings for LinkPool crypto ecosystem

LinkPool has reduced memory, CPU and disk costs by 85%, while delivering higher network performance, following its move to platformEDGE, which is Pulsant’s multiregional UK edge infrastructure. Having previously operated on hyperscale cloud infrastructure, the combination of cost inflation and performance limitations led LinkPool to seek a solution that offered lower latency and expense without sacrificing scalability. platformEDGE was chosen to compose the infrastructure it needs to support its business-critical global workload. In moving to a regional data centre network offering edge colocation, hyperscale cloud access, and distributed compute – all available in a high-performance package – LinkPool has been able to make huge cost savings while improving performance. It has done so in an infrastructure capable of scaling to match the company’s success and growth over time. Pulsant's regional network also meant that Sheffield's data centre was ideally placed to personally oversee the build, onboarding its infrastructure in a matter of days rather than weeks. Continued investment has also seen a recent upgrade to 380kW from 176kW processing power (+114%), ensuring all businesses in the region can benefit scalable, high-performance, low latency edge application delivery. As part of the edge platform, Pulsant's Milton Keynes data centre delivers resiliency via dedicated links over its high-performance, secure, national network. “As the first third-party team creating products and services specifically for the Chainlink network, we’re in a unique position to further its use cases and adoption, and Pulsant is enabling us to do that at scale,” says Jonathan Huxtable, Founder, LinkPool. “LinkPool is committed to lowering the barrier of entry to meaningfully contribute to the Chainlink Network. Pulsant is doing the same for edge computing, making sure regional businesses like us can drastically reduce costs and improve performance,” Jonathan adds. Click here for latest data centre news.

The Paratus Group announces new data centres in Angola

The Paratus Group is celebrating 20 years in Africa by announcing it will construct Angola’s first Tier-IV by design data centre in Luanda. This complements the existing two Tier-III by design data centres that the pan-African telco already owns and operates in Angola. It is the fifth certified and carrier neutral data centre operated by the company in Southern Africa. Chief Technical Officer at Paratus, Rolf Mendelsohn, who is participating at the Pan-African data centre exhibition and conference as a panellist, says, “The new data centre will be constructed on a 30,000m2 plot, will have the capacity to house over 2,000 cabinets, and will have a total IT power capacity of more than 10MW. It is a natural evolution after having built other world-class data centre facilities in Namibia and Zambia recently. It will be the biggest data centre in Angola and not only complements our existing data centre offering, but will cement our network in Angola as a major hub in the region.” The company currently has four Tier-III by design data centres in Southern Africa. With the opportunities presented by the activation of the Equiano subsea cable and by the growing digital economy, it has established itself as a player in igniting the possibilities for hyperscalers, cloud and infrastructure providers and multinational enterprises. Rolf adds, "Colocation of critical infrastructure in data centres is becoming indispensable to businesses wanting a digital economy advantage. We will support this by providing the necessary infrastructure and services to give businesses what they need to actively compete in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR).” The company owns and operates data centres in Angola, Namibia and Zambia. All Paratus data centres have been ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and PCI-DSS certified.

Colt launches multicast data in the cloud for capital markets

Colt Technology Services has announced the global availability of Colt Market Data in the Cloud with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The service solves a complex challenge for exchanges, prime brokers, trading firms, market data vendors and technology providers - by hosting and distributing multicast data in the cloud without the need for conversion software. Now capital markets can experience the benefits of cloud, without being held back by cloud service providers’ inability to support critical applications. The launch follows a successful Proof of Concept announced by Colt and AWS in October 2022, which saw the companies build virtual distribution Points of Presence (PoPs) in the AWS Cloud. Colt provides market data feeds for equities, derivatives, commodities and FX from more than 80 exchanges and liquidity venues worldwide. Securely sending this market data to multiple parties simultaneously is a key requirement for financial exchanges, but getting this data to clients’ cloud environments is complex. Existing solutions typically require conversion software to change data from multicast to unicast, adding cost and complexity as organisations rewrite and retest applications. As more and more capital market firms migrate to the cloud, the problem becomes widespread. Colt Market Data in the Cloud solves this, enabling organisations to securely host and distribute raw multicast data directly to their customers’ cloud environments in its original format, ensuring seamless integration with applications, facilitating faster times to market and improving the client experience. At the same time, organisations benefit from end-to-end market data monitoring: the company monitors data at the source, within the exchange colocation; in transit, as it moves through the network; and within the virtual Point of Presence.   The launch supports the financial market’s transition to on-demand services and automation of real-time raw data and trading applications.

Cologix expands partnership with Montreal Internet Exchange

Cologix has announced an expansion with the Montreal Internet Exchange (QIX) to establish an additional Point of Presence (PoP) in the Cologix MTL7 digital edge data centre. This expanded partnership enables valuable interconnection access for businesses in the Montreal region. QIX has maintained a presence in Cologix facilities for over a decade, serving as a hub for internet, peering at its MTL1 and MTL3 digital edge data centres. Internet exchanges like QIX play a pivotal role in the value of the company’s ecosystem by enabling scalable peering and broad access to a diverse collection of networks. “This growing partnership between QIX and Cologix is driven by a shared mission to streamline the sharing of internet traffic to empower digital ecosystems at the edge,” says Peg Hallberg, Cologix’s Head of Product. “Our MTL7 facility now provides customers an environment to natively connect and exchange traffic with peering members. Businesses can directly connect to the QIX exchange in MTL7, enabling customers to expand their reach and improve network performance while fostering a dynamic digital ecosystem.” MTL7 is 26,000ft², located in downtown Montreal and connected to the MTL3 carrier hotel facility and 10 additional data centres across the city via Metro Connect. All of the data centres are ISO 27001 certified by Schellman and HIPAA, SOC1, SOC2 and PCI compliant. “Our new PoP at MTL7 makes peering easier than ever before by enabling networks within the data centre to seamlessly connect to QIX,” says Stephano Bertini, Vice President, Business Development and General Manager at QIX. “By eliminating an extra layer of connectivity, QIX ensures enhanced accessibility and facilitates more efficient and cost-effective peering options for businesses colocated at MTL7.”