Carrier neutral Central London colocation Tier 3 data centre for server hosting

What does the new digital world mean for London colocation and the London data centre?

Roger Keenan, managing director, City Lifeline

The world of work, play and living is changing. The economic models we have all dealt with for many years are based on ideas that relate to enterprise manufacturing and do not fit the interconnected digital work. The networked society gives us the strange idea of billion dollar corporations that own nothing – just our trust in them and our willingness to give them our information which they can then process, repackage and resell to increase the wealth of their shareholders. Facebook and Google are the two most obvious examples.

Change is rapid and accelerating. Recently, Encyclopaedia Britannica announced its last print run. From its establishment in 1768 it ran for 244 years and was made irrelevant by Wikipedia in under 10. The fixed-line telephone took 89 years to reach 150 million users; mobile telephones did that in 14. Then the iPod did it in 7. Facebook did it in 5. Broadband and mobile technologies continue to be embraced by all of us. Five years ago there was no Apps industry. Ten years ago, no one even imagined one. Now all the developed world consumes Apps voraciously.

Cooperative networks are the way in which the world is developing. StackExchange is a good example of world-wide collaboration. StackExchange is a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites where anyone can post a question and many people will answer, adding to the almost instant sharing of human knowledge. The key is not in its attracting potential users, but in intentionally repelling non-relevant potential users, so that each microsite is relevant only to people who can regard each other as peers in the chosen subject. The world is moving from being enterprise-push driven to consumer-pull driven. Television broadcast is an example, where traditionally a broadcast channel defines programming and pushes it to the consumers. But the fastest growth in video is cloud-based pull, where the consumer chooses to buy an individual programme or a television series and has it delivered as and when he wishes for consumption as and when he or she wishes. So where is the future for television channels? And what does it mean for London colocation in London data centres?

We are moving from the Age of Empires to the Age of Networks, where no-one can do anything fast and successfully unless they choose to co-operate with others, and give their time, effort and knowledge in exchange for the time, effort and knowledge of others who they may not know and may never meet. The world is moving from competition to collaboration, value chains are becoming value circles and leaders of enterprises become Connectors, not Directors.
One word of caution though, before we all get carried away by all this. There once was a scriptwriter called Bill Shakespeare, who was quite well-known when he was alive and more so afterwards. He wrote with great insight about people and the way people behave. Although the environment and the tools and the colocation and the data centres change at break-neck speed, people don’t, and are just as kind, mean, clever, dumb, malicious, altruistic and human as they were when Bill was writing about them in the 16th century. And they are not likely to change any time soon. This new world will only be what we people make it.

All of these new things are driven and enabled by the digital world and by digital 1’s and 0’s flying through the Ether (or the Cloud as it’s now known), not just data centres or colocation. The development of the Intel 4004 microprocessor in the 1970’s started off a huge revolution, of which we are only at the beginning. Just as we could not envisage the World Wide Web in the 1980’s or the App industry in the 1990’s, so we cannot envisage the world in which our grand-children will operate. But what we do know is that somewhere all this ephemerality has to hit the ground. Somewhere at the bottom of it all there are servers in colocation data centres and technicians with screwdrivers and delivery men arguing with security guards about spare parts and maintenance men grumbling about temperature controls. All the services that the new digital world uses as its platforms are based on physical hardware somewhere. It may be in a London data centre, it may not be in London colocation, but in a cabinet by the side of the road in the rain, it may be attached to the roof of a London sewer and connected to a London data centre, but it has to be somewhere.

Some of it is in dedicated enterprise data centres – the likes of Google and Facebook have enough economic muscle to design, build and operate their own mega data centres, design their own servers and not need colocation in London or outside London. But much of it is in commercial colocation data centres, all over the world. And the continuing on-going growth of the collaborative digital world and of the amount of data there is and the amount of data that moves around means that colocation will grow as well. So the world of the commercial London colocation data centre is likely to be one of on-going growth for the foreseeable future just to keep up with the growth of the digital economy.

City Lifeline scraps brown electricity in favour of 100 per cent green IT

Central London colocation data centre City Lifeline is overhauling its electricity policy in order to run on 100 per cent green electricity by July 2012. The move marks the company’s latest milestone in the quest to become one of London’s most environmentally friendly data centres.

Green IT is clearly a focus for today’s data centres, but it seems that practice is still lagging behind policy. A recent study by the Symantec Corporation found that while 97 per cent of businesses were discussing green IT, only 45 per cent had already implemented green IT projects.

Thanks to a new agreement with EDF Energy, City Lifeline will only run on electricity which has been renewably sourced. This decision complements a number of eco-friendly measures which have been put in place by the company.

These include improving the efficiency of the data centre’s chillers and other cooling systems, using energy efficient duel-diesel generators for back-up power and fitting movement-detection light sensors throughout the data centre.

Roger Keenan, MD of City Lifeline, comments: “Our decision is especially important in light of expert estimations that almost two per cent of the nation’s electricity is used to power computers and telecoms equipment, most of it in specialised data centres.

“Data centres are renowned for consuming a lot of energy – but we are working hard to increase our efficiency, reduce costs, improve our carbon footprint and push out less heat. Protecting the environment is a cultural responsibility for businesses, and one that we should all take seriously.”

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About City Lifeline

City Lifeline is the leading independent carrier-neutral colocation data centre in central London. Lifeline House is situated in an ideal location, just outside the central London Exclusion zone, in the emerging Silicon Roundabout / Tech City district.

With some of the best connectivity in London, City Lifeline provides a secure, reliable and resilient home for telecoms, networking and server hosting. Its customers have access to the fastest, carrier diverse networks in the UK connecting across the world.

The data centre offers a first-class, flexible and personal service coupled with the security, reliability and engineering teams to match.

For further information about City Lifeline visit: www.city-lifeline.co.uk

Silicon Roundabout and Tech City – will it succeed?

The British government announced Tech City with great fanfare. David Cameron visited it (it’s not very far from the Houses of Parliament!) on its nominal first anniversary in November and launched more bits of it – a “national Virtual incubator” for small businesses and an “Entrepreneur First” scheme to encourage young people to start their own businesses. In these times of economic doom, gloom and failure, the government wants to see success in the areas of the future. It needs to be seen to be encouraging success and it needs the economic growth that comes from new industries and the tax revenues that come from people working to create new products and services and customers buying them.

But will it work? Governments and civil services are slow, political and have their own internal agendas. The internet world is fast and vibrant and anarchic. Companies grow, flourish, get overtaken, die and reform themselves in months, not over government lifetimes. Is there a role for government? (Apart from providing free money, of course, but civil servants and politicians have a terrible record in selecting potential winners to give it to).

Hubs of innovation form themselves. People with like interests come together because they like being with people who are like themselves and have similar interests and aspirations. People like hanging out after work in bars with people who they regard as peers and respect and can learn from. Often, there will be a catalyst – something which is not directly participating and is itself unchanged by the experiences in its surroundings.

Technology-focused universities often fulfil that role and Cambridge in the UK and Stanford in the US are classic examples where hubs have spontaneously formed around them. So do manufacturing companies, where designers will leave a company and set up down the road making something similar, be successful at it, grow, then have their designers leave, set up down the road and make it happen all over again.

So hubs of innovation are organically created. Occasionally, governments can make it happen – an example is the Canadian government’s successful efforts in creating an aerospace hub around Bombardier in Montreal. But such examples are rare and often happen because the government has a lot of buying clout, like buying planes and trains from Bombardier. Mostly the creation of successful hubs is spontaneous, organic and not predictable, plan-able or controllable.

Although governments can rarely create such hubs, they can facilitate their growth by smoothing the way, flattening obstacles that might block progress, making it easier for start-ups to get commercial credit, promoting the benefits of an area, making people aware of the opportunities and so on.

And that is what the British government is doing with Tech City (or Silicon Roundabout as everyone used to call it before the marketing professionals got involved). The government didn’t make it happen, it did that on its own, as like-minded people chose places with cheap accommodation and trendy bars and restaurants where they could do fun things. Everybody wants to be at the party, so others joined them. And Silicon Roundabout was born.

The government is promoting it, for example by the appointment of Eric van der Klieij as CEO of the government-sponsored Tech City Investment Organisation. Exhibitions dedicated to it are starting to appear, for example the new “Digital London” exhibition at the Excel Centre in March. The need for extreme bandwidth has been recognised and Virgin Business Media showcased a 1GBit/sec feed into THECUBE in Shoreditch to show what can be done. Existing business offering relevant services, such as City Lifeline’s London colocation hosting centre just off the Old Street roundabout find that their services are more in demand than ever as a result of the government’s interest and promotion.

The fact that the internet industries and the London colocation and London data centre industries are so fast-moving is in some ways an advantage. The nature of the products is fleeting, with every new development being quickly overtaken by its successors and products flowering, dying and being replaced. Once people are in a stimulating and exciting environment where that happens, and where the supporting infrastructure, such as fibre in the ground and London data centres, has already been attracted, they will carry on doing it in the same place because that is where the stimulation and excitement is. So they will stay in the innovation hub unless they have a reason to go elsewhere.

Activity creates activity and success creates success. Google’s well-publicised move to set up a London office near the Old Street roundabout and near the London data centres bodes well for the hub. So does the success of organisations like TechHub, actually on the Old Street roundabout, running networking events, training and bringing together people who can spark off each other. Others are trying, notably Dublin, but Dublin is more about tax than technology. To get to be viable, a hub needs size and momentum to get to critical mass, easy accessibility and a flow of new people. London does that and the London data centre and colocation industry is a significant contributor.

So the overall conclusion is very positive. Government cannot make successful innovation hubs, but government does have a role to play and seems to have identified it correctly and be playing it well. All the necessary conditions are there for Tech City (or Silicon Roundabout for us veterans) to be successful, but it will be successful or not on its own and on its own terms. Let us look forward to seeing what happens over the next few years.

2012 – The Year of Indecision

As we enter the year, economic uncertainty is the dominant factor. No-one knows what will happen to the Eurozone, but it is likely to be either countries surrendering economic power to align with the German view of discipline or a partial or full breakup. The US has elections in a highly emotional and partisan environment currently paralysing decision-making, China is showing signs of its never-ending growth stopping. Governments world-wide are cutting costs to try to pay back the money they borrowed when times were good. In such times, companies do not invest in new and speculative projects. They hoard cash, reduce debt and try to make their existing investments last a bit longer until the way ahead is clearer. That is the overall outlook for 2012 – indecision and delay.

Amidst all this gloom, failure and depression is the London colocation and London data centre industry, which is projecting a 30% increase over the next five years. The London data centre industry has several things on its side – the growth of cloud, the increasing digitalisation of almost everything, the ever-decreasing cost of bandwidth, the drive to outsourcing, the need for low latency communications with guaranteed packet transit times, and the green agenda which favours specialised operators over in-house data centres to mention just a few points.

The Cloud will continue to be a driving theme during 2012. Although not at all new (IBM offered it as “Business on Demand” twenty years ago and we all used to call it “Remote Hosting” before Marketing thought up the idea of “The Cloud”), it has very clear and big advantages for the software vendors. Instead of selling software as a single package plus support, the vendor can sell it repetitively every month, and, over the life of the package, make far more revenue and profit for a given product development. At the same time, the customer’s data is held by the software vendor in a data centre, not the customer, which gives the software vendor a bigger lock-in of the customer. The user gets flexibility and scaleability, and lower costs for appropriate applications. Takeup in 2011 was slower than predicted, so we can expect more marketing promotional spend, more hype and more takeup of Cloud in 2012. Even the Cloud resides somewhere physical eventually, and Cloud creates further demand for colocation data centres in which ephemerality hits the silicon.

Bandwidth will cost less at the end of the year than it did at the beginning, just as it has in every recent year. The days of £150 per MB seem like a distant dream now, but they were only five years ago. Hardly ever has a mature industry seen its selling prices decrease by over 90% in such a short time. At the same time, continued heavy investment is needed to keep up and agile networks using ROADM’s are likely to become more prominent during the year. The anecdotal evidence is that the growth of bandwidth is equalling the decline in price (ie halving the price doubles the demand) so the carriers are surviving, but being CEO of a data or voice carrier will continue being one of the world’s most terrifying jobs in 2012. Those that survive can look forward to 2013, when consolidation of the carriers is likely to get more ferocious.

Quality of performance of bandwidth is becoming more important. In particular, latency is becoming a more critical and more public issue. Financial trading houses running algorithmic trading can win or lose millions on being a millisecond ahead of or behind their competition and will seek out carriers and London colocation facilities and London data centres in the right geographical locations to gain that little advantage. Equally, consistency of latency is important for real-time applications such as telephony where packets have to arrive with consistent time delays so they can be reassembled in the right order. Quality and location of delivery for bandwidth will grow in importance in 2012.

Inside the data centre, cooling is likely to be the biggest single focus of 2012. The market is demanding that data centres become greener and waste less energy on cooling. At the same time, electricity is becoming more expensive, which incentivises the London colocation operators to invest in more efficient cooling to reduce their costs. Free-air cooling will make big strides in 2012, using cold air from the outside to mix with recirculated air from the inside when conditions outside are cool enough to do so. It is not a simple as it sounds, and needs careful control of all the environmental parameters to save worthwhile money whilst ensuring that warm, wet air is never passed into cool servers (which would create dew inside the servers). Evaporative cooling is another technology which will make good progress in the data centre and in hosting in 2012. This involves passing outside air through a wet blanket to cool it before passing it to the servers (a practical application is a bit more sophisticated). Again, the same care is needed to ensure that the servers never get wet.

Server technology will continue to advance during 2012. The new ASHRAE temperature ranges will start to come into use, which means that cold aisles will get hotter and cooling bills will decrease. Unfortunately, this really only applies to data centres where the facility controls the selection of the servers. In a commercial colocation environment, the colocation operator has no control (or even knowledge) of what equipment the customer will install and it will be a very long time before cold aisles at 27 degrees C become the norm.

So 2012 is likely to be a troubled and uncertain year. One in which the London data centre and London colocation industry continues to grow and one in which technology continues to advance, but also one with a lot of frustration as projects are cancelled, delayed and scaled back. We can all look forward to working harder and writing more technical proposals to achieve the same levels of business - and that applies not just to the colocation and data centre industry, but to its customers and to its customers’ customers.

About City Lifeline

City Lifeline is the leading independent carrier-neutral colocation data centre in central London. Lifeline House is situated in an ideal location, just outside the central London Exclusion zone, in the emerging Silicon roundabout district.

With some of the best connectivity in London, City Lifeline provides a secure, reliable and resilient home for telecoms, networking and server hosting. Its customers have access to the fastest, carrier diverse networks in the UK connecting across the world.

The data centre offers a first-class, flexible and personal service coupled with the security, reliability and engineering team to match.

For further information about City Lifeline visit: www.city-lifeline.co.uk

Hisham Abougrad is the London colocation competition winner! Hisham (on the left in the picture) is a DBA researcher from Chelmsford, Essex. He is shown receiving his prize from Lance Wright, Head of Sales for City Lifeline's London data centre. We wish Hisham every success in the future and hope that his new iPad contributes to his success.

What do customers value when choosing a colocation provider? City Lifeline ran a survey asking customers and potential customers for London colocation exactly what they lokked for and what they valued in a London colocation provider The results are on the attached report in .pdf form.

Above all, Security is what colocation customers value - knowing that their valuable mission critical equipment is physically safe from damage, disasters, theft or vandalism. Customers want to be sure that their equipment is safe and will stay safe and that they can sleep at night without having to worry about it.

A wide choice of carriers in a carrier neutral colocation data centre is what comes next. Customers want to be able to choose the carriers that they deal with, and to have a wide choice of carriers available to them.

Price comes in at third place. Price is always important, but the message from colocation customers is clear - price comes after security and connectivity when choosing a London colocation provider.

The survey is here:

City Lifeline enables iMarket Communications to extend its network to the UK

Housing its network operations centre (NOC) in Lifeline House offers the UK financial, banking and energy customers a reliable and cost-effective telecoms service

City Lifeline, the London-based independent carrier-neutral colocation data centre, today announced that iMarket Communications has purchased space within its data centre to support the company’s strategic move into the UK market. By housing its trader voice and data solutions within Lifeline House, iMarket will now offer the UK financial, banking and energy industries a high-performance telecom service in Central London.

Founded in 2002, iMarket established its business by delivering tailored integrated communications products to the US market. Following increased demand from its global customers to deploy its services in Europe, iMarket has expanded its network to provide the flexibility and mobility required by the fast-paced global financial community in London.

Dennis Costello, CEO of iMarket Communications, said: “Real-time communication tools are a ‘must-have’ in the financial sector to trade on a global scale. As the financial, banking and energy communities operate 24/7, 365 days a year, we needed to house our solutions in a secure and reliable data centre to continue to offer the high levels of service iMarket’s customer are used to. We are excited to move into the UK market and feel City Lifeline will help us deliver the best value and most specialised trader voice and data solutions on the market.”

Roger Keenan, managing director at City Lifeline, explains: “The move to the UK offers iMarket a substantial growth opportunity and one that City Lifeline is proud to support. We believe our colocation services will offer the company a robust a reliable service to approach potential customers and succeed in this highly competitive market. “

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About City Lifeline
City Lifeline is the leading independent carrier-neutral colocation data centre in central London. Lifeline House is situated in an ideal location, just outside the central London Exclusion zone, in the emerging Silicon Roundabout / Tech City district.

With some of the best connectivity in London, City Lifeline provides a secure, reliable and resilient home for telecoms, networking and server hosting. Its customers have access to the fastest, carrier diverse networks in the UK connecting across the world.

The data centre offers a first-class, flexible and personal service coupled with the security, reliability and engineering teams to match.

For further information about City Lifeline visit: www.city-lifeline.co.uk

For further information contact:
Donna Bennett / Lucy Knighton
Berkeley PR
T: 0118 909 0909
E: [email protected]

City Lifeline provides Planet Numbers with effective international call switching services

City Lifeline, the London-based independent carrier-neutral colocation data centre, has today announced that Planet Numbers will be hosting its international telephone call switching capabilities within Lifeline House to deliver an effective, fast and consistent communication service.

Planet Numbers is positioned as one of the very few communications providers in the UK that is truly independent. City Lifeline’s carrier neutral colocation data centre, it will have equal and unconditional access to a wide range of carriers operating both voice and data services. The choice of carriers will also enable Planet Numbers to continue direct contractual relationships with leading tier one telecoms carriers such as Opal Telecom, Colt Telecom, Spitfire Technology, Kingston Communications, Cable and Wireless and BT.

Robin James, managing director at Planet Numbers said: “We believe our call services to be the most effective in the sector, and will always apply our independence to ensure that customers benefit from the most competitive terms and best value in the communications market place. Following recommendations from peers, we chose City Lifeline because its neutrality allowed us to offer the best routes for telephony traffic. City Lifeline’s reasonable pricing structure has also enabled us to pass costs saving onto our customers.”

Roger Keenan, managing director at City Lifeline explains: “Operating from a colocation data centre means companies gain access to a whole world of carrier neutral telecoms possibilities. Our services deliver low-latency, high-reliability connections to even the most obscure parts of the world. This will enable Planet Numbers to continue offering the best value and most specialised communication services in the market place.”

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About City Lifeline
City Lifeline is the leading independent carrier-neutral colocation data centre in central London. Lifeline House is situated in an ideal location, just outside the central London Exclusion zone, in the emerging Silicon Roundabout / Tech City district.

With some of the best connectivity in London, City Lifeline provides a secure, reliable and resilient home for telecoms, networking and server hosting. Its customers have access to the fastest, carrier diverse networks in the UK connecting across the world.

The data centre offers a first-class, flexible and personal service coupled with the security, reliability and engineering teams to match.

For further information about City Lifeline visit: www.city-lifeline.co.uk

About Planet Numbers Ltd

Established in 1999, Planet Numbers specialise in the provision of 0800, 0844, 0845 and 03 phone numbers for business, and cheap international phone calls.

For further information about Planet Numbers Ltd visit www.planet-numbers.co.uk

Data centres offering colocation and hosting to the Unified Communications market need to be able to show that they have a wide choice of carriers and diverse routing from the facility to all parts of the world. Low latencies are often critical, as are guarantees on the consistency of latency. City Lifeline's colcoation facility in central London offers 22 carriers PoP'd in the facility and wide connections to the world. City Lifeline will be showcasing London colocation and London hosting capability to the Unified Communications market at the Unified Communications exhibition at London Olympia between 6 and 7 March 2012 on Stand 109. Existing customers and industry specialists who want to learn more are welcome to visit us there.