CASE STUDY
PRODUCT NEWS
Physical and electronic connectivity is everything Mapping the power of colocation by Steve Gold, Editor, Netcomms Europe
C4L is a data centre, connectivity, cloud and communications provider headquartered in Bournemouth. With access to 100 data centres in the UK and more than 300 globally, the company is a colocation specialist that can safely colocate client infrastructures, as well as store business critical data in most locations. The company has its own private
fibre optic network that helps it deliver high-grade VoIP communication services with excellent voice quality. Where clients prefer to virtualise their
Steve Gold C4L’s Bounremouth CoLO Centre
estate, the company’s scalable virtual cloud platforms allow clients to continue their business on an anywhere, anytime basis.
90 Countries With more than 500 customers and thousands of users across 90 countries, Aspect Enterprise Solutions is a global provider of Web-based commodity trading, risk management and data management applications. The company was looking for a range
of benefits from its colocated operations, including high-speed connectivity, reliability of service, enhanced data security and solid technical support. Aspect’s Software as a Service (SaaS)- based tools allow commodities trading
organisations in the oil & gas, metals, agriculture and other industries, such as Chevron, BP and Noble, to manage the financial risks of trading resources. The company’s range of solutions
assist client organisations with real-time pricing and analytics, whilst at the same time ensuring they are making the right business decisions that won’t cost them profit.
The challenge Aspect had spent 10 years using a colocation centre operated by a large colocation provider in London, during which time its IT resources came to take up five racks’ worth of space. However, when the firm’s contract
came up for renewal the provider tried to impose a three-fold price increase and did not guarantee the level of customer service that Aspect required. In its search for an alternative
provider, Aspect faced a number of limitations. Firstly, in order to reassure its customers that their services would not be disrupted or otherwise at risk. The company, which needed to keep
its IT operations in the UK, also wanted to be able to move its hardware between locations with minimum disruption and cost - ideally, travel time from its London location to the new centre would be two hours or less. Furthermore, any colocation
centre had to provide fast and secure connectivity that would enable Aspect to transmit data between the IT resources, its offices and its customers reliably and without delay. “Unfortunately, our colocation
provider wasn’t able to offer us the kind of dedicated, responsive customer service that we needed,” said Alexander Krapivin, Director of infrastructure with Aspect Enterprise Solutions. Krapivin went on to say that, when combined with the price increase, this gave the company a clear incentive to look elsewhere. “However, in a business such as ours
Colocation: Network cabling still needed 40 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 1 2013
this isn’t a simple matter. Any provider had to be able to guarantee the highest levels of security at the colocation centre, as well as ensuring that events such as a loss of power or connectivity would not disrupt our actions,” he said.
www.netcommseurope.com “At the same time, we also needed a
team that would recognise and respond to our needs. Any failure in these areas would result not only in a loss of data and services but, more importantly, could also result in a loss of confidence from our customers,” he added.
The solution Aspect began a search for colocation providers that would be able to fulfil its criteria. As part of this search, it expanded its view beyond London in order to take advantage of more competitive colocation pricing. After researching suitable providers,
Aspect settled on C4L’s Bournemouth colocation centre as providing the best service at the best cost, in a location that was within the required two hours’ travel time from London. “Bournemouth’s location relative to London meant that we could quickly and easily relocate to the new colocation centre, with less than two hours’ travel time,” said Krapivin. C4L’s data centre has high levels
of physical security. Physical security measures at the site include biometric security, access cards, PIN code-locked doors, cameras and monitoring of all access to and from the site to ensure that Aspect’s resources are completely protected and accounted for. Despite moving away from London, C4L is still able to guarantee Aspect fast connectivity via its dedicated fibre network: a connection speed of less than 10 milliseconds to the majority of service providers in the UK, means that Aspect can communicate between its IT infrastructure, its offices and its customers as if the colocated resources were in the next room. C4L also provides Aspect with a
redundant uplink for their resources, meaning that if the primary network connection fails they still have access.
www.C4L.co.uk/colocation
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