D ATA CENTRES
How optical may prove to be a colocation saviour Understanding colocation drivers By Keith Sullivan, EMEA Marketing Director, Corning Cable Systems
Keith Sullivan explains why colocation is falling out of favour in Europe…
Despite promises of cost efficiency and scalability, the uptake of colocation data centre facilities across Europe in the first half of 2013 was down 31 per cent year-on-year, according to the European Data centre Market View report from the CBRE Although there has been a slowdown in colocation demand, the report maintains a positive outlook for the European data centre industry as the economic outlook improves and data centre operators begin to see a rise in new enquiries from enterprises and service providers. So why are many organisations across
Europe not taking up the colocation challenge? It seems that the growth in the
amount of data, video, and connected mobile devices is leading to increasing need for more storage and processing power. This drives SMEs and large
enterprises to look for new solutions to
address their increasing IT capacity and application needs. The options available to deploy these
services include upgrading or building new private data centre facilities, leasing colocation facilities, or opting to use managed/hosted services or cloud services from technology service providers. An alternative approach for a number
of enterprises has been to upgrade their existing data centre facilities to meet short-term needs by implementing technologies to save space and improve server productivity as well as retrofitting with scalable infrastructure and additional power. Such decisions may have been
taken while waiting for the economy to improve, or for the development of a longer-term strategy in respect to deployment of secure public or private cloud services. In both of these scenarios, the
adoption of a virtualised IT solution within the data centre leads to multiple application instances executed on the physical equipment, which increases the productivity of the IT infrastructure while reducing the physical space need.
Dynamic scaling These virtualisation solutions can be scaled dynamically based on the changing needs of the enterprise. As such, organisations can make better use of the space already leased or owned. However, with the increasing
complexity and cost of managing and running IT and networking due to the rapid development of new applications and deployment of mobile device technologies, many organisations, especially SMEs, are finding it increasingly difficult to manage their own infrastructures. This drives the demand to use
managed services and new cloud services. Such adoption will fuel the need for many cloud providers, who do not own their own data centres, to lease additional capacity within colocation facilities. Given the very large number of SME
Structured cabling needs are paramount... 24 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 3 2014
businesses within the marketplace, the greatest opportunity for data centre space may likely be from cloud providers
addressing the SME sector, even though each individual SME has a smaller capacity need than that of a larger business. One of the major challenges being
faced with this take up of public cloud services is a concern regarding the security of the data being stored and transmitted within these services. With data security needs paramount,
many mid to large size enterprises may look towards a hybrid strategy using various approaches for specific data sensitive, strategic and tactical business operational needs – a mixture of their own IT services deployed from a data centre/colocation facility and IT services accessed via the public cloud. Whether businesses lease colocation
space, take up public cloud services or deploy a mixture of both, the need for a flexible, scalable and highly reliable cabling infrastructure within the data centre will be paramount to support the future computing and application needs of businesses.
Colocation objectives From a cabling infrastructure perspective any data centre design for colocation needs to meet a number of objectives:
Accommodate fast and flexible provisioning to
meet the changing demand for managed/hosted IT services and public cloud services. Support the growing data centre capacity
needs over time, including increasing data speeds and the need to optimise space. Support the need to provide high data centre
infrastructure efficiency (DCIE) or low power usage effectiveness (PUE). Provide a robust high quality installation to
support and manage high availability services. In order to address these objectives
the cabling solution must be able to offer flexible modular patch cord/connector access while achieving a high port density to support more data in a finite amount of space. System components must be able
to provide easy access, because moves, adds and changes (MACs) need to happen quickly and without disrupting the data centre’s daily operations. The deployment of a fibre-rich
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