(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In early March, Texas-based global IT hosting provider The Planet (www.theplanet.com) announced its first international data center, planned to open in April in London, England. The new facility will help The Planet meet both international customer demand and globally redundant hosted infrastructure needs.
Featuring up to 20kW of power per rack and N+1 redundancy, according to the company’s announcement, the London facility is currently up for preleasing. The new data center also gives customers private access to a 10GB fiber connection to The Planet’s core network through its Ashburn, Virginia data center, as well as local connectivity to tier-1 providers and the major European peering exchanges.
The Planet’s UK expansion comes at a time when data center operators are scrambling to meet the increasing demand for data center services amidst the scarcity of data center space in London, however, The Planet avoided strict utility guidelines by expanding through a colocation agreement with London-based TelecityGroup (www.telecity.com), which operates 20 network-independent data centers across Europe.
The London facility will initially roll out its “virtual racks” solution as its first offering. Virtual Racks host business web application infrastructure, allowing clusters of servers to easily work together, offering unlimited server-to-server connectivity, pooled bandwidth and access to a wide array of advanced firewalls and load balancers.
In an email conversation with the WHIR, The Planet dedicated hosting line general manager Urvish Vashi answered some questions about the size, scope and capabilities of the new data center, as well as explaining specifically why The Planet chose London for its first facility abroad.
How have limitations on London’s electricity supply affected companies interested in buying data center space in London?
Urvish Vashi: We have partnered with TelecityGroup, a leading provider with more than 20 data centers across Europe, so they offer vast infrastructure experience to support our requirements. Their new Powergate facility in London has 10MWs of UPS conditioned power with N+1 redundancy on all critical systems, and at least 10 percent of the supply coming from renewable energy. We are confident in our partner’s ability to deliver, and will extend our network and power SLA to our services offered out of this data center.
Can you expand on the size and scope of The Planet’s operations in London?
UV: We’re deploying our virtual rack infrastructure, which is one of the fastest growing solutions in our portfolio. Virtual racks provide customers advanced networking, firewalls and load balancers, including global load balancing across multiple sites. We’re also entering into both transit and peering networking relationships in London, which includes direct connectivity into the LINX (London Internet Exchange). In addition, we are dropping a fiber link into our North America network by way of our Ashburn, VA point of presence, which provides superior network performance for all of our customers. From a footprint perspective we are not concerned. The TelecityGroup’s Powergate facility is one of the newest additions to the TelecityGroup portfolio, and we have secured commitments that will enable us to grow for the foreseeable future.
What factored into The Planet’s decision to expand into the European market now?
UV: We’ve examined international opportunities and planned for the last 18 months to expand our global presence based on customer interest. Our CDN provides 16 network POPs throughout the world, and our storage cloud is in five cities around the world. The London facility is another step in our continued global expansion, now with our own data center presence in London.
How will customers of the London data center benefit from connection to The Planet’s stateside facilities?
UV: Just as almost half of our business is international, many of our customers’ customers are located throughout the world. Customers hosting in any of our data centers, including London, will experience higher throughput and lower latency benefits because we’re connecting London directly into our backbone. If our customers are hosting in London, their customers all over the globe including North and South America will experience better performance.
When UK2 Group brands have expanded into the US, they have offered some substantial promotions to get themselves grounded in the new market. Does The Planet have any similar deals in the works to help bring in new customers?
UV: One of The Planet’s hallmarks is our competitive pricing. London is a more expensive operation, and at this juncture we’re seeing sufficient customer demand to meet our internal targets.
