Colocation is no commodity
Born over two decades ago colo is now something altogether more complex, says Simon Bearne, commercial director at Next Generation Data.
There are over 250 colocation facilities in the UK. But buyer beware, colocation data centres are far from being commodities. Much has and is changing beneath the surface which is redefining what customers need or expect from colocation.
This will have growing implications for providers and users alike in the years to come. Older, smaller, and increasingly power strapped facilities are already finding it a challenge.
As the market matures in response to meeting modern business requirements, colocation is no longer ‘just’ about the secure hosting, processing and storing of data. And while cost will always be an important factor to users this isn’t the overriding decider.
While colocation data centres are still generally categorised from Tier 1 – 4 in terms of levels of redundancy, resilience and security, and rated separately for their power usage efficiency (PUE), these alone can no longer be the only methods applied for facilities’ evaluation and differentiation.
Winds of change
Arguably the roots of the ‘colocation’ market can be traced back 20 years to the original dot com boom era. This created demand from e-commerce businesses and ISPs for a more cost-effective way of housing of their growing ‘server farms’ and the idea of sharing secure IT spaces with others was born.
There have been various drivers for change over the past decade or more, most notably the growing concerns over data security; advances in networking technology; more sophisticated remote diagnostics; and an exponential reduction in connectivity costs.
Low latency low cost fibre and the pre-existing ‘FUD factor’ about security, seeded by 9/11 and London’s 7/7 combined, created the perfect storm conditions which have steadily been eroding traditional CIO wisdom. This had decreed the maintaining of in-house data centres and keeping them close to London’s exchanges.
Today, however, a typical 1 Gb/s circuit between London and Wales, for example, costs circa £6,000 per annum – compared to an order of magnitude higher cost for 100 Mb/s 15 years ago.
Therefore, businesses can now achieve a far more balanced and geo diverse data centre strategy by retaining central London/Docklands facilities (in house or colo) as needed for certain applications such as high frequency trading.
But businesses can also save on cost per sq ft and gain access to more stable and abundant power by connecting to out of town colocation facilities for the majority of other tasks.
A few operators have already succeeded in establishing very large purpose-built colo facilities in regions where real estate and labour is considerably less expensive.
While this translates into lower rates for users, of equal importance, those built in more rural areas are also out of harm’s way with significantly lower risk profiles than metro alternatives.
Clearly, improvements in latency and tumbling connectivity costs have helped to broaden the UK colocation market and make it more accessible and viable to more businesses.
However, the sector now faces other challenges as a result of growing Cloud, Big Data, IoT, AI and HPC requirements. These are making additional demands on data centre technical infrastructure, power, cooling and connectivity.
Clouding the waters
Cloud computing and various ‘as a service’ subscription models such as IaaS, SaaS and PaaS have perhaps caused a blurring of the lines of the original colocation concept.
Companies are quickly realising that they need many different types of cloud services to meet a growing list of user and customer needs.
For the best of both worlds, hybrid cloud is becoming increasingly popular. It offers a private cloud combined with the use of public cloud services which together can create a unified, automated, and well-managed computing environment.
This is attractive to organisations requiring the flexibility, cost savings and elasticity of public services such as Microsoft Azure, while still retaining control of sensitive applications and maintaining compliance.
But aside from the considerable power to rack considerations, hybrid cloud environments are only as good as the weakest link: the public cloud’s connection to the data centre.
This has called for colocation data centres to bypass the internet with cloud gateways, allowing faster, more secure private connections directly into global public cloud network infrastructures.
However, only a few colocation data centres are directly connected to these networks for allowing optimised performance and very low latency.
Another key factor to consider is a data centre’s level of engineering competence, necessary not only for configuring and interconnecting these complex hybrid environments, but also for helping businesses bring their legacy IT into the equation.
HPC
Big Data, the Internet of Things, accelerating AI and machine learning are key drivers and contributors to the High-Performance Computing (HPC) requirements of both commercial and not for profit sectors.
However, many colocation facilities in the UK are not served by sufficiently abundant levels of power, let alone direct to grid connections for reducing the potential of outages.
As a work around, most facilities must put in place UPS and auxiliary power systems capable of supporting all workloads running at the same time, along with overhead and enough redundancy to deal with any failure within the emergency power supply system itself.
This and the specialist cooling needs of HPC are a tall order for many colos today and as result most are unable to address this high growth market opportunity without significant upgrading.
Many colo providers are retail operations, so they deploy a single cooling technology that is pre-built and marketed as a product aimed at standard rack densities of a few kWs.
HPC is increasingly becoming the reserve of custom build facilities that can build to order and have experience with a range of cooling technologies and sufficient reserves of power.
HPC (if they could do it) would cause most retail facilities to deplete their power reserves way before filling their available space.
Data privacy and compliance
Furthermore, colocation businesses perhaps more than any others are under increasing scrutiny from existing and potential users over where and how securely their data is being stored.
With Brexit and GDPR this raises the stakes for data centre operators when it comes to the quality and compliance of their security and operational management procedures.
In summary, two decades on the modern-day colocation business is now something altogether more complex.
Enterprise customers, service providers and SIs are considerably more demanding in what they need and expect from their colocation providers: Scalable high-quality facilities, high calibre engineering and management.
source datacentrereview
Industry: Data Centre News

Latest Jobs
-
- Security Analyst. Financial Services. UK. Permanent
- Unknown
- N/A
-
CH7863 Security Analyst. End User . Financial Services Security Analyst needed to monitor and manage a security suite of tools within an End User environment. The Security Analyst will be responsible monitoring, configuring, fine tuning, incident management and generally improving the security tool capability. Specific experience with CyberArk, Tripwire Log Center and Tripwire Enterprise is highly desirable). Current experience with Vulnerability management and penetration testing is highly desirable. Specifically the ability to effectively manage 3rd party pen tests. You will be working within a specialist security team reporting to the CISO. Experience working within an end user environment within financial services is highly desirable. Flexible location. This is an exclusive role to DCL Search & Selection. To book a call please use my Calendy link https://calendly.com/chris-holt/arranged-call-with-chris-holt-soc-role-
-
- DevSecOps - Security design / review consultant. SC Clearance. London
- London
- N/A
-
CH7858 London £70,000 DevSecOps - Security design / review consultant. DevSecOps - Security design / review consultant will ensure that newly created, public facing apps are secure by design and by default by aligning them to current / best practice security policies and standards into the design phases. The individual must have a technical software / application development background with specalist experinece in secure architecture design. (Frameworks, processes, best practice etc) Practical experience translating and ensuring that the OWASP top 10, ISO27001, HMG frameworks requirements are reviewed and embedded into project designs which are implemented is essential. Experience working projects through a full development lifecycle is key. You will work along side the design and project teams to idenitfy and mitigate risks throughout the design phases. This is a permanent role. SC clearance is essential as is the ability to get to the London office. (When appropiate #covid) Security DevSecOps consultant. To arrange a discreet call book via https://calendly.com/chris-holt/devsecopp--security-design-review-consultant
-
- CONTRACTOR Cyber Vulnerability Analyst, NESSUS, Rapid 7, SC clearance required.
- London
- N/A
-
Cyber Vulnerability analyst NESSUS, Rapid 7, needed for IMMEDIATE 3 month contract MUST have / be able to achieve UK SC clearance role to work within a live environment within a public sector department. The individual must have experience in using various security methods and tools such as Rapid7 and NESSUS scan for / identify vulnerabilities, prioritise them according to risk and raise appropriate tickets for remediation / follow up. In depth experience utilising Nessus highly beneficial. Current cyber public sector experience highly desirable.
-
- Internal Security Auditor, Level 1 Service Provider (ISO27001)
- London
- Upto 55,000 plus benefits
-
Internal Security Auditor ISO 27001, PCI, needed to join a Cyber team within this expanding Fintech business. The Internal Security Auditor will have end to end responsibility for planning, delivering, remediating any findings etc. Experience working within financial services is highly desirable. This Is a great time to join a newly formed and growing Cyber team within a rapidly expanding fintech, that is taking a major share of its market. We are looking for someone with experience, (but not to be limited to) a mix of Information Security standards, frameworks, audit principles, controls / policies and the management and use of the technical tooling etc. ISO 22301, ISO 27001, NIST Cybersecurity Framework etc An ideal candidate will be working within an end user environment with a cyber consultancy background. Experience taking a company through accreditation is highly desirable Experience managing internal stakeholders, technical teams and external third parties essential Flexible working, but with the ability to get into London. This is an exclusive role to DCL Search & Selection.