British telecommunications specialist Colt Technology Services has launched DCNet – a data center interconnect service which will eventually link together more than 120 carrier-neutral facilities in Europe and Asia, as well as provide direct access to more than 560 Colt and third party data centers worldwide.
The first phase of DCNet in 48 European data centers adds to Colt’s current DCNet footprint of 75 facilities in Asia. The new service gives customers greater choice on where they host their data and with whom they connect.
More choice
According to Cisco’s Global Cloud Index, total data center traffic is expected to reach 8.6 zettabytes by the end of 2018, increasing businesses’ need for high-bandwidth connectivity.
Colt owns 22 carrier-neutral data centers across Europe, and manages a further seven in the Asia-Pacific region. The company offers colocation, managed cloud and networking services: it maintains direct fiber connections into more than 22,000 buildings worldwide.
DCNet aims to help with some of the bandwidth issues faced by Colt’s customers: it enables provisioning of 10Gbps connections in as little as five working days.
This flexible approach to networking could help businesses expand into new markets more rapidly, easily adopt cloud-based business applications and deploy more robust business continuity strategies.
The first phase of the project will be completed by the end of June, with a focus on Europe. In the next few months, DCNet will become available in Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Paris and Zurich.
“We recognize that enterprises looking to expand, adopt cloud-based business applications or, for example, upgrade their disaster recovery and business continuity plans to meet local regulatory requirements, want to be able to focus on their core business – and trust the underlying infrastructure,” said Zhongmin Guo, VP of Strategy and Business Development for Network Services at Colt.
“DCNet supports this goal by providing service providers and enterprises with flexibility and simplicity: the ability to choose from a vast network of data centers to best meet the business requirements while also being able to rapidly and cost-effectively connect to the ecosystem of business partners and easily upgrade bandwidth or switch routes as required.”
Late last year, Colt considerably increased its presence in Asia by acquiring KVH - a communications and IT infrastructure services business with headquarters in Tokyo and operations in Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore.