Colt Data Centre Services has added private connectivity into two major public cloud providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure at its three London data centres. The announcement forms a central part of the evolution of the company’s data centre portfolio, which will see the same connectivity rolled out in a number of its facilities across Europe over the next few months.
This new service allows customers to consume connectivity services ‘on-demand’ and in real-time via an intelligent and intuitive online customer portal. Gaining full control, customers can flex bandwidth requirements up and down instantaneously. The on-demand flexibility also extends to pricing, giving customers the option to choose per-hour pricing plans, as well as more traditional fixed-term contract durations.
Enterprises, system integrators and managed service providers are increasingly building hybrid or multi-cloud platforms as part of their IT infrastructures. High-performance, private connectivity to the biggest cloud service providers forms a critical element of this.
Colt DCS’ dedicated cloud access on-demand allows organisations building hybrid platforms to avoid the high cost of fixed private network connectivity to key clouds, or the premium paid to collocate next to cloud gateways.
The new service can deliver between 10Mbps and 1Gbps of private connectivity simply with the provision of a cross connect from customers’ racks to the Colt DCS platform. Once the cross-connect and access port is in place, the required bandwidth can be delivered within minutes. With per-hour billing for bandwidth, customers could contract 1Gbps for three years, or use the service at hourly rates at their discretion. Furthermore, Colt DCS can provide the same flexible, high-capacity private connectivity to multiple cloud locations around Europe, connected via the same port in any of its London data centres without a requirement for additional network purchase.
Matt Cantwell, Director of Portfolio Propositions at Colt Data Centre Services, commented: “This solution has been designed in keeping with our vision to be the most customer-centric data centre operator. It can reduce the costs of provisioning bandwidth, improve consistency in network performance and offer the flexibility to scale usage up and down in line with capacity requirements in real-time.
“Customers will no longer need to pay a premium for buying colocation services within the same sites as the major cloud services providers. It will also negate the upfront capital costs of provisioning fixed connectivity to cloud platforms that don’t offer a data centre services capability.
“We’re confident that it’s the best possible model on the market, developed to keep costs for our customers to a minimum, without sacrificing performance and delivery.”
