Digital Realty enables Cloud

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. has announced the release of a white paper titled “Enabling the Cloud: Digital Realty and the Next Generation of Data Centre Connectivity in Europe.” The paper discusses in detail how Digital Realty is addressing the connectivity-specific needs of UK-based enterprise customers that are either providing or using cloud and/or virtualization services.

“More and more enterprise customers are viewing the cloud as a key strategic business tool, and, as such, are increasingly moving toward a cloud-based service delivery platform,” said Robert Bath, vice president of Engineering, Digital Realty, Europe, and author of the paper. “With the adoption of this new strategy come certain challenges for customers, which are primarily related to issues around fibre optics and network connectivity.”

The white paper focuses on how Digital Realty is uniquely positioned to help its enterprise customers overcome these challenges through its deployment of a high-capacity, high-availability network in the greater London area combined with a host of complementary connectivity solutions that are provided by a variety of carriers with whom the Company has longstanding relationships.

Key Customer Requirements
In the paper, Digital Realty identifies the following key concerns among its enterprise customers’ critical connectivity-related requirements for operating within a cloud or virtualization environment:
· Security and/or protection of data and its associated transmission
· Flexibility (the ability to rapidly scale bandwidth, augment protocols, etc.)
· Network reliability/availability
· On-demand (or just-in-time) deployment
· Managed platforms, service bundling and network convergence
· Bespoke network and bandwidth services (i.e. dedicated networks, fully bespoke design, build-and-operate models)

“Mindful of the potential performance impact both cloud- and virtualization-based services could have on their operations, enterprise companies are placing increased reliance on outsourced management of their networks to carriers offering high levels of service availability and network flexibility,” said Mr. Bath.

Long-Term Solution
To address these concerns, Digital Realty has launched an initiative to provide enterprise customers with a long-term solution for connectivity in and around London, and ultimately across Europe.

The first phase of the effort, completed in November 2012, focused on providing a single network that interconnects Digital Realty’s data centres in the greater London area. The second phase focuses on establishing diverse, high fibre connectivity for the same network between Digital Realty data centres and key metro and access networks. The third phase focuses on interconnecting the Company’s data centres throughout Europe. The expected completion date of the entire initiative is the first quarter of 2014.

“Three of our local data centres today are linked via a highly advanced connectivity network,” Mr. Bath said, citing facilities in Chessington, Redhill and Woking. “The pan-European connection that we are striving for will link our London-area sites to those in Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris and future Digital Realty markets.”

“With one of the largest global portfolios of network centric data centre facilities, our unique operating platform and scale enable us to develop and deploy industry-leading solutions such as this one to meet our customers’ ongoing requirements,” added Michael F. Foust, CEO of Digital Realty. “The completion of the first phase of this important initiative represents an important milestone in our continued efforts to enhance our portfolio and global data centre offering.”