centre of attention
‘The drive
for cost
efficiency,
off-the-shelf
solutions,
agility, and
disaster
recovery
capabilities
to name a
few have
made cloud
the queen of
the party.’
organisations are not only utilising
the solution for functional
elements like running IT back-
up services and archiving, but
they’re also taking advantage of its
versatility to drive innovation.
With data intensive practices
such as machine learning and
virtual reality becoming key
tools for organisations to better
interact with and understand
their customers, it’s no wonder
that UK organisations are looking
for cost efficient ways to carry
that extra compute.
And this drive for cost
efficiency, off-the-shelf solutions,
agility, and disaster recovery
capabilities to name a few have
made cloud the queen of the party.
The trend to find more robust
and efficient data storage solutions
will not stop here. And we can
clearly see an increased demand
for faster data transfer.
Many businesses today are
still battling data latency issues,
which hamper their abilities to
develop and deliver innovative
digital products and solutions,
retain operational efficiency and
handle day-to-day activities. It
is encouraging, however, to see
both businesses and data centre
providers join the race to shave
microseconds from data processing.
Distance isn’t
just a number
While the demand for speed and
efficiency is characteristic to
many industries, this becomes
particularly relevant to the
financial sector.
Here, ultra-high speed
networking, especially used in
trading exchanges and brokerages,
can provide an advantage of a few
milliseconds, enough to earn the
company millions per year.
Research showed that when
choosing a data centre, brokerages
pick based on cost, followed by the
proximity to the local exchange,
and reliability of power supply
amongst other criteria. This is
mirrored by other industries, where
decision-makers are on the lookout
for networks that are as near real-
time as possible, transparent and
at low cost.
London, being a tech and
business cluster, is home to
thousands of businesses that
require the above, and once
Google has built its London data
centre, Google Cloud Platform
customers are expected to see
significant reduction in latency
when they run their workloads in
the London region.
As such, the tech giant itself
confirmed that in cities like London,
Edinburgh, Dublin and Amsterdam,
their performance testing showed a
40% to 80% reduction in round-trip
latency when serving customers
from London compare to the
Belgium region.
This means that companies
both big and small can now
compete on the same level as they
can all access the same capabilities
– data centres offer unrivalled
opportunities to unlock their
growth potential. As businesses
undergo a transformation process
to meet the ever increasing needs
of their customers, we see the
demand for cloud services soar.
Colocation and
other solutions
Reducing the distance between
two sites can considerably improve
network performance, and that
explains why many other data
centre sites are located close to
financial centres for example, or
even inside stock exchanges.
However, a side effect of this
is an increased competition for
colocation. This drives prices up
and increases strains on power
reserves. An alternative solution
could be faster networks.
Various technologies can
have an effect on how well a data
centre is performing. Both the
distance data has to travel and the
bandwidth the colocation provider
has impact user experience. It is
clear, however, that data centre
solution providers are now
striving to implement the latest
technologies as well as using
old tricks to provide the best
experience for their customers.
After all, time is money.
September 2017 | 15