06
NEWS
Networks Europe helps you to understand the art of
the possible as the news desk highlights some of the
stories currently catching their attention.
The cloud, colocation and choice
Colocation data centre provider Aegis Data who operate highly resilient and
optimised data centre environments for mission critical IT, has announced its
membership of the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).
In a sector experiencing rapid growth, CIF champions and advocates the adoption
of cloud-based technologies and it works to improve industry standards using
education, research and whitepapers. Currently made up of more than 21,000
members CIF also provides certification to a Code of Practice for credible online
cloud service provision with the aim of improving transparency for end users and
businesses alike.
Despite the growth of cloud-based solutions, colocation data centres have
continued to remain a viable option. They allow organisations to enjoy an
operational expenditure (OPEX) model without relinquishing control of their
physical IT estate. Colocation popularity shows little sign of regress according to
research from analyst firm 451 Research. They fo und that the amount of data
centre space occupied by colocation providers was up 11 per cent in 2014 and
is forecast to maintain this level of growth through to 2018 as organisations
continue to outsource their IT.
Greg McCulloch CEO of Aegis Data comments, “Data centres and cloud
technologies are commonly misunderstood as competing services at opposite
ends of the spectrum – we don’t see this to be the case at all… the rise of cloud
services is affording colocation facilities like us greater opportunities to enhance
our proposition…”
The network challenge in the data centre
With the Internet established as an integral part of daily life and
with the mobile Internet and service-oriented cloud computing
technologies maturing, Internet traffic has experienced
explosive growth. One survey shows that IP traffic from DCs
around the world increases at an annual growth rate of 33 per
cent on average. The data traffic in DCs is expected to reach
4.8 ZB during 2016 and this poses significant challenges to
data centre networks, the infrastructure for service provisioning.
Speaking at the 2016 Mobile World Congress, Huawei holds that
future networks have to adopt hierarchical DC deployment and
DC-centric restructuring so that they can provide a millisecond
latency service experience. Based on this, Huawei has unveiled
their “Best Experience DC-Centric Network Solution”. It
comprises three components: CloudFabric 3.0 for intra-DC
connections, DCI for inter-DC connections and CloudVPN for
user-to-DC connections.
CloudFabric 3.0 provides SDN-based drag-and-drop GUIs,
allowing tenant-oriented service provisioning with one click;
DCI provides SDN-based E2E IP+optical synergy for automated
service provisioning and rapid optimisation and CloudVPN
expands the business reach of operators to enterprise networks,
helping to increase customer loyalty and business revenue
through NaaS.
Fixed broadband (FBB) solution provider Huawei has invested
heavily in the DC network to provide a DC-centric network
solution that will help operators to build next-generation bearer
networks. These networks are oriented to cloud services to
facilitate operator business transformation in the DC era in a
digital transformation market worth trillions of US dollars for
operators.
www.networkseuropemagazine.com