Internet Solutions (IS) today announced that capacity on the second phase of the recently completed Randview data centre will be available shortly, following strong demand for rack space in phase one.
“We went live with the first phase of the Randview data centre in March, and the uptake of rack space has been overwhelming,” explains Greg Montjoie, Executive for Cloud Services at IS. “The growing demand for local hosting, cloud computing and virtualisation services is clearly evident in the fact that we filled all the racks in phase one in less than six months.”
Montjoie explains that many of the clients that are hosted in the Randview data centre use it to provision private clouds, and as this data centre offers the most efficient cooling system in Africa, hosting costs are reduced.
“Randview utilises free cooling technology, in the form of Kyoto Cooling Cells - mechanical devices that use a wheel to direct colder ambient air into the data centre to cool the server racks. The system also extracts heat from inside the data centre by means of a hot aisle-contained exhaust system.” This form of cooling not only offers a greener alternative, as traditional cooling is only required during the hottest days of the year, but is also more efficient. This makes it the ideal cooling solution for data centres as it can accommodate the more advanced technology configurations and increased server density required for hosted private clouds.
“The results of this cooling system have been extremely positive and offers many operational benefits to our business, and subsequently, to our customers,” continues Montjoie. “Most importantly, we are seeing many cost benefits to using this cooling technology, particularly in terms of our operating expenditure, which results in a saving that we are then able to pass on to our clients.”
Montjoie also believes the strong uptake of hosted services in Randview, mainly by new clients, has been robust in phase one, due to the fact that the data centre is telco-agnostic or carrier-neutral. “This means that clients can break out of the data centre on any network,” he explains. “This gives clients access to a sophisticated cloud platform that can be accessed and used without having to change their existing connectivity service provider.”
“The new facility also contains the new IS CaaS (compute as a service) offering built on, allowing clients to create hybrid clouds that can burst to consume CPU, storage and RAM on an hourly basis, which means they only pay for what they use,” continues Montjoie. “This is an attractive offering for companies who want to enjoy the benefit of hosting in a world-class data centre, but only want to pay for what they use to better manage their costs. It is an ideal environment for businesses which have cyclic loads on their compute infrastructure or have unpredictable demand peaks.”
Based on current uptake, Montjoie expects the second phase of the 2 500m^2 facility to be filled by the end of 2013.
“We are extremely positive about the response we have had to the launch of the Randview data centre - a reflection of the growing number of businesses which now understand the cloud computing value proposition, and are demanding an agnostic choice of network provider. Additionally, our next-generation Randview data centre enables companies of all sizes to leverage a full suite of cloud computing services,” he concludes.
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Internet Solutions
Internet Solutions is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dimension Data. The company is southern Africa's most established and experienced Internet service provider. Since 1993, Internet Solutions has been providing innovative end-to-end connectivity solutions and related services across the African continent. Today, IS is a provider of Internet Protocol-based connectivity, communications, cloud and carrier services in the African market and for African clients into the global market. IS provides services to large public and private sector organisations, medium-sized organisations, and through its value channel programme to smaller organisations and consumers.
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