December 23, 2020 by Matt Seaton

A look back at 2020

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2020, data, data center, data centre, end of year, internet, review, summary, year in review

What a difficult year 2020 has been for everyone around the world.

While this year will certainly stand as one to forget for many, we’re going to remember 2020 for a long time, as a year of extremely exciting developments here at Netwise.

This has been our largest year of investment to date, having broken ground on our brand new London East data centre back in April. Unsurprisingly, this is by far our biggest single project to date, and will provide the capacity we need to continue with our upward growth projections as we head into the new decade.

While NLE has taken centre stage this year in terms of investment and development, it’s been a busy year aside to this, across a wide range of key areas.

Notable projects from 2020 include:

We started work on London East – we started work on our brand new London East data centre in April. We’ve been running our Build Blog ever since then – needless to say, we’re very excited about what 2021 will have in store for us and our new site.
Graham Cornell joined as Technical Manager – Graham joined as our new Technical Manager in January, and has been hard at work helping our growing roster of clients ever since.
THN became our first Supernode – in March, we upgraded our core node in Telehouse North, becoming the first on-net site to enjoy the roll out of our full Supernode architecture.
We added CLL to our POP list – the summertime saw the roll out of a brand new on-net POP / node at City Lifeline, one of London’s most important carrier-dense facilities – we took a pod of racks here, to secure our future in this location.
We took delivery of our first fleet vehicle – our first fleet vehicle joined us this year – number 001 – which has since received our full livery and chevron kit. This will be joined by further vehicles in due course, and makes the ongoing operation and maintenance of our multiple facilities much easier (along with client migrations).
We expanded into FRA and AMS – we’ve expanded our presence in Frankfurt, and have entered the Amsterdam market for the first time, all driven by client growth in these key European locations.
Our first private cage went live – we deployed our first private client cage at our London Central site in Q1, allowing one of our key clients to enjoy an entirely private space in Data Hall 1, complete with their own access control and build desk.
COVID-19 safe operations – in line with changing government guidelines throughout the year, we’ve always ensured fully-compliant operation of our sites, both in terms of our own team, and visiting clients.

Beyond the roster of notable projects above, we’ve also performed extremely well in our 19-20 financial year, which came to an end in October. Despite global economic issues resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re fortunate to operate in a sector which has seen accelerated growth and demand as organisations move to remote working.

We hope that our continued growth in what has been a very turbulent year provides the stability our customers need to operate with total peace of mind, thanks to the faultless operations of critical business systems around the clock.

We helped many new and existing customers pivot to fully-remote working environments back in April, which we’ve continued to do throughout the year.

Our growth this year has been testament to our rock-solid operation, which our clients continue to rely on for their critical IT infrastructure. We’ve been extremely proud to see so many of our clients continue to grow this year, providing world-class services to millions of end-users all around the world.

Looking ahead

We’re looking forward to 2021 just as much as everyone else, not least as we expect to return to a more normal home life, but also as we see the fruits of our labour this year come into full service.

In early 2021, we’ll be adding to our team, which we’re very excited to share with everyone in January.

A reminder of our exciting 10th birthday, which we celebrated at the end of 2019

We’d like to wish all of our stakeholders a fantastic New Year, and a prosperous 2021. We look forward to sharing it with you.

December 18, 2020 by Matt Seaton

London East Build Blog – Weeks 35 and 36

As we head towards the Holiday Season, we’ve been able to clear away a range of outstanding tasks on our list, setting things up nicely for the continuation of scheduled work in Q1 2021.

This short entry covers the items that have seen progress in the weeks leading up to the Festive holiday.

Weekly overview

We’ll be keeping this post relatively brief, however we’ve seen dramatic developments in a couple of key areas; cooling and lighting.

The entire first floor is now fully lit through the Klik system, which provides power to our overhead LED panels. This means that all temporary site lighting on the first floor can now be removed. Emergency bulkheads have also been wired up, ready for final directional label application in due course.

We’ve also built out our cooling system much further, with Data Halls 1 and 2 now very near completion, ahead of plumbing and cabling. The supplementary air conditioning systems are now also in place, pending commissioning much later in the project.

Lights — We lit up the first floor of the facility with full overhead lighting for the first time

Fire Stairs — Although our new first floor fire exit got installed a little while back, we haven’t yet shown it – here it is, providing a new fire exit route to the rear of the first floor data halls

Cooling — Here we see the cooling system being married up to its custom blanking system

The past few weeks have been vital in driving the project forwards, as we continue to line up the various items required for the next phase of the build.

What else has been happening?

We have two new deployments underway in Frankfurt and Amsterdam, which have been in the works now for some time. These will reach completion in the next few weeks, with a large number of high-specification servers and high-performance connectivity rolling out in both locations.

These have both been top-to-bottom deployments for us, from consultation, hardware supply, project management, right through to provisioning.

We’re very excited to see these two new systems come online. Amsterdam will be a new location for Netwise, and the roll-out in Frankfurt sees us expand our existing footprint in Germany’s most important data centre hub.

We’ve also had confirmation this week of our plans for fully diverse fibre routes back to our core nodes in THN and LD8, which is great news. The ball is now rolling on installation of these lines, which will provide us with dark fibre access to our existing metro network. Our network will then span five key London data centres.

In other news, we’ve been working directly with TfL to update the content on our travel notice screen in reception at NLC, which will carry over to a the new system being installed at NLE. Look out for the updated screens on-site at our facilities soon!

What’s next?

We will be continuing with progress on outstanding items throughout the holiday season, ready for larger trade work to continue in Q1. This will most notably include the electrical portion of the project – both HV and LV – which will take us right through to the point of onlining the site.

December 10, 2020December 10, 2020 by Matt Seaton

Why a colocation centre will help your business with data management

We’re living in the information age where data drives the business world.

As companies expand, so do the requirements they place on their data. Businesses are looking for cost-effective, secure solutions for storing and managing their data. While many organisations still use in-house facilities, data centres continue to gain in popularity every year.

In fact, experts are predicting data centre spending to reach $200B in 2021.

Many data centres offer colocation as their core service. This allows companies to lease space within a larger shared facility.

When it comes to data management, a colocation centre is a secure and affordable solution. Keep reading to find out more.

What is a colocation centre?

A colocation data centre is a physical facility used for data storage. This means companies lease space within the facility to house their critical IT infrastructure.

Colocation centres offer power, cooling, and security. This provides companies with a robust, turnkey solution for their data storage needs.

Included in most colocation services are network connectivity, physical security, powerful cooling, and resilient power delivery.

These facilities are multi-tenant accessible. Depending on their needs, businesses can select from a variety of scalable solutions.

Colocation centres include cabinets, cages, and suites for housing equipment. Clients can access the facility, outsourcing the location and security to the service provider.

There are two main types of colocation centres – wholesale and retail.

Retail colocation

In the retail model, a business leases space inside a colocation centre, usually a rack or cabinet. Power is supplied at a threshold, and the amount you pay depends on your consumption.

Retail colocation is mainly used by startups, SMEs and government agencies.

Retail colocation is a turnkey service, meaning you can just turn up with your hardware and get setup. The data centre provides the rack(s), power, PDUs, network connectivity and IP addressing.

Wholesale colocation

Wholesale colocation is geared towards large corporations and service providers. Because of this, it’s a more complete solution. Wholesale colocation provides organisations with larger spaces away from other tenants, and is generally sold as technical space in square feet, or by available total power in the space.

Having your data storage facilities separate from other tenants helps ensure security. Costs for wholesale colocation depend on your power usage and space requirements.

Wholesale space is generally a more hands on experience, for businesses with lots of in-house technical know-how. This approach offers a greater level of economy at a larger scale, by committing to a much larger service specification from day one.

Benefits of data centre colocation

There are several reasons to consider using colocation services for your business. Here are some of the advantages of colocation for data management.

Affordability

Colocation centres provide businesses with an affordable solution for their data management needs. With a colocation facility, you can scale up your hosted environment as your business grows.

Sharing space and infrastructure with other companies helps save on operational costs. This makes colocation a highly affordable solution.

Furthermore, companies can enjoy modern data centre infrastructure, cooling, experienced staff, and security.

Efficiency

Companies that choose to manage their own data have to set up server rooms. They also need to find trained staff to manage their hardware. A colocation service offers a more efficient way of storing and managing data.

Colocation centres offer efficient solutions to meet energy and cooling requirements. And on the whole, energy consumption is lower, thanks to improved power efficacy.

Colocation facilities are engineered for high uptime. If your business relies on online traffic, then outages are simply unacceptable. With colocation services, you can be sure your systems are operating in a stable environment.

Flexible

Colocation facilities are flexible and provide a range of carrier connectivity options. They can also offer blended transit services, spreading bandwidth between several carriers. This ensures 100% network availability.

With colocation services, you can increase space, equipment, and power as you need to. In-house server rooms may be difficult to scale once your business starts growing. You don’t have to worry about this with colocation centres.

Secure

Colocation lets companies make use of resources that would otherwise be too expensive. One advantage of using colocation centres for data storage is security.

Colocation centres have several layers of security and threat detection to protect infrastructure. These facilities are also monitored at all times using CCTV cameras. And personnel are on active patrol 24/7.

Scalable

Another important advantage of colocation services is the scalability that they provide. With a colocation setup, expanding is quick and seamless. The same can’t be said for in-house setups and server rooms.

Colocation makes it easier to grow long-term. This is thanks to better control over fixed-costs and IT budgets.

Connectivity

Colocation offers global and secure connectivity. These facilities provide fast networking solutions and stable connectivity at an affordable cost. Traffic flow on the network is monitored to ensure minimal downtime.

Fast internet connectivity is not always possible at an office location. And employing personnel to manage specialist equipment can be costly.

Sustainable infrastructure

Colocation provides organisations with a fully auditable system. They also have full control over their IT infrastructure. This is why colocation has an advantage over other data solutions such as cloud storage.

Cloud storage can be very expensive. It’s often more affordable for companies to store data on their own servers.

Moreover, data centres are constantly researching and making use of green technologies. This allows companies to reduce their environmental impact.

Colocation vs in-house data facilities

What is in-house data storage? It’s when a company stores servers and networking hardware on their premises. Some companies prefer this antiquated method of data storage.

Why? Because it gives you full control over your equipment, and you can tweak and change your setup when you want.

There’s one problem – maintaining your own hardware can be complicated and expensive. Colocation centres provide a simple, turnkey solution that comes at an affordable cost.

Also, companies don’t need to worry about the cost of power, cooling, and security. Colocation facilities also increase uptime by offering stable connectivity and redundant power solutions.

Improve your data management with colocation services

A colocation centre provides organisations with scalable solutions for their data management needs.

Colocation allows companies to lease space for their IT infrastructure. This includes power, cooling, connectivity, and security. Many tenants lease space in the same facility. This makes colocation more affordable than in-house data storage.

Are you thinking about moving to a colocation solution? We offer world-class data centre facilities run on 100% renewable energy. Get in touch with us to find out more.

December 9, 2020December 9, 2020 by Matt Seaton

Why you’ll thank yourself for using a third party provider for data management

The total global volume of data is expected to reach 175 zettabytes within the next five years.

With the rise of SaaS and the Internet of Things (IoT), can companies continue to host their own data in-house? Or should they look to a third-party provider to manage their information?

This article examines third party data centres as the ideal solution to hosting critical business data.

We explain what a third party data management service is and how it differs from on-site hosting. We also outline the benefits of data centres and how colocation is the perfect choice to store your data safely.

Read on to discover the best way to manage your business data through a third-party provider.

Why the need for data management?

Data continues to play a critical role in business, from storing customer records to analysing big data through AI.

Yet all this data needs to be stored somewhere. It must remain safe, be accessible at all times, and comply with all necessary regulations.

Downtime in a world where the workplace never sleeps is unacceptable.

Databases, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), web sites—they all require uninterrupted data flow. Servers control this movement and offer authorised connections to read and update information. Misconfiguration or faulty hardware can decimate a business overnight if no one is there to help fix it.

It’s essential to not only have a system to manage business data, but also to ensure it remains available at all times.

Types of data storage

There are 3 recognised types of data storage solutions:

On-site or on-premises
Colocation services
Cloud storage

On-site or on-premises

On-site data gets stored inside of a local or wide area network within the company’s own premises. For small to medium-sized businesses, that means using servers located in a dedicated data room or closet.

Full responsibility for this hardware lies with the office or IT manager.

That includes organising the installation, security, and maintenance of each piece of hardware. Any outdated equipment must be replaced and managers are ultimately liable for any downtime.

Colocation services

Companies that need bigger or better data management solutions use colocation.

Colocation services store data on company-owned equipment, but then house this equipment off-site, in a purpose-built data centre facility. Instead of having to physically house and service their own servers, they use a data centre to host their hardware.

Data centre operators like Netwise offer a dedicated solution to store your company data.

Businesses can either purchase their own servers or let us order, configure, and install them on your behalf. They’re placed in server racks, which can be divided into segregated cabinets, or even provided on a per unit basis.

Data centres are fully secured, both digitally and physically. They’re also monitored for intrusions such as hacking attempts and DDoS attacks.

Cloud storage

Cloud storage lets you save information to an off-site location, held on large distributed systems owned an operated by a cloud service provider.

Cloud providers host, manage, secure, and maintain all the necessary hardware. They’re also responsible for the infrastructure that lets you access your data.

A cloud storage system often uses multiple clusters of servers to host data. They’re termed data buckets and companies use them to hold multiple digital objects like videos or back-up files.

What is a data management third party provider?

A third party provider is an external company that’s responsible for hosting your data.

Unlike on-site storage, they help to maintain and control your servers for you. Our world-class London data centres enable our clients to colocate their own servers and utilise our high-uptime utilities.

But what are the main differences between a third-party provider and managing data on your own premises?

On-site vs online data centres

Until quite recently, most businesses traditionally stored data in-house, on the servers they keep in their offices.

That required the purchase and installation of cabling, switches, a network cabinet, and the servers themselves. Not to mention licencing the right software.

For many years, Microsoft SBS enabled Windows PCs to store and share files over a company’s network. Back-ups were saved to costly tape drives and placed in a fire-proof safe.

So why did Microsoft Small Business Server come to its end of life in January 2020?

Online data management

With the rise of broadband and fibre internet, companies abandoned on-site methods in favour of online solutions.

Modern internet infrastructure enables the sharing of terabytes of data around the world, all at the speed of light. That global network now enables businesses to store and access large volumes of information via third-party data centres.

Low latency combined with robust security ensures a better service than hosting on-site. But the benefits don’t stop there.

Benefits of a third party data management provider

Unlike your business’s premises, data centres are designed to do one thing: host your critical data.

A data centre provider like Netwise can manage your company’s data by offering:

Multiple reliable power sources
Resilient, high-performance connectivity
DDoS mitigation services
Multi-unit to full rack colocation services
Dedicated and custom hosting
Access to software licencing

Data centres come equipped with UPS hardware to ensure systems stay up when the power goes down.

Security software continually monitors for intrusion attempts and attacks. And they can provide custom servers to match your exact requirements.

Colocation vs public cloud

What’s the difference between a cloud host and a colocation data centre?

The main issue is where your private data gets stored.

A public cloud host saves your sensitive information on servers all around the world. There are often no geographic constraints which can cause problems when protecting data. It’s also more difficult to set-up an environment that’s dedicated to a legacy system on the cloud.

With a colocation provider, everything’s kept on your own servers.

You know exactly where your hardware is at all times, which makes life easier for GDPR compliance etc. You also manage who accesses it and what’s stored there.

If you want full control over your data but don’t want the limitations of hosting it yourself, always choose the colocation option.

Host and manage all of your data with Netwise

This article has examined the issues faced when hosting and managing data within a local network.

Not only is it less expensive to use a third-party provider to manage your information, but it’s faster and safer too. That’s why companies of all sizes choose Netwise to hold their most important digital assets.

Netwise owns and operates private data centres in the heart of London to host your critical business systems.

Our London Central facility boasts 11,000 square feet of technical space, housing up to 200 racks. Our data centre buildings run on 100% renewable energy and they’re secured by 24/7 monitored security.

See how much you can save with our colocation services by using our colocation calculator. This step-by-step process lets you choose your power, space, connectivity, and port speed requirements. Then, when you’re ready, get in touch by contacting our team.

Don’t let your data get out of control. Use a third-party provider. Use Netwise.

December 8, 2020December 8, 2020 by Matt Seaton

London East Build Blog – Weeks 32 to 34

With the internal shell now complete, and with far fewer trades now on-site until the electrical works begin, we’ve been able to get various supplementary works underway across a number of key areas.

The last few weeks have proved to be an excellent springboard for getting things like access control integration started, with the first doors at NLE now online and interacting with our core systems at NLC.

Weekly overview

While final plans and schedules for the LV and HV electrical works continue, we’ve been able to press ahead on-site with a range of supplementary projects which have helped to drive forward general progress.

We’ve spent time on the main access control elements, which will secure the client entry points to the facility. This includes the frame installation of our turnstile, the integration of the main reception door onto the access control system, and the deployment of our lovely new Boon Edam speed gates.

Speedgates — The first of our three speedgate terminals fixed down to the floor in our entrance foyer, seen against the grey feature wall which runs the length of this area

Frontdoor — Here we see the front door access control systems being installed, which will also house control points for the main compound turnstile

Envelope — A quick look at some of the now fully-completed door systems, this one showing the entrance to one of our LV power rooms, and the ground floor lift entrance – this is being custom painted to match all other doors soon

Hardhat — With hard hat tours starting in early 2021, we’ve been getting the tour PPE kit on-site ready for use by our visitors

Alongside access control works, we’ve also now flood cabled the first data hall with its final lighting cables, which means we can begin to light the data halls with their overhead LED panels for the first time.

We’ve also had trades back on-site over the past few weeks to bring all doors to full completion, which includes the checking of tile stability around the frames, and adjusting all doors for their opening angles and closing speeds. Given the number of door systems installed, this is quite the undertaking.

Though not something pictured, our lift is now operational, and can move between floors. We’re now just waiting on some final integration work to be undertaken, which will bring that particular element of the project to a close.

The custom frame system we’ve had designed for our cooling plant and cold corridors arrived during this time, which we hope to begin installing in the next couple of weeks, on the lead up to Christmas.

What’s next?

Details are now finalised on much of the HV and LV front, meaning we’re close to having that stage of the project begin.

In the lead up to this, we’ll be continuing with lighting, access control, and the chequer plating of all client areas.

Another major job that will be undertaken both now and throughout the electrical installation works will be the integration of our new CREC system. This will include getting the coolers plumbed, powered and interconnected for their control systems, along with the installation of our custom-fabricated containment frame, which will blank off any cooler bays which are presently unoccupied, as well as providing a mounting location for the extraction louvres.