Challenge
Magrathea needed to find a new provider of colocation services when it became necessary to move part of the firm’s network out of one of its data centre sites. The organisation also required additional resiliency for its telephony network in order to prevent the possibility of any downtime, which could seriously harm the business.

Pulsant solution
Pulsant now provides Magrathea with three colocation racks in its ‘Pulsant 2’ Maidenhead-based data centre, providing dual feed capability to achieve enhanced resilience and prevent the possibility of any downtime.

Results
Magrathea’s network is now highly resilient with various links between data centres. It is now constantly working to make further improvements so that calls remain uninterrupted.

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Challenge
Edenhouse sought to improve its IT network capacity and operational efficiency in order to future proof its business
and support its long-term growth strategies. The organisation needed to find somewhere to host its SAP (System Applications Products) infrastructure with a network solution that would keep its applications and data safe.

Pulsant solution
Edenhouse engaged Pulsant to host, manage and maintain its cloud environment on the Pulsant Enterprise Cloud (PEC) and provide it with a managed MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) network, managed security, inter-office connectivity, data centre connectivity, internet access and connectivity to its customers.

Results
Edenhouse customers are now benefiting from an improved experience due to the company’s optimised data environments which ensure consistency and 24/7 uptime.

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Launched in 2002, Active Voice & Data is an award-winning supplier and installer of business telecommunication systems, including unified communications, hosted communications, business internet and comprehensive support and maintenance packages for businesses of all sizes.

Pulsant solution
Pulsant Enterprise Cloud

Outcomes
• Improved service offering
• Increased customer confidence

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For the best part of a year, most UK businesses have been operating remote working policies under the operational restrictions of the pandemic. Although many organisations will have had fairly robust business continuity plans in place, few will have been prepared for the true scale and impact of Covid-19. Indeed, our recent research found that only two-thirds of IT decision-makers (68%) felt their organisation was prepared to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.

So now nearly a year into the pandemic, what have we learnt? And is now the time to start thinking about wider implications on your IT infrastructure?

Understanding the risks

The pandemic has left many IT decision makers questioning whether their current IT architecture is right for their organisation’s future needs. As well as the challenge of securing and supporting a dispersed workforce, it has also highlighted a number of IT issues that may not have been considered previously.

For example, if you’re currently operating an on-premise model, local and national lockdowns have probably meant you have at some point found yourself unable to maintain and access your IT infrastructure. Not only can this leave you unable to carry out required physical updates and maintenance, but it puts your IT and business at risk from unplanned downtime. And with restrictions only increasing around the country, you need to contemplate whether this infrastructure model is fit for purpose.

Similarly, you may have experienced challenges with your infrastructure network as a result of the mass remote working. You may have found yourself needing to add more bandwidth and connectivity which can take up to 30 days in an on-premise environment, impacting staff productivity.

Add this to the extra costs associated with purchasing and maintaining on-premise equipment and the risks can soon mount up. It only takes one piece of equipment to fail to result in a huge, unexpected capital expenditure to your business. So, what do you need to consider and where should you start?

Key considerations

Before making any infrastructure changes, you need to understand what you really need from your IT infrastructure. Consider how you want to consume services in future – do you want to make the journey to Software as a Service (SaaS) and let a provider worry about how your applications and data are managed and delivered? Do you want a middle ground where you let a cloud provider take the strain (and investment in technology) allowing you to focus on your applications? Or do you need to maintain full oversight of applications, data and facilities with the overhead that brings?

Having the right infrastructure in place will be critical for future success so longer-term questions need to be asked including:

• Are your applications and data in the right place to achieve both performance and compliance requirements?
• How accessible is your data? Should you reconsider how you manage your data and where it lies, bringing it closer to you?
• How important is the ability to flex and scale as required? And are you held back by your current data centre environment?
• Are your infrastructure costs rising? Or do you need to switch from a CAPEX to OPEX model?
• Do you need to accelerate digital transformation plans in a safer and more reliable manner?
• Do you plan to move towards a remote working model permanently, and if so, do you still need the real estate space?

Turn risk into opportunity with colocation

Our research found that nearly a quarter of business leaders (24%) believe that delivering business transformation projects is where IT can deliver the greatest value over the next 12 – 18 months. Yet, having the right infrastructure in place will be critical for success.

One thing pandemic has highlighted is that flexibility, adaptability and resiliency is key. You need to be able to access your infrastructure 24/7, be able to make changes quickly if required, and scale capacity up and down as needed. In this environment, on-premise models can be restrictive.

Colocation is an ideal way to ensure infrastructure remains protected, while also supporting a long-term digital migration. With the right colocation partner, you can turn risk into an opportunity, ensuring your IT infrastructure can quickly develop, scale and remain secure, resilient and operational, no matter what challenges arise. Colocation is also an ideal way to future proof operations and migrate to the cloud, providing flexibility and operational outsourcing, as well as dynamic connectivity to a cloud fabric to accelerate your cloud journey.

Another benefit is that you can consume the resources you need, when you need it, using an OPEX model. This avoids the need for up front capital costs, depreciating assets, and investment should equipment fail. Plus, with colocation, the cost of system maintenance is spread across multiple customers, so you can benefit from high service levels whilst unlocking precious capital.

Future proofing your IT Infrastructure

The pandemic has highlighted the importance of having the right IT infrastructure in place and as the new Covid-19 variant continues to sweep the UK, you can’t afford any risks.

If you haven’t already it’s time to consider a shift from on-premise legacy IT to more agile models such as colocation that enable a full shift to the cloud if required. With a trusted colocation partner, you can significantly reduce the time, resources and costs of supporting and managing your own infrastructure, so you can focus on what matters most – the services and solution you offer to customers.

The global data centre colocation market size is expected to reach US$ 104.77bn by 2027 and as the largest regional data centre provider in the UK we will remain at forefront of UK growth. Our sites are strategically located throughout the country, giving you the peace of mind that your data and infrastructure is never far away, easily accessible and always remains in the UK.

More than that, we can provide you with a one-stop-shop for your infrastructure needs. Our 10 regional data centres mean that you can spread your estate across multiple sites and can easily and cost-effectively scale up your footprint as your business grows. Our sites are also cloud-ready (carrier neutral and support all cloud models, including our own Pulsant Enterprise Cloud), allowing you to make the transition from colocation to private and public cloud at your own pace.

To find out more, get in touch with one of our experts.

The post Is your IT Infrastructure putting your business at risk? appeared first on Pulsant.

In today’s climate, when any unplanned downtime can be catastrophic for a business, you need assurance that your organisation’s data remains secure and accessible, no matter what circumstance. The current Covid-19 pandemic in particular, has brought this issue to the fore, but there are many other unexpected scenarios that could impact your business. In future, it may be an act of terrorism, natural disaster or even another health crisis that causes disruption – one thing is for certain you can’t anticipate everything.

With Covid-19 shining the spotlight on the importance of our infrastructure, you may be considering whether your current strategy still meets your business requirements. You may be hosting on-premise, or collocating in a big London data centre, but whatever your approach, the pandemic has likely highlighted unnecessary infrastructure risks you may no longer be comfortable with taking.

Now’s the time to use the health crisis as a catalyst for a rethink and consider the benefits of moving your infrastructure closer.

Think beyond central hubs   

In today’s digital era, you need to ensure your users and customers have rapid and seamless access to data and services. You may be collocating in one of the carrier rich data centres either in or close to London, that offer benefits such as connectivity to hundreds of carriers. However, have you ever taken a step back to look at which of those connections your business is actually using? In reality, you’re probably only using a fraction of what’s available, yet paying a premium for the extra carriers you will never use. And in challenging economic times like those we are operating in today, is this a cost risk you are comfortable with taking?

Similarly, it’s also worth bearing in mind that with major London data centres focused in two major hubs, should a national grid outage occur, all data centres are likely to fail together. And whilst a London data centre can offer benefits in terms of more interconnections, do you need to travel further when you can benefit from the same service you actually need on your doorstep?

Make proximity a priority

Having your data centre nearby makes sense. Shorter distances and less traffic can reduce latency. Plus, you can keep a closer eye on your infrastructure and meet with any third-party representatives face-to-face as needed. Conversely, a poor choice of location can result in unstable connections of inefficiency in data processing.

A local data centre is also desirable for things such as maintenance and upgrades. You know your environment better than anyone else and no doubt want to be able to make any changes to your infrastructure yourself, which is highly impractical if the data centre is at the other end of the country.

There is also the issue of data sovereignty post-Brexit. You need to know exactly where your data is being held and whether your current provider can guarantee it will always remain in the UK.

Looking further forward, as 5G adoption and the use of IoT grows, you may be looking to adopt an edge computing model. Here proximity will become even more important with regional data centres providing an ideal platform for delivering edge services with data sent less regularly to centralised hubs and instead delivered across a grid-like architecture, with lots of data centre locations closer to edge devices.

Remove risk with a regional approach

In order to facilitate digital transformation and accommodate growing data volumes and requirements, more and more organisations are shifting their infrastructure outside of their organisation. However, selecting the right data centre to house the core infrastructure that supports your business is one of the most critical decisions you will make as an IT decision leader.

By hosting your infrastructure with a regional data centre provider like Pulsant, you can take advantage of the same connections and benefits as a London data centre, but at a fraction of the cost.

As a regional provider with a global reach, we are large enough to meet any requirements, but small enough to deliver the bespoke and personalised customer service you require. Our team of experts can help you determine the best location for your business data and applications and if necessary, help you spread your estate across multiple sites if required.

As the largest regional data centre provider in the UK, our sites are strategically located throughout the country in locations such as Reading, Sheffield and Edinburgh, so you can easily and cost-effectively scale up your footprint as your business grows. But most importantly, you can benefit from the peace of mind that your data and infrastructure is never far away, easily accessible and always held in the UK.

To find out more, contact the team today.

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Partnership enables businesses to benefit from fast, flexible, and high-performance connectivity for optimised cloud strategies.

Maidenhead, UK – 30 July 2020 –  Pulsant, a leading UK provider of regional data centre, cloud and managed services, has partnered with Megaport, a leading Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) provider, to strengthen connectivity for hybrid and multi-cloud solutions.

Leveraging Megaport’s software defined network (SDN), Pulsant customers can now connect their infrastructure directly to Megaport points of presence housed within Pulsant data centres in Milton Keynes, South London and Edinburgh South Gyle, to access a multi-cloud ecosystem.

Delivered via Pulsant’s Cloud Connect service and through Megaport’s scalable, private network, customers can connect to over 360 service providers, including major hyperscalers like Alibaba, AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Nutanix, Oracle Cloud, Salesforce, and SAP via a single port. Customers can benefit from secure, fast and flexible connectivity across regions, countries and continents, enabling organisations to scale their business faster, access new markets and deliver local services to global clients.

“Scalable connectivity between the data centre and the public cloud is now a prerequisite for modern businesses with hybrid and multi-cloud solutions. Through our Megaport Connected solution customers can now directly connect to public cloud environments from a network of regional data centres, enabling them to move their data fast and securely on a low latency, high capacity network, across and out of the UK” comments Simon Michie, CTO, Pulsant.

“Customers also increasingly need the flexibility to scale cloud consumption in line with their needs. With Pulsant Cloud Connect, we have designed a service which is fully managed and monitored, can scale up and down quickly as demand changes, and can be provisioned very quickly,” concludes Michie.

Cloud Connect can be used by customers who have a fully managed service from Pulsant or colocated infrastructure in Pulsant’s data centres. Fully-managed connectivity to Azure and AWS is provided by Pulsant with alternative Megaport supported clouds offered on an unmanaged service.

“Pulsant has established a very strong portfolio of UK regional data centres with a deep enterprise customer base” comments Eric Troyer, Chief Marketing Officer at Megaport. “The partnership helps to expand our UK network further to address the growing demand for cloud connectivity in-region. We are excited to support Pulsant’s mission to provide enhanced cloud connectivity in the North of the UK by helping companies to increase their speed to market and ability to scale.”

For more information, please visit the Cloud Connect webpage.

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If you’re reading this article, then you might be tasked with finding out how hybrid cloud fits in with your company’s current architecture. Or perhaps you’re just curious about how this cloud computing approach works.

Either way, here you’ll find lots of useful information about what hybrid cloud is, the advantages are of using it, and what options are available for your business.

Contents section

• What is hybrid cloud?
• How do hybrid clouds work?
  • Private cloud
  • Public cloud
  • Hybrid cloud
• Advantages of hybrid cloud
• Limitations
• Who is hybrid cloud suitable for?
• Hybrid cloud implementation
• Our hybrid cloud solutions

What is hybrid cloud?

The term ‘hybrid’ is used in everyday vernacular and refers to things that have been combined to make something new. In the case of the cloud, ‘hybrid’ means a mix of different ‘types’ or environments.

In essence, it’s an architecture that connects a company’s on-premises private cloud services to a third-party public cloud. Thereby creating a single infrastructure from which an organisation can choose the optimal cloud for each application or workload.

For example, it could include on-premise private clouds, externally hosted private clouds and public cloud services. It may also be a mix of UK-based hosting services with global hyperscale public cloud services.

Many organisations choose a hybrid cloud architecture to deploy their applications and data across a range of cloud environments. There might be instances where an application can’t be put into a public cloud for commercial or data protection reasons, so it is deployed internally or in a private cloud environment.

How do hybrid clouds work?

There are three main forms of cloud computing: private, public and hybrid. To understand how hybrid cloud solutions work, we first need to look at the differences between public and private clouds.

Public cloud

The public cloud is defined as computing services offered by third-party providers over the public Internet.

In a public cloud model, a company is essentially renting a portion of its distributed data centre infrastructure. The third-party cloud provider delivers compute, network, storage, and application resources while maintaining management rights. Some of the largest service providers include AWS, Google, Microsoft, Alibaba, IBM, and Oracle.

Public clouds deliver cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS). One of the main benefits for businesses is that the provider bears all the operational costs associated with hosting an application or workload. This offers you significant cost savings and takes the burden away from your IT staff.

Private cloud

As you might have guessed, the private cloud involves deploying infrastructure on your premises, as opposed to someone else’s. This is also called an internal or corporate cloud.

The corporate cloud can be offered either over the internet or via a private internal network. In the case of the former, many organisations build private clouds on rented data centres located off-premises to keep costs down.

Housing a private cloud yourself requires you to pay for the upfront expense of maintaining the equipment. You will also need the appropriate in-house IT experts to manage the infrastructure.

One of the main benefits of having a private cloud is that it gives you complete control over the computing environment and data. This may be pertinent to a company dealing with sensitive data or having to abide by strict regulations.

How does hybrid cloud differ to public or private?

Hybrid cloud allows companies to scale computing resources by allowing data and applications to be shared between both public and private clouds.

One reason you might want to do this is to gain the flexibility of the public cloud for basic computer tasks, while keeping sensitive data or intellectual property behind a company firewall via a private network. It also allows businesses to free up resources and make cost savings by delivering less mission-critical applications via the public cloud.

If you’ve already invested a significant amount of money into on-premise hardware, you can still use software as a service (SaaS) public cloud products for functions like customer relationship management or enterprise resource planning.

Hybrid cloud allows users to get the best out of both worlds, depending on the needs of the business, regulations and the data that’s being hosted. It can be used in many ways. It’s a good staging area, a good platform for building confidence in the cloud, developing a transformation programme on and carrying it out.

In the same vein, it may be a deployment model that must be used, either for compliance, regulatory, risk, latency or data sovereignty issues. Regardless, the benefits will depend on your business objectives.

The pros and cons of hybrid cloud

One of the main advantages of hybrid solutions is known as cloud bursting. This means if an organisation reaches maximum resource capacity, the overflow traffic is directed to a public cloud. This seamless transition from the private cloud is particularly useful for businesses that experience variable demand, such as those in the retail sector.

Here are some more advantages of hybrid cloud:

• Flexible policy-driven deployment to distribute workloads across public and private environments based on security, performance and cost requirements.
• Scalability of public cloud is achieved without exposing sensitive IT workloads to the inherent security risks.
• High reliability as the services are distributed across multiple data centres both public and private.
• Improved security as sensitive IT workloads run on dedicated resources in private clouds while regular workloads are spread across inexpensive public cloud to trade-off for cost investments.

Limitations of hybrid cloud architecture:

• It can get expensive.
• Strong compatibility and integration are required between cloud infrastructure spanning different locations and categories. This is a limitation with public cloud deployments, for which organisations lack direct control over the infrastructure.
• Additional infrastructure complexity is introduced as organisations operate and manage an evolving mix of private and public clouds.

Who is hybrid cloud suitable for?

There are multiple reasons why an organisation may choose to operate a hybrid cloud infrastructure.

It might be that your business has run out of physical space in your data centre. Or you are hosting a consumer website with the application databases placed on a private network. The opportunities for hybrid cloud solutions are gigantic and will depend on your business objectives.

Here are a few examples of situations where it can be useful:

• Organisations serving multiple verticals facing different IT security, regulatory and performance requirements.
• Optimising cloud investments without compromising on the value proposition of either public or private cloud technologies.
• Improving security in an existing cloud environment, such as SaaS offerings that must be delivered via secure private networks.
• Organisations that are still on their ‘cloud journey’. A hybrid cloud environment enables you to leverage the flexibility, scalability and the potential cost savings of the cloud without having to commit to moving all workloads to the cloud in one go.

Hybrid cloud implementation

How your cloud infrastructure is implemented will partly depend on the size of your organisation and business objectives. But there are a few considerations you should keep in mind, including:

• Defining the right application and data deployment model.
• Working in tandem with your enterprise systems.
• Assessing connectivity requirements.
• Assessing existing compliance frameworks and highlight gaps.
• Implementing security and privacy measures.
• Managing the cloud environment.
• Creating a backup and data recovery plan.

Our hybrid cloud solutions

As a hosting provider, we can offer you hybrid cloud solutions. We will bring all your different cloud environments together and manage them centrally. This gives you the ability to move data and apps between environments easily.

We will ensure everything ‘speaks to each other’ and that workloads can be moved from one cloud to another.

There are multiple ways of beginning your transition; the first (and perhaps most important) is understanding your organisation’s current state and defining your cloud aspirations. This can be done in several ways, including conducting a cloud readiness assessment, which determines your organisation’s current state and what’s needed to start your journey.

At Pulsant, we assess and baseline our customers against what we call a Cloud Maturity Matrix. The matrix acts as a guide to determine which cloud services are best suited to your business, by looking at how far along the migration journey you are. This includes looking at the various cloud services you’re already using, where you aspire to be, and then helps you plot a path forward, essentially helping you manage the process.

To find out more about our hybrid cloud services, contact our team today and we’ll be happy to find a solution that fits your business.

The post What is Hybrid Cloud? appeared first on Pulsant.

All businesses have IT hardware they need to house. Whether it’s a handful of servers in the corner of the office, a larger estate of multiple servers or some racks in a comms room.

This requires reliable power distribution, cooling systems, and much more infrastructure for the servers to operate optimally. The cost of housing servers, therefore, requires a significant level of capital investment that many organisations simply can’t afford.

That’s why many businesses are turning to colocation. In this article, we discuss the meaning of server colocation, why it’s more cost-effective, and how it could help support your IT growth.

Contents

• What does ‘server colocation mean?
• How much does server colocation cost?
• The advantages of server colocation
• How safe is it to collocate your server?
• How to collocate your servers

What does ‘server colocation’ mean?

The definition of ‘server colocation’ is the process of housing an organisation’s compute, storage, networking and security hardware in a purpose-built data centre, owned and operated by a partner.

Using a data centre removes the need for your business to spend money and resources on housing servers on your own premises. You simply move your existing equipment into pre-built racks, and the data centre looks after the supporting infrastructure. We will take a look at what some of this infrastructure is below.

How much does server colocation cost?

It’s important to understand the factors that can determine your colocation costs.

The commercial goal of colocation is to avoid the up-front capital expense of building your own hosting facilities. This is done by following an OPEX model of paying the colocation provider only for the hosting space and services you need.

Our colocation contract terms are flexible. We allow you to rent a space as small as part of a shared rack, up to multiple racks locked in your own secure cage. You can even have a dedicated private room within the facility, depending on your needs.

The point here is, you only pay for the capacity you use. Billing is monthly, and you don’t need to commit to lengthy contract terms. Furthermore, as your IT needs grow, your data centre footprint can scale accordingly.

This system saves you having to pay the up-front costs of expanding your own on-premise server room.

The advantages of server colocation

• Frees up your IT resources
  • A colocation service provides engineering staff responsible for maintaining the facility and responding to issues 24/7.
• More cost-effective
  • We house multiple customers within each data centre, allowing us to spread the cost of maintaining the facility. For you, this means benefitting from economies of scale.
• All the infrastructure is provided
  • The data centre provides the building fabric, power feeds, cooling systems, generators, CCTV cameras, maintenance engineers and back-up servers.
• More reliable
  • Power outages and loss of network connectivity are major disruptors to IT operations, and in business-critical or customer-facing IT systems, any downtime will result in loss of custom and reputation.

How safe is it to collocate your server?

The ISO 27001 accreditation for IT security management covers all of our data centres. Each one is designed from the ground up to be reliable.

As part of our server colocation package, you can expect:

• Multiple redundant cooling systems
• Multiple power feeds
• High-capacity, enterprise-class UPS systems
• On-site diesel generators,
• Steel perimeter fencing preventing access
• Internal and external CCTV
• Diverse network connections

The latter takes services from several different telecommunications carriers to minimise the risk of communication outages. Your IT will continue to function and serve your customers even after a component failure.

Because we own and manage the entire environment that houses your servers, it provides us with clear visibility of any issue affecting your collocated servers and vastly increases the speed of diagnosis.

Where can I collocate my servers to?

One of the potential downsides to the colocation approach is it can mean long travel times if your engineers need to physically access your hardware.

To mitigate this, we own and manage a range of data centres across the country, with excellent transport links.

All of our data centres are constructed to enterprise-class specification, allowing you to choose a facility that is geographically convenient for you.

We also offer a ‘remote hands’ service, where our engineers act on your behalf in carrying out essential maintenance, repairs, or upgrades to your collocated equipment. That means, in many cases, you can avoid sending your own engineers entirely.

You still own the servers and you are responsible for setting up and configuring them. Your own engineers will have access to them 24/7 if required.

How to collocate your servers

If you’re interested to find out more about server collocation, you can contact our team today. We will be happy to find a solution that meets your business needs.

The post What is Server Colocation? appeared first on Pulsant.

The role of the data centre has changed drastically over recent years.

As the rapid rise of AI, the cloud, and virtualisation continue to shift the information technology landscape, data centres have had to adjust to keep up with new processing demands.

In this article, we take a look at what a data centre is, how they work, and why many businesses are making them central to their day-to-day operations.

Contents

• What is a data centre?
• What does “colocation” mean?
• How reliable are data centres?
• How much do colocation data centres cost?
• Where to find data centres
• Data centres and compliance
• Benefits of multi-site backup and disaster recovery
• Managed cloud and other services

What is a data centre?

The most basic definition of a data centre is simply a facility that a business uses to house its IT equipment.

While you could place your network servers in a corner of your own office, many modern businesses require their mission-critical IT systems to be secure, reliable and easily accessible.

This involves a significant amount of facilities infrastructure, which includes backup generators, cooling systems, power supplies and more. It requires a level of capital investment beyond the reach of most SMEs.

For that reason, many businesses will make use of the colocation services provided by third-party data centres, such as ourselves.

What does “colocation” mean?

Colocation simply means placing your own IT equipment in pre-built racks in a data centre. This isn’t just servers, but associated equipment like storage devices, network switches and firewalls.

In doing so, you can let us take care of running the facility itself, while you concentrate on running your IT systems.

As previously mentioned, the data centre will also provide the infrastructure needed to function, including:

• Power supply and distribution
• Uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) for reliability
• Stand-by generators for use in the case of a mains power failure
• Ventilation and cooling for the IT equipment
• Fire detection and suppression systems
• Physical security and access control
• Network connectivity to the outside world

At Pulsant, we own and manage all of these elements. We also host multiple businesses within each of our data centre facilities, so we’re able to keep costs at a minimum for you.

How reliable are data centres?

All of our data centre infrastructure has multiple levels of redundancy.

This means mains power is taken from more than one supplier and is backed up by on-site generators. These automatically engage if mains power is lost.

Redundant Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems ensure that if one fails (or is taken out of service for routine maintenance) other units will take up the load. For you, this means an uninterrupted service.

Similarly, cooling systems have multiple redundant units, allowing one to fail or taken out of service for routine maintenance without impacting the facility’s cooling ability. All of our data centres have multiple incoming lines from telecommunications carriers, providing reliable connectivity for your hosted systems.

All of these systems are regularly tested. For example, we will simulate a loss of mains power to demonstrate that the generators will adequately take the load in the case of a real emergency, with no loss of service.

Colocation data centre support

The most important part of supporting all this infrastructure is, of course, the people.

Maintaining the building fabric, the power, cooling sub-systems, and the security of the facilities needs knowledgeable staff.

As with the physical elements of the data centre, recruiting and retaining this team of people would be prohibitively costly for many businesses. With your equipment housed in a data centre, however, you have experienced engineers working for you 24/7.

Typically, businesses find that colocation hosting improves business operations, cuts capital costs and increases the reliability and availability of service.

How much do colocation data centres cost?

In our data centres, you can occupy everything from a shared rack up to your own secure cage. You can even have a dedicated private room within the facility, depending on your needs.

Our data centre colocation services are priced according to the physical space that your servers take up in the data centre and the amount of power they draw. Additional charges may be made for networking provision and for any server maintenance tasks you ask our engineers to carry out.

As your IT needs grow, your data centre footprint can scale accordingly, with none of the up-front capital expense you would need to expand your on-premise server room.

Where to find data centres

There are potential downsides to consider when moving your equipment into a third-party data centre. One of the main issues is the distance from your own offices.

If using our on-site staff isn’t suitable and you need to send your engineers to attend to your servers, the distance and associated travel time needs to be considered.

That is why our data centres are scattered across the country and include excellent transport links.

Our colocation data centre estate includes enterprise-class facilities at:

• Edinburgh Medway data centre
• Edinburgh Newbridge data centre
• Edinburgh South Gyle data centre
• Maidenhead data centre
• Milton Keynes data centre
• Newcastle Central data centre
• Newcastle East data centre
• Reading East data centre
• Sheffield data centre
• South London data centre

All of our data centres are designed to offer the same high levels of enterprise-class service, allowing you to choose a facility that is geographically convenient for you.

Data centres and compliance

A great data centre should measure itself against global standards.

At Pulsant, we hold independently-verified certifications in multiple standards, including:

• PCI-DSS SP 2.0 (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)
• ISO 27001:2013 (Information Security Management)
• ISO 9001 (Quality Management)
• ISO 14001 (Environmental Management)
• SSE Green Certificate (for purchasing 100% renewable energy)

These certifications are only awarded after rigorous independent auditing and show our commitment to the highest levels of service and security.

In a highly-regulated industry, you may need to show compliance with some or all of these standards yourself. Hosting your systems in a certified data centre provides an essential tick in the box.

Benefits of multi-site backup and disaster recovery

Another key benefit of moving your IT into our data centres is geographical resilience.

By mirroring your systems between geographically-separated data centres, you can make sure that your systems continue functioning in the event of a localised disaster. This wouldn’t be the case if your systems were all housed in a room in your own office.

For this reason, even businesses that run their IT from their premises often use a third-party data centre as a backup. The disaster recovery options provided by dispersed data centres should form a key part of the business continuity planning of any organisation that relies on mission-critical IT systems.

All of our data centres are connected by our multi-gigabit core network, allowing the fast and reliable transfer of data between the facilities.

Managed cloud and other services

Colocation is only one way to use a data centre.

Many organisations find it makes commercial sense to outsource IT management entirely to service providers such as ourselves.

In addition to data centre colocation, we provide public and private cloud services and a range of managed server services, all hosted from within our data centres.

Should your server estate become too large or complex for you to continue to manage yourself, you could migrate to one of our managed server solutions. This could be either on dedicated hardware we manage for you or on shared infrastructure in our Enterprise Cloud service.

To find out more about our services, contact our team today and we’ll be happy to find a solution that fits your business.

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In a landscape characterised by intense competition, changing technology and fast-evolving business needs, the ability to demonstrate compliance is becoming even more important.

Whether it’s driven by industry regulation or customer demand, you will be called on – at some point – to demonstrate your compliance with standards and certifications.

In this article, we discuss data centre compliance, what accreditations we hold, and why you should be careful when choosing a third-party provider.

The importance of data centre compliance

Data centres should be compliant with a range of recognised standards. We consider this to be paramount.

The importance of compliance is not just to tick the box of an abstract regulatory requirement, but to add real value to your business by guaranteeing a secure, reliable, consistent, and continually improving service.

In a highly-regulated industry, you may need to show compliance with some or all of these standards yourself. Hosting your systems in a certified data centre provides an essential confirmation of your commitment to security and compliance

All our data centres are designed from the ground up to ensure that your servers are physically secure. This approach means that our colocation services don’t complicate your compliance issues, but, instead, make it easier.

What our data centre accreditations mean

A modern-day data centre should have the highest level of physical security. At our data centres, you can expect multiple access controls, internal and external CCTV, steel perimeter fencing, and visitors escorted by staff.

Implementing these measures has earned us several accreditations. These certifications are only awarded after rigorous independent audits and show our commitment to the highest levels of service and security.

BSI – ISO 27001

 ISO/IEC 27001 is a global best practice framework for an information security management system (ISMS). By achieving this certification, we can demonstrate our ISMS meets international best practices and holds up to scrutiny. For you, this means we can handle your information securely.

BSI – ISO 14001

This is a globally-recognised environmental protection standard. ISO 14001 is used across the world to reduce environmental impacts and is an excellent framework to help implement an environmental management system (EMS). By having this accreditation, it demonstrates our ability to measure and improve on identified areas of environmental responsibility.

BSI – ISO 9001

 ISO 9001 is the Quality Management System (QMS) standard. Earning this accreditation means we can streamline operations, reduce costs, and continually improve our quality management system. You can take peace of mind, then, that we are always looking to identify areas for improvement.

PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliant

The PCI-DSS standard specifies the minimum security processes to be applied to protect payment card data and transactions carried out.

We have been assessed against the PCI-DSS physical security requirements at our data centres in Edinburgh Medway, Maidenhead, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, South London and South Yorkshire.

 Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) STAR certificate

Cloud computing has opened up many new opportunities, but it also presents several new security risks. This certificate shows that we have one of the highest standards in the cloud security industry. For you, it means continual progress, demonstrable safety, and transparency.

SSE Green Certificate

SSE Green demonstrates our commitment to only using 100% renewable energy. That is, clean electricity generated by wind and hydro assets. You can be confident that the electricity we use to house your data is renewably sourced and has zero carbon emissions.

Advantages of data centre compliance

Data centres are our business. That means we have a greater degree of security and compliance than many organisations could achieve on their premises.

Partnering with us as your colocation or managed hosting provider means that you don’t have to keep abreast of ever-changing compliance requirements. You can leave it to the experts.

Regulatory controls that would be burdensome for you to understand, implement, document, and demonstrate in an audit have already been implemented in our data centres.

We can provide the certificates to prove this to your auditors. That means your IT professionals can be freed from the need to deal with compliance frameworks and, instead, perform work that will directly benefit your business.

ISO data centre compliance

The ISO approach to certification requires a continuous programme of audits to ensure continued compliance. The audit is structured around a defined global list of requirements and controls, which independent audits will confirm that we remain compliant with.

Our certifications are valid for three years from the point they are awarded. However, during that period, a schedule of on-going audits are established to show that the management system is constantly reviewed using a sampling approach. This is also to ensure that a development and improvement cycle is undertaken.

Come and see for yourself

For further peace of mind, you are free to come and audit our data centres yourself.

Subject to the agreement of suitable controls to protect our other customers, we will allow physical penetration testing of our facilities.

Want to find out more about how we keep your data compliant? Speak to our team today.

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