Colt's Blog

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recently published two new documents on cloud computing: the first edition of a cloud computing standards roadmap and a cloud computing reference architecture and taxonomy.
 
Colt has been a strong supporter of the NIST definition of cloud since it came out in 2009 and it has been helpful in defining the scope of cloud computing especially in a business-to-business context. These new documents are equally valuable.
 
However, as we move from theory to practice, tensions are beginning to appear in cloud definitions – and the biggest creaks can be heard in the Service Deployment models of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS (infrastructure, Platform and Software-as-a-Service).

Gradually Software-as-a-Service is looking more akin to the old ASP model of per seat pricing and access to software applications over the internet.  At the same time the lines between IaaS and PaaS are blurring.

So why is this important? Two reasons: market hype and customer understanding.

Forrester reckons SaaS accounts for 80% of the cloud market revenue and dwarfs those revenues from IaaS and PaaS. So when we talk about the cloud market, we are actually beginning to talk about two markets – the enterprise IT department (IaaS/PaaS) and verticals and line-of-business (SaaS).
 
The danger of trying to cover two different markets under one umbrella comes when  analysis becomes difficult to understand and compare, making it more prone to hype and misunderstanding.

The IT professional and IT service provider should be concerned with the architectural design challenges of cloud computing. The question “is that Iaas or PaaS”? is not the right conversation for end-users and CIOs.

The real issues are those of design, migration, management, service levels, and orchestration. The work NIST is doing in the new reference architecture is a good start at putting “flesh on the bones” – but while IaaS/PaaS/SaaS models are shoe-horned into this architecture – it will still creak.
 

We have now launched www.tomorrowsdatacentre.com. Over the coming months, we’ll be tracking the deployment of the world’s first dual-sourced 100 per cent renewably powered data centre; being built in Verne Global’s new facility in Keflavik, Iceland. Our 500m2 modular data centre is being shipped from the UK today and will dock in Iceland in a week’s time.

Follow this exciting project here as we race against the clock to have the data centre delivered and fully operational in less than 16 weeks – an industry feat when compared to traditional methods that can take up to two years. We’ll be bringing you the latest updates directly from Iceland – from the modules arriving in Keflavik, through to the lights being switched on and the first customers moving in. There’ll be regular blog posts, images and videos plus an opportunity to talk to project leaders from Colt and Verne as part of a LinkedIn chat.

After the modules depart from Northern England, they’ll arrive in Iceland around a week later. We’ll then transport them to the site and assembly/installation will begin.

Check back later this week for images of the data centre as it leaves the UK.

We’ll be posting all the content on this site, but if you’d like to add us to your social media networks we’ve included the links below:

Twitter: @Colt_Technology
YouTube: ColtTechnology
LinkedIn: Colt Data Centre Services (stay tuned here for a LinkedIn chat, due to take place in late November)
Finally, we’d like to leave you with some of the media coverage we’ve had for the project so far – we’ll continue to post additional links as they come through:

The Guardian
Wall Street Journal – Tech Europe
CNN
Reuters

With many small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) still reeling from the continued effects of global economic uncertainty, access to cutting edge technologies that help them to perform more efficiently, at an optimal level, has never been more important. That’s why, in direct response to what we’ve been hearing from our SME customers with regards to their business needs, Colt has expanded its Smart Office product portfolio with several significant new features.

The new Speedy Surf and Fax 2 Mail features build on the comprehensive choice of connectivity and managed services that Smart Office already provides to offer improved bandwidth, functionality and performance on demand. This gives both our new and existing SME customers access to the power, scale and flexibility they need to support both current operations and future growth.

Right now, many SMEs are facing up to the challenge of reducing operational costs or overheads, while remaining innovative and maintaining the flexibility to react to external pressures and opportunities. In many cases, SMEs can meet these challenges simply through the strategic deployment of smarter IT. Our Smart Office suite of flexible managed services already helps SMEs across Europe to reduce costs and gain an important competitive edge. And these updates highlight our continued investment in ensuring our SME customers have access to the latest business-grade technology solutions, providing them with the tools they need to help their businesses run more efficiently.

Speedy Surf
Smart Office provides our SME customers with the reliable, enterprise-grade high-speed Internet access needed for business critical applications such as video, voice or for accessing cloud-based applications. The new Speedy Surf function complements this by providing high-bandwidth dual connectivity via any existing residential internet access service together with Colt’s high-capacity, dedicated network to enable prioritisation of critical data.

The dual access mechanism also includes embedded back-up systems to ensure the highest levels of security, continuous availability and seamless connectivity for users – all of which are key factors in businesses’ performance and end customer satisfaction levels.  With Smart Office, our small and medium sized business customers can also now enjoy high speed, high bandwidth connectivity delivered at the standard rate for residential Internet access.

Fax 2 Mail
In addition, Fax 2 Mail is a new IP/Email based hosted fax service that eliminates the need for a physical fax machine by allowing users to send and receive faxes via email. Many businesses, both large and small, still rely on fax machines as a method for communication. This new feature, Fax 2 Mail, provides an easy to use, secure, reliable and cost-effective alternative, eliminating the capital costs, software fees, telecom charges and on-going maintenance associated with using a traditional fax machine.

In order to keep the SME engine running, so to speak, it’s important to reduce the complexity of traditional communications packages that SMEs have had to navigate in the past and empower them to be more productive and efficient wherever possible.
 

In the rush to get to the commoditised nirvana of “on-tap” IT, new business models are being touted as the future path for IT service delivery. Recently, there has been much discussion on the potential of the cloud broker model. But what is it and why would we need one?

Both Forrester and Gartner are pushing the concept of a cloud broker.

According to Stefan Ried at Forrester: “the cloud broker model represents the most promising, but also the most ambitious, cloud approach.  It offers IT and telecom service providers — but also other vendors — the timely and unique opportunity to overcome the rapid commoditization of their existing services business and build a sustainable, more margin-rich service delivery model”.

Whilst Gartner’s Cloud computing hype cycle has cloud  brokerage at the start of the hype curve — the ‘technology trigger’ area. Even so, it predicts that “through 2015, Cloud service brokerage will represent the single largest revenue growth opportunity in cloud computing”.

Now NIST has entered the fray with a somewhat controversial definition:

 “An entity that manages the use, performance and delivery of cloud services, and negotiates relationships between Cloud Providers and Cloud Consumers”.

The need for this is outlined by NIST as follows: “As cloud computing evolves, the integration of cloud services can be too complex for cloud consumers to manage”.

So we are saying that cloud services are going to continue to grow at such a pace in the next 5 to 10 years that we will need an intermediary between the cloud consumers and the cloud providers.  That intermediary could fulfil one of three different roles:

• Service Intermediation: A cloud broker enhances a given service by improving some specific capability and providing value-added services to cloud consumers. The improvement can be managing access to cloud services, identity management, performance reporting, enhanced security and so on.
• Service Aggregation: A cloud broker combines and integrates multiple services into one or more new services. The broker provides data integration and ensures the secure data movement between the cloud consumer and multiple cloud providers.
• Service Arbitrage: Service arbitrage is similar to service aggregation except that the services being aggregated are not fixed. Service arbitrage means a broker has the flexibility to choose services from multiple agencies. The cloud broker, for example, can use a credit-scoring service to measure and select an agency with the best score.

While the Conceptual Reference model from NIST is a very good model, it is not a crystal ball.  Enter my favourite phrase of the moment. Kevin Kelly, (Senior Maverick at Wired magazine until 1999) recently wrote, “Futurists have a dilemma. Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable.”

Traditionally companies have integrated along the value chain to improve their competitive position. While the NIST definition includes Cloud Providers, Carriers, Brokers and Auditors, these roles will not be allowed to grow but subsumed quickly by players in the market before these separate power bases in the value chain  have a chance to develop. The most important role will be that nearest to the customer.  As Paul Maritz, CEO at VMware, said “the customer’s {NIST “cloud consumer”} key strategic supplier relationship going forward will not be with his hardware suppliers of old but with his service provider”. The company who can best combine the NIST roles of carrier, auditor, broker and cloud provider may be best placed in this new market to offer the customer the services they will need. Maybe NIST has just defined the Information Delivery Platform…

I’m proud and delighted to announce that early next month Colt will ship a 500m²  modular data centre to Keflavik in Iceland. The data centre will be installed at Verne Global’s new dual-sourced renewable energy facility, the world’s first zero-emission data centre to be manufactured, delivered and operational in under four months.

This is a fantastic achievement for our Data Centre team. This will be one of the biggest logistical challenges in the data centre industry, with 37 modules being delivered in total, but our team have taken it in their stride. Once the modules arrive in Iceland, they will be reassembled on the Verne Global campus that is currently being prepared for our arrival. By the end of the 4th quarter, Verne Global will be open for business enabled by the Colt Data Centre.

This will be the first wholesale data centre space in Iceland, and the first dual sourced 100 percent renewable powered data centre in the world. By the end of this year Verne Global will be open for business with a prime quality, flexible data centre  in a shorter time than a traditional build would allow and at Colt we will have proved that we are a datacentre supplier and operator that can deploy almost anywhere in the world (top of Mount Everest and undersea have been provisionally ruled out, but the team are working on that).

The location of this data centre has been strategically placed so that it will be the first in the world to  use 100% dual sourced renewable energy sources, in this case a mixture of geothermal and hydro-electric power. In addition to this, in collaboration with Verne, we’ve optimised the cooling system to suit Iceland’s climate, allowing for free cooling 365 days a year.

To find out more, why not check out our project’s website which will go live on October 7th. We’re going to be updating you with more information about this project over the next few weeks and months  and look forward to sharing this unique build with the world.