Search Data Center Locations

In an attempt to take on its rivals, Oracle is expanding its global presence by adding new cloud regions in five countries. The company added local regions in Saudi Arabia (Jeddah), Australia (Melbourne), Japan (Osaka), Canada (Montreal), and The Netherlands (Amsterdam). Oracle said that all of them are open for business and available in the Oracle Cloud Console.The new regions in Osaka, Melbourne, Montreal, and Amsterdam give customers a second site within the same country. Customers have told us that to run critical systems of record in the cloud, they need to run workloads across fully independent cloud regions for disaster recovery purposes. They also told us that those multiple sites must be in the same country to meet data residency requirements, wrote Andrew Reichman, Oracle Director of Product Management, in a blog post announcing the new cloud regions.The first region in Jeddah, will be followed this year by a second region in Saudi Arabia, as well as two regions in the UAE. These represent Oracles first forays into the Gulf with Generation 2 Cloud regions, a part of the world thats been underserved by other cloud vendors. Oracle is the first public cloud vendor with a region in Saudi Arabia, added Andrew Reichman.Oracle informed that going forward, it plans to put a minimum of two regions in almost every country where they operate. The move of adding a new region is a big step toward the goal. The United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, India, and Brazil are expected to have two regions live by the end of 2020.In the last six months, Oracle has opened ten cloud regions. With the latest five regions, the company now has Oracles Generation 2 Cloud available in 21 fully independent locations. By the end of 2020, Oracle intends to have 36 cloud regions. By expanding the geographical reach, Oracle is stepping up its game to compete with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, who are the major market players.The company is confident that rapid cloud launches worldwide will make an impact. Oracle claimed that all 10 of the largest Japanese companies and 10 of the top Australian enterprises are using Oracle Cloud. They added that in the larger Middle East region 87% of the top companies by revenue use Oracle, and 54% already use Oracle Cloud.

[Bob]Tell me a little bit about yourself and your role at ColoHouse?[Bob] My interview today is with Paul Bint, President and CEO of ColoHouse and Savvas Bout, CTO of ColoHouse.Paul has served as ColoHouse President and Chief Executive Officer since 2010. Paul is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of leadership experience impacting corporate performance. Paul is responsible for overall market strategy and growth. He joined ColoHouse from j2 Global Communications, a B2B Cloud Services, and Digital Media firm, where he directed the South East USA Region. Prior to j2, Paul presided over Global Accounts for British Telecom and subsequently spent 15 years leading teams in the US, EMEA, and Asia. Paul received his MBA from Henley Management College and his Law Degree from the University of Buckingham.Savvas joined ColoHouse as Chief Technology Officer post the acquisition of Netrouting and Data Facilities in 2018. Savvas has been in the telecom and technology industry for over 10 years. He founded Netrouting in 2007 and has been able to expand his services and his portfolio to over 500 companies. Savvas is responsible for product development and technology at ColoHouse as well as providing a consultative approach for all customers and prospects to optimize their IT infrastructure.[Bob]What is the background story/history behind ColoHouse[Paul] ColoHouseincorporated in 2007 and opened its doors in 2009 in downtown Miami, FL. From2009 to 2017, ColoHouse offered premiere carrier-neutral colocation space as the 2nd most connected facility in Florida after the Equinix Miami Data Center. Our initial offering was space, power, and access to a variety of carriers in our Meet Me Room.We knew our goal from the beginning was to provide reliable solutions with an even more reliable team behind our products.Our biggest challenge was overcoming how fast the industry was moving. We quickly realized that we needed to provide more than just colocation to our customers ever-changing needs. Netrouting offered an extensive selection of colocation, managed cloud hosting, internet, and metro services. Additionally, operated and owned a data center in The Netherlands, The Hague and several other Points of Presence in the US, Europe, and Asia, so it was a natural fit.The next stage in our growth will be to launch OpenStackcloud offering which will be rolled out during Q1 2020.[Bob]How has the industry evolved? How has ColoHouse responded?[Paul]Back in 2010 a lot of people were just looking for a colocation facility that offered space, power and N+1 redundancy on the key infrastructure equipment like power, AC, cooling, light generators, etc.Over the years, small businesses who had small spaces with us, quarter or half cabinets, were able to move their infrastructure into the cloud and have been able to do away with the capital to refresh IT equipment. However, businesses that are focused on data center as a key partner to their infrastructure on a global basis such as Avast, Datacamp, Voxility, etc. are taking more and more space within colocation facilities - That means that our average spend per customer on space and power had grown exceptionally as we had customers buying typically 5/6 cabinets as supposed to quarter and a half cabinets. So thats one thing that is changed.The other thing that has changed - customers wanting connectivity to and fromSouth-America purchase bandwidth and small spaces to put in routers and switches when they dont need services in Miami; they just need a point of presence, so that part of the business had grown significantly as well. Going forward,larger clients are asking for cloud and redundant opportunities.[Bob]Where do you see the industry going[Paul] We are seeing that specifically in cloud, customers are looking now for more flexibility than they are able to get from an AWS. That will continue to develop as customers will look for more alternatives for more flexibility, so we see that as an opportunity there. We will also see more development in security and in DDoS protection. ColoHouse will continue to develop our DDoS product in the upcoming year as well.[Savvas]A lot more talk about AI, we will also see more and more development in the cloud as you see that cloud is more widely adopted these days. The conservative approach from people is slowly disappearing, people are lowering their guards and there is a growing market there. Apart from AWS and AZURE or Google Cloud that control the market right now - there is going to be more room again for private cloud providers to build and grow their products.[Bob]What sets ColoHouse apart from the competition?[Paul]- Customer Support- Customization of solutions- Access to executives- NPS Score - Demonstrates that our sole focus is customer service. We are focused on delivering quick and timely resolutions to issues- Reliable network and data centers[Bob]What do you see as the top cities/markets for ColoHouse?[Paul]Currently, we have our HQ in Miami, FL, and our EU HQ just outside of Amsterdam in The Hague. ColoHouse is strategically centered in Europes most connected city. Amsterdam has more data center locations than any other city in the world. We have our owned facility in addition to 3 additional locations for access to premium carriers and peering exchanges.ColoHouse Miami is strategically located as the gateway to the Americas It is the 5th most connected city in the world. Central and South America are going through a transformational time in terms of technology, specifically in places like San Paolo and Mexico City.We have 14 Points of Presence (POP) across the globe and we are always in expansion mode for another data center acquisition or opening more geographically favorable POP locations. Some of our points of presence have been driven by customers wanting to put the equipment there. Sometimes its customer demand that driven that and we continue to do that.[Bob]What role do you see for colocation in the future?[Savvas]Colocation will continue to be an important product in the industry, perhaps the requirements for colocation will change but what we will see are smaller requirements. Such as quarter and half cabinets now, will slowly start to disappear. Our focus will be more on, one to multiple cabinet footprints with more than high-end power, consumption for either cloud solutions or other alternative modern-day products for which businesses house their own company infrastructure.[Bob]Who are the future customers of colocation?[Savvas] I predict that the future customers of colocation will know very well what they are looking for. I think they probably will be working with more skilled IT people, that either have its own in-house IT team to fully build out infrastructure or have external consultants that will do that for them.Our role as a colocation provider - to those customers will be to fierily provide space and power in a very specific tailor-made setting for the best adaptive requirements as given by the customer.[Bob]What is instore for ColoHouse in the future? New products//services?[Savvas]The future is not set in stones and we are always on the lookout for opportunities. We will have a strong focus on innovating some of our products and perhaps expanding our product line. One of our new cloud-based products that are going to be launched next year is Openstack which will be a nice development and extension to our product line and will add a variety of our services to it.[Bob]What role do you see ColoHouse in for future technologies like Ai?[Savvas]We are definitely not going to play an active role as a developer in the greater of AI but we could provide the facility and infrastructure for those that do... high-density space and power solutions for AI technologies. That wecould as a company facilitate.[Bob]How will ColoHouse position itself in the 5G evolution?[Savvas]5G is going to do great things in the world, its going to change the way we look at bandwidth exchange - from the core to the end consumer. As a carrier-neutral data center, thats is very well connected in the South American region we could play a dominant role in facilitating infrastructure for those who do. Since we are very well connected, there is a high amount of bandwidth available in our building and easy to scale from. There are also facilities that could operate as an edge location or distribution side for those carries that do work with 5G.

It comes as no surprise that public and private cloud is a major part of the IT infrastructure equation for most businesses. Cloud infrastructure offers flexibility, scalability, ease of use and pay-as-you-go consumption and billing. Whats not to love about the cloud? Actually, there are a few challenges that arise when building your business case for cloud computing including security, cost, and vendor lock-in.In this article, Ill discuss the differences between public and private cloud and bare metal servers. Ill speak to the use cases and workloads that are a great fit for bare metal. Lastly, Ill lay out how you can build your business case for bare metal servers in your IT environment.Public and Private Cloud vs. Bare Metal ServersNot all cloud infrastructure is the same. In fact, its quite different. In this part of the article, we will take a look at what public, private and bare metal servers are as well as the features, benefits, and downsides of each.Public Cloud ServersPublic cloud services offer that on-demand, scalable up and down environment with pay-as-you-go pricing. Theyre offered by a third-party such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and many others. Were talking hundreds and maybe even thousands of public cloud providers.With public cloud, customers are charged based on the CPU cycles, storage, and bandwidth they consume. Its great for some businesses and enterprise customers, others worry about multi-tenancy and security.Private Cloud ServersWhile similar to public cloud services, private clouds differ in that it provides dedicated compute resources to a single business or enterprise customer. Private cloud can be physically located on-premise, hosted in a third-party data center such as a colocation provider or provided by a cloud provider as a service.Some cloud infrastructure architects prefer private cloud because they are known for their increased flexibility, improved security, and high scalability. This is especially true with government agencies, financial institutions, and other organizations with industry-specific regulatory or compliance requirements.The downside to private cloud infrastructure is that it is costly. Many businesses and enterprises also find that they over-provision private cloud resources that are underutilized. That cost falls directly to the customer.Bare Metal ServersA bare metal server, also referred to as bare metal cloud, is a single tenant physical server. You can think of a bare metal server as being similar to a dedicated server. The customer can optimize the server according to their specific needs for performance, security and reliability.Another big difference between public and private cloud and bare metal server is that the operating system (OS) can be installed directly on the server which eliminates layers and delivers increased performance. Further, bare metal supports multiple types of OS and hypervisors. A hypervisor is an OS that creates virtual machines (VMs) within a bare metal server.The downside to bare metal servers is that you are committing to the compute resources of that server which somewhat limits on-demand scalability. Some bare metal providers offer flat, monthly pricing based on the server type and other features or on-demand pricing like public cloud. It really depends on the provider and the solution.Does Bare Metal Make Sense for Your Businesses?Its clear that hybrid cloud, hybrid infrastructure, and multi-cloud are all the rage. You can pick up these technology buzzwords at your local jargon superstore. However, theres a lot of merit to architecting your infrastructure in a way that meets the demands of the business, applications, security and compliance aspects of IT.With bare metal servers, you get the best of both worlds. Bare metal delivers performance and cost-savings by combing the best parts of dedicated hardware and cloud technology. Bare metal servers are great for your significant, but short-term, processing needs. You can store, process or analyze data on a bare metal server for as long as it is necessary and then wind it down when its no longer needed.Probably the best selling point of bare metal servers is that you have the ability to build your hybrid infrastructure the way that you want to. You can choose to run certain bare metal servers for applications that run better on physical infrastructure such as CRM and ERP systems and databases. You can run other bare metal servers within your environment for cloud-based applications, processing and data storage.Use Cases and Workloads for Bare Metal ServersGiven the benefits, bare metal provides advantages for many applications. Heres a list of the top use cases for bare metal:High-performance compute where overhead should be prevented and hardware is specifically tuned for performance.Real-time analytics and recommendation engine clusters where specific hardware and storage is needed in real-time to support workloads.Gaming where performance is needed for raw compute or 3D rendering and where the hardware is tuned to for these types of applications. Specific hardware components, high-performance NVMe-based SAN arrays are integrated.Security applications where end-to-end encryption including memory, trust implementation environments is required. Hardware can leverage Intel/AMD CPUs.Applications that have very high outbound bandwidth requirements such as collaboration or webRTC platforms.Business cases where a dedicated compute environment is required due to policy, compliance or regulatory requirements.Applications that use steady and continuous compute resources and where the hardware requirement is considerable and capital costs are concerns.Building Your Business Case for Bare MetalWeve already touched on many of the benefits of bare metal servers. So how do you make your business case for bare metal? The hype around the cloud continues to build as more and more businesses undergo digital transformation and infrastructure modernization.Run the Financials and Know Your OptionsThe beautiful thing about bare metal servers is that they offer upfront and transparent pricing. Most times, bare metal providers have an interactive configuration tool that allows you to price out different options. Check out the Datacenters.com Marketplace for bare metal server pricing. In addition, many providers offer pre-bundled bare metal servers for different customer requirements. This makes it easy to compare public and private cloud costs to bare metal.Buy-Off From the C-Suite on Bare MetalGetting buy-off from the C-suite is critical. Your executives do not have to be experts in cloud technologies to see the value and where bare metal fits into the equation. Find ways to educate them on the differences without getting too technical. Relate cloud speak to something more relatable. For example, public cloud is like an apartment building. Private cloud is like a single-family home. Bare metal is like a custom-built home.Tailor your messaging and pitch to the audience. If you are speaking to CISO, talk to the many security benefits that bare metal servers have over public and private cloud services. If its the CFO, speak to the cost-structure of the bare metal and how it can reduce costs by scaling to demand or how you can shift expenses from capex to opex.Leverage Cloud and Digital Transformation BuzzFocus on how bare metal can be integrated with cloud, how its complimentary and part of your hybrid strategy. We discussed how the cloud is all of the rage so now all you have to do is relate bare metal to the cloud. You could even mention bare metal cloud instead of bare metal server.Demonstrate How Bare Metal Solves BusinessMake sure to demonstrate the benefits of bare metal vs public and private cloud. Pay special attention to how bare metal helps solve a business challenge, technology challenge or works towards achieving specific business goals or challenges. Come prepared with case-studies from other companies in similar industries that have deployed bare metal as a part of their infrastructure.Its All About Hybrid InfrastructureTheres a time and a place for public cloud, private cloud, and bare metal. The best approach for most business and enterprise customers is a hybrid strategy. Public cloud makes a lot of sense for test dev and other applications. Private cloud makes a lot of sense for companies that need a dedicated instance. Bare metal makes sense for companies that want more control over their servers, operating systems (OS), and hypervisors.Need Help Selecting a Bare Metal Cloud Provider?Were more than happy to help you determine the right bare metal providers, servers and configurations for your business and technology requirements. We work with all of the major bare metal providers both in the United States and Internationally. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you build your IT infrastructure solution today.