There’s an old story told about how the supply of electricity evolved from power plants in houses serving the homeowners to the first street lighting provided by a centralised power station and then the development of centralised power stations supplying consumers over a national grid.
The vision that caused the leap from localised electricity service platforms to national critical infrastructure has happened in the world of content and eyeballs. There’s a recognition of the critical importance to an economy of having a robust data centre and telecommunications infrastructure to protect Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
This is more and more in evidence in the subsea and data centre (DC) industry. In the analogy above, replace electricity with content and end-users (consumers) with eyeballs. Now recognise that content is global and the new power stations of content, the data centres and the subsea telecommunications systems enable its exchange, unlimited by national boundaries.
As with any competitive industry, there is in the subsea and DC industries energy to improve efficiency and economy. The move to locate the cable landing station (CLS) in the DC is evidence of this. Efficiency is achieved in the direct collocation of content adjacent to the CLS. Consequently, optimising access and throughput rates at the DC into the market where the CLS resides, and to the markets, the subsea system connects with. The market footprint of the DC is now defined by latency, not geography. Stellium Datacenters market spans from east coast USA (66ms latency), within the UK (<8ms latency), northern Europe (<19ms latency) and the Nordics (<10ms latency).
The development of the UK subsea connectivity landscape has seen several pivots from its origins of Cornwall to London, to the South East Coast through Blackpool, to Manchester to London and the South East Coast to the latest most significant pivot of Blackpool to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and the North East of England. This new route, through the CLSs located at Stellium’s DC, connecting UK Inc. to the Nordics and Northern Europe introduces the highest-capacity subsea cables and critically an alternative route into and out of the UK, with a significant chub and the capability to host 120MWs of content.
Efficiency comes from the direct access to content whether that be OTT, gaming, fintech or streaming, all of which are latency-sensitive. The coalescing of carriers and eyeball networks around the CLS enable the creation of a virtual carrier and Internet Exchange marketplace where connectivity can be traded, driving down cost and improving margins.
Stellium stood up and founded and operate the NCL-IX (Newcastle Internet Exchange). It is at its core an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) but Stellium is also something more than a traditional IXP – Stellium is a DC AND IXP, a CONTENT AND CONNECTIVITY HUB where the new vision of our world is realised.
Optimisation comes when the CLS is collocated in a Tier III DC rather than in a containerised environment on a remote coastal site. Inherent in this is the significant reduction of risk to power outages and security breaches and the operationalising of cost, as the backup infrastructure costs are ‘as-a-service’ in the DC.
Come join us!
Stellium Data Centres and NCL-IX sponsored and attended Submarine Networks EMEA, at London’s Business Design Centre early in 2022.
In the video below, Gerry Murray, Stellium/NCL-IX’s Chief Commercial Officer, spoke to Sub Net about a number of key issues in the converged world of the DC, subsea, CLS and IXP.
ABOUT STELLIUM DC / NCL-IX
Stellium Datacentres own and operate the largest purpose-built carrier-neutral DC campus in the UK and is the home of the UK’s newest Internet Exchange NCL-IX.
Stelliums Tier 3+ data centre campus has guaranteed availability of at least 99.982%. It is ISO-27001 Information Security, ISO-14001 Environmental, ISO-9001 Quality, ISO-20000 IT Service and ISO-22301 Business Continuity Management Certified along with PSN Network and Cyber Essentials+ certification and has direct access to sustainable green power of up to 80MW.
Stellium offers the highest quality connectivity to local, national, and global fibre networks, for low-latency, high-capacity open network connection and is where colocation, subsea and terrestrial communications converge. In addition to being the UK’s only DC hosting the cable landing station for the new NO-UK cable from the Nordics, Stellium’s DC is also the UK hub for data transmitted between the United States, the UK and Europe on the North Atlantic Loop, a new transatlantic subsea fibre network provided by Aquacomms.
Stellium offers its clients a range of services, including multiple public clouds on-ramp offering connectivity at up to 100G capacity, expert colocation services and powered-shell data centres.
Follow and chat with Stellium Datacenters today on LinkedIn.
To book a guided virtual tour of our datacentre please see here: https://bit.ly/3sXBXVC.
To speak to a member of the team about Stellium and NCL-IX services, please email or call us today on:
Scotland Office:
Stellium Datacenters
6 International Avenue, Cirrus Building
ABZ Business Park
Aberdeen, AB21 0BH
Office Phone: 01224 920935
Greig Scott (Scotland Sales)
Mobile: +44 07570 710194
Email: greig.scott@stelliumdc.com
Email: info@ncl-ix.uk
Email: info@stelliumdc.com
Web: www.stelliumdc.com
