Dealing with the first steps of a digital revolution

Q

Please tell us a bit about Virtus – when and why it was formed
and how it has evolved?

A
Virtus specialises in the middle-market for data centre solutions in London, incorporating the best of wholesale and retail models. In the last five years since its launch we have built a reputation for exceptional service and value.

Our Virtus Intelligent Data Centre (VIDC) range goes beyond just the supply of physical colocation space to include a wide choice of connectivity solutions and value add services available in uniquely flexible packages.

Virtus’ Data Centre solutions portfolio enables customers to manage their costs for data centre power, space, connectivity and management. It helps reduce their IT operational risk and takes advantage of state-of-the-art infrastructure which gives them more flexibility, greater efficiencies and lower overall TCOs.

Important company milestones are documented at http://virtusdatacentres.com/about-virtus/milestones/

Q
What is the financial framework that underpins Virtus’
data centre build and operate programme?

A
Virtus is a well funded London centric data centre owner-operator supported by capital from Frogmore and Brockton Capital. We own the freehold of all our sites which allows us to build what our customers really need. We have demonstrated that we can build our data centres at a lower cost than most of our competitors which in turn delivers significant cost savings to our customers.

The senior management team at Virtus are also shareholders in the business and are closely supported by a dedicated team from Brockton Capital as part of a strategy to build and operate a high quality, energy efficient UK data centre portfolio.

Q
You have two data centre sites right now, can you provide
details of their roadmaps – what’s been achieved and what’s
still to come?

A
Phase 1 of LONDON1 (Enfield) went live in 2011 and Phase 2 was completed last year. In total, LONDON1 has 33,000 sq ft of net technical space with 4.2MW of IT load. Virtus has spent much of the last year building its partnerships with key connectivity providers and launching innovative and flexible products designed to give customers maximum flexibility.

Work has now commenced on LONDON2 in Hayes, our flagship data centre which will deliver 65,000 sq ft of net technical space and 11.4MW of IT load. This data centre will be the most environmentally friendly facility in London, deploying indirect evaporative cooling and using 100 per cent renewable energy. The design and operational PUE for this site is less than 1.2 - the lowest in London. LONDON2 will go live in the summer of 2014 with a rich community of connectivity providers available, including four Tier 1 carriers providing interconnectivity with all major European Internet exchanges.
This year, Virtus has successful launched its Intelligent Data Centre Product Portfolio which comprises the V-range. This is broken up into three different sub-sections: Intelligent Colocation, Intelligent Connectivity and Intelligent Customer Services. We will be adding to these three areas with a DCIM Customer Portal, a Business Continuity Assurance product, and a Migration Assistance Service.

Q
Your two data centres are very much London/M25 based.
Is Virtus planning to remain south-east centric, or will you
explore options further afield?

A
Location is extremely important for our customers who are mostly based either in central London or within close proximity to it. Virtus’ facilities are all located within London (Zone 5) with good access to major transport links. LONDON1 is only 28 minutes from Liverpool Street by train and LONDON2 benefits from a fast train link from Paddington and the Cross Rail development.

Our unique locations within London offer low latency connectivity, with central London less than 0.2 milliseconds away. Virtus is currently looking at acquiring another site for its next data centre and this is likely to be located within the M25.

Q

The market is not short of data centres, what are Virtus’ USPs?

A
Virtus’ USPs are its flexibility of products, quality of services, variety of service mix and commitment to efficiency. In addition, we have built a thriving MSP community which provides additional value added services for Virtus customers. Virtus is also one of the fastest growing operators in London with sites ideally placed in ‘Metro Edge’ locations.

The plethora of cloud based platforms operating from our data centre coupled with the wide choice of connectivity solutions available mean that Virtus LONDON1 is fast becoming the number 1 hybrid cloud and content hub in the capital.

Virtus solutions are ideal for businesses that need scalable, reliable and efficient colocation, with the convenience and rich connectivity of London locations.

Virtus strongly believes that flexibility + efficiency + value added services = intelligent data centre solutions.

Flexibility - One size doesn’t fit all and different intelligent solutions are based on different workloads, RTOs and project lengths.

Efficiency - This is also crucial and comes in many different forms from green energy and low PUEs to low cost connectivity and reduced build costs. Intelligent monitoring and bespoke management tools also contribute to optimising the most efficient IT solutions.

Value added services – Customers need analytical tools to monitor their equipment to manage their IT solutions and get a higher return on their investments.

Q
Can you tell us a bit about your colocation offering?

Virtus has created a range of products to best address the different needs of its target markets: these have been productised as Flex, Enterprise, On-Demand and HD. Flex, Enterprise and HD solutions are available as a V Rack, a V Pod or a V Suite. CoLo-On-Demand comes on a rack by rack basis.

The Flex Colocation Solution is based on a ‘pay as you grow’ model with the ability to flex down or up during a contract if a business’ forecasts don’t quite match with actual performance. This solution is ideal for customers who expect their IT load to grow over a period and are prepared to commit to a fixed term but need flexibility to match any fluctuations in the business cycle.

Enterprise is available from a rack to many MWs and is suitable for customers with fixed power requirements for a known term.

CoLo-On-Demand is a colocation service where you pay for what you use and choose what you want, when you want. At the end of each month you pay for the space and power, based on how many kilowatts you have used.

Q
And your data centre infrastructure?

A
Virtus’ data centres are flexible enough to handle a broad range of requirements from a rack to a customised branded hall, high density, low density or a combination of both.

The new Virtus facility is designed to Tier 3 standards but is flexible enough to meet the growing demand for scalable, reliable, on-demand colocation services. It will be the first in London to deploy a new ground breaking fresh air, evaporative cooling technology that dramatically decreases energy consumption, bringing site PUE to below 1.2, delivering substantial operational savings to Virtus’ clients.

Q
What about the connectivity options for customers?

A
Virtus recognises that demand for infrastructure based services is more dynamic and flexible than ever before. Connectivity-On-Demand enhances the portfolio of ‘carrier neutral’ connectivity services already present in Virtus’ data centres and offers IT and cloud service providers, enterprise IT and media customers flexible connectivity options designed to meet their business requirements and align their revenues with their overheads.

Connectivity-On-Demand works differently to other connectivity products offering ground-breaking levels of flexibility and cost savings to both interconnect and IP transit users while maintaining industry leading SLAs and high quality connectivity. Interconnect users can adjust their bandwidth commitment up and down on a monthly basis, giving them an opportunity to exactly match their varying bandwidth requirements and achieve significant cost savings. IP transit users pay only for actual consumed bandwidth billed in arrears, rather than committed in advance.

This year, Virtus will be boosting its connectivity portfolio with additional ‘NaaS’ products and access to more global Internet exchanges and PoPs worldwide via our wide network of connectivity partners.

Q
Are there any particular industry sectors you’ve managed to
target successfully thus far?

A
We have been working with cloud providers, managed services providers and media companies. These are all sectors where we see big growth potential and steady long term demand.

Exponential-e, one of our customers, is operating over 15 different cloud platforms from LONDON1. Having worked through a flexible business solution with us they were able to deliver tangible benefits in lowering their costs of building out their platforms. The data centre cost efficiency and agility we have provided has enabled them to win several key new cloud customers.

Our V portfolio is designed to provide intelligent bespoke solutions for the very challenging changing business models of these sectors and we have been very successful in encouraging business to grow their operations in our data centre. LONDON1 has become a thriving ‘cloud hub’ which we will continue to nurture and build.

Q
Do you think that the energy issue will cause significant
problems for the data centre industry in the future?

A
No. Modern, purpose built data centres like the Virtus sites are more energy efficient than in house computer rooms. Cloud based compute and storage services are more energy efficient than distributed client server systems. I think there will be consolidation of infrastructure driven by virtualisation and advances in low power compute and storage. This will no doubt be subject to Moore’s law in part and any advances in efficiency will be eaten away by more memory and storage hungry software.

I think generally the hardware industry thinks about power now more than it used to so computing will get more energy efficient. Cloud solutions and shared data centres work like the ‘public bus’ model. A public bus uses more petrol than a car because they have bigger engines, but they carry more people more often and are therefore much more efficient than if everyone on the bus used their own cars.

If everyone used a cloud solution or put their servers in a shared data centre then the amount of power consumed on IT would be a fraction of what it is today.

A typical unit of IT in an in-house data centre uses two units of electricity to cool it. A unit of IT load in a Virtus data centre uses 1.2 units of electricity to cool it. 70 per cent of the world’s IT is currently in in-house data centres so in theory the amount of the world’s energy usage that could be saved by moving all IT to a cloud base model in modern shared data centres is enormous.

Q
Where does Virtus stand in terms of the sustainability/green
credentials required of data centre operators by their
customers?

A
Virtus’ data centres are supplied with energy from renewable sources, including on and off shore wind farms, biomass power stations and wave energy projects. This means that all of the colocation customers benefit from ‘green’ energy.

Our new LONDON2 data centre in West London is deploying a ground breaking cooling technology which will dramatically decrease energy consumption and deliver substantial TCO reductions to Virtus’ clients. By using the most advanced, fresh air, evaporative cooling technology, solar panels, ground water from its own well, chimney racks for heat extraction, highly efficient UPS systems, and other innovative technologies, Virtus LONDON2 will be the most energy efficient data centre in London.

Q
Do you think that ‘simple’ space only colos will survive in
the cloud/managed services world?

A
Maybe, but we think that operators that stick to the traditional colocation model will not thrive. Consumers and businesses alike want services and applications. Increasingly they are not really interested in the inputs, it’s the outcomes they are focused on. Outcomes like enabling them to grow their businesses quickly, leverage new markets and partners, lower their costs and risks and remain agile.

So a more complete service is required, more than just space and power. Connectivity is key as are accompanying bolt on services and technical and commercial flexibility.

Q

What do you see as the opportunities and challenges for
Virtus moving forward?

A
The opportunities are many and they bring challenges of a good kind. My first real job fresh out of university in the 80’s was managing the operation of a punch card machine interface to a mainframe in a data centre for a French bank. Nearly 30 years on, I think that we are experiencing the most exciting time ever known in the technology industry.

The world is going through the first steps of a digital revolution, akin to the industrial revolution. Whereas technology was once just used in the back office, now it is at the forefront and centre of every successful business on the planet. Technology has become central to the consumer and business world; it’s difficult to imagine a world without Wi-Fi, smartphones, Amazon, online shopping, social media and photo sharing platforms, let alone the business uses of digital technology developed for film, media and financial services.

In the business world the move to cloud based services is just beginning really, and in our personal lives the move to wearable technology allowing Internet access is also just starting. Data centres are the workshops, factories and laboratories of this digital world.

The cloud is not a cloud, it is a collection of heavy networking and computing infrastructure that lives in 1,000 data centres across the globe, connected by international undersea fibre optic cables and wireless towers, all watched over 24/7 by anxious technicians. Modern, high quality, secure, resilient data centres underpin everything in this digital world.

Q
What can we expect from Virtus during 2014 and beyond?

A
We have a roadmap of services we would like to bring to our customers in 2014, like the ground breaking CoLo-On-Demand and Connectivity-On-Demand services we brought to market in 2013.

We are fully focused on flexibility and service to deliver quality and value to our end customers. We will also be launching some unprecedented analytics and DCIM services to our customers in Q2 2014. This will be built into our standard service model and will include a ‘self service’ tool that will allow our customers to manage their IT better and more cost effectively.

We will be bringing a lot of additional features and choice to our network offerings and working with our cloud service partners to extend the hybrid cloud access hub services available at our sites.

Finally, we will be building new sites, so it will definitely be a busy 2014 for Virtus!