In recent years, we have seen massive changes in enterprise’s collocation and connectivity needs. Until very recently, for example, most organisations only hosted equipment in two remote datacentres for backup or disaster recovery (DR) purposes. Additionally, compute, storage, and network equipment was nearly always hosted in the same facility to avoid latency and other issues that can impact performance.

Now, though, all this has changed.

The new normal is to distribute datacentre infrastructure across two or more geographically distributed locations, and not only for the purpose of DR. This approach to building out infrastructure is being driven by a number of key factors, including:

  1. Availability of datacentre space (or lack of it)
    Lack of space in tier-4 datacentres could be a challenge for Enterprises.  A distributed architecture allows them to overcome this challenge by hosting infrastructure in two or more tier-3 datacentres in active-active mode.

  2. Proximity to cloud providers and other partners
    With distributed architectures, enterprise customers can decide to host additional, virtualised infrastructure that is collocated with cloud ‘on-ramps’. This can minimise their latency and maximise app and workload performance.

  3. Increased scalability
    Based on the ability to collocate infrastructure in two or more locations, and to overcome space restrictions in a single datacentre, businesses are able to grow their operations more easily.

  4. Cost efficiency
    With the choice to host mission-critical apps and workloads in a tier-4 datacentres, and less critical apps in tier-3 locations, organisations no longer need to buy more space in the datacentre than they currently need, just to ensure future scalability. In this way, distributed architectures can deliver major cost savings from day one.

  5. Improved DR provisions and regulatory compliance
    Businesses can feel confident that their infrastructure meets with DR provisions and regulatory compliance, by adopting geographically resilient infrastructure and services

All of this adds up to much greater agility, with options for hosting infrastructure where it is needed – and where it provides the greatest technology and business value to the business.

But inter-datacentre connectivity is a key requirement

Despite the many upsides of building out a more distributed architecture, the entire operating model depends on super-fast, super-reliable inter-datacentre (DCI) connectivity. While 10G connections were adequate in the past, many companies now require multiple 10G, or even 100G connections to ensure their apps and workloads perform at their best.   

Spending on cloud services is also growing fast and the new applications that need to tap into datacentre compute and storage resources are growing at double digit rates. In order to keep up with growing cloud services demand, high-performance interconnects are needed that allow organisations to easily distribute and scale their business.

The problem is that setting up and configuring these types of transport services can be complex and costly, requiring specialist skills, dedicated resources, and long-term fibre-leasing agreements.

At Interxion, we are meeting our customers’ growing DCI needs with innovative propositions, such as our ‘Managed Wave’ solution built on Ciena Waveserver technology.

The better way: Interxion’s Managed Wave service

At Interxion, we are meeting our customers’ growing DCI needs with innovative propositions, such as our ‘Managed Wave’ solution built on Ciena Waveserver technology.

Interxion’s Managed Wave service provides 10GbE and 100GbE connectivity over industry-leading coherent technology so enterprises and datacentre operators can quickly scale their network capacity across any distance (from single span to long-haul and subsea) and seamlessly interconnect with customers, partners, and cloud providers.

This solution effectively integrates all Interxion datacentres in a single city – say, Dublin in Ireland, or Marseille in France – to create a single, connected, multi-datacentre ‘campus’.

The Managed Wave solution allows you to connect with cloud partners, VNF partners, and content delivery partners located at any Interxion location as if their equipment were located in the same facility as yours. This means you can choose to collocate your infrastructure in any of our datacentres, or in multiple datacentres, without worrying about latency or other performance issues.

The top 8 benefits of Managed Wave for your business

By choosing to adopt our Ciena-powered Managed Wave solution to connect your distributed infrastructure, you can side-step the complexity and cost of deploying, managing, and supporting DCI links. Additionally, you can scale up inter-datacentre connectivity quickly and simply, with no need to deploy additional equipment anywhere in your network.

Managed Wave gives you:

  1. Major DCI cost savings
    With Managed Wave, you no longer need to lease fibre, purchase CPE equipment, or manage and support the network. As well as bringing significant savings, you also benefit from an OPEX cost model that increases cost transparency and predictability.

  2. Rapid, simple adoption
    With Managed Wave, you can connect with infrastructure and partners at remote Interxion datacentres quickly, simply, and seamlessly, with a turn-up time of just 1 to 3 days. The fact that Interxion provides both hosting and DCI as managed services with defined performance and availability SLAs also gives you a single point of contact and responsibility for any service issues.

  3. Excellent reliability and performance
    With traffic delivered over a dedicated fibre path for transmission at the speed of light and very low latency. Managed Wave performance and uptime are assured with SLAs from both Interxion and Ciena, and with 24x7 service monitoring and support.

  4. Scalability to meet your future DCI needs
    Managed Wave services can be scaled from 10G to 100G, with no need for additional network equipment in your network.

  5. Service resiliency for ‘always on’ services
    With diverse fibre routes between our datacentres Managed Wave can support applications and services for financial services companies, healthcare providers, government organisations, and other sectors with mission-critical networking requirements.

  6. Support for digital transformation initiatives
    Based on fast, easy access cloud platforms and virtualized network functions hosted at remote datacentres, Managed Wave lay the foundation for more distributed, more efficient datacentre infrastructure, as well as breaking down system and data silos for more effective capacity planning and strategic decision making.

  7. Increased focus on your core business activities
    With no need to deploy and manage optical-level platforms, enterprises can benefit more time to focus on core business activities that directly contribute to your bottom line.

  8. Compliance with regulatory requirements
    Based on geographical resilience of mission-critical systems and data hosted in more than one datacentre location, Managed Wave can help businesses to meet compliance and regulatory requirements

Find out more

We’re proud to be implementing new technologies that help our customers push the boundaries of datacentre innovation, especially in terms of building high-performance architectures that span multiple physical locations.

To discover more about our Managed Wave service, and how it harnesses Ciena technology to eliminate the physical distance between our datacentres with high-speed, always-on DCI connectivity, please contact us today.