HomeNewsCIOs can now future proof the data centre

CIOs can now future proof the data centre

London, 5 November, 2012Colt Technology Services today announced its next generation of data centres, the Colt ftec data centre, which is built with innovative flex technology. The new Colt ftec data centre addresses the biggest operational and financial risks facing CIOs today when they deploy a data centre. This is achieved by providing flexible scalability in terms of space, cooling and power requirements through the operational life of the facility. It offers for the first time, a solution with embedded flex technology that enables businesses to effectively and efficiently manage unforecasted demand for IT capacity, by dynamically scaling up and down without any data centre downtime.

The current volatile economic climate puts increasing demands on businesses to reduce capital and operational expenditure, while making it difficult for CIOs to accurately predict how much and what kind of data centre capacity they will need in ten or fifteen years’ time. Many companies aren’t in the growth position they predicted and are paying for unused capacity. In these instances while the data centre is at low load (15%) businesses can pay up to 40%* of the operational costs, just to keep their data centre running, when the IT load does not achieve the forecast.

“This new design has enormous implications in terms of both upfront and long term costs for businesses. Now, rather than having to build or decommission a data centre to accommodate change, organisations are able to quickly increase or decrease capacity in line with their business requirements while still maintaining peak efficiencies,” said Bernard Geoghegan, Executive Vice President, Colt . “No other data centre solution today can offer the same combination of flexibility in terms of power, space and cooling, enabling the data centre to run at maximum efficiency throughout its lifetime without requiring an expensive refit or experiencing downtime. Business just got easier, technology just got smarter”

“Many data centers are running out of power and cooling capacity, and still need to expand. To accommodate hardware infrastructure growth requirements, and help avoid the high capital cost of expanding or building a new data center, businesses are looking for technologies that increase power and cooling efficiencies in the data center”1 said John R. Phelps Research VP, Gartner in the recent Hype Cycle report.

To meet the demands of a changing landscape, flexibility both in the design phase and throughout the life cycle is put at the heart of the Colt ftec data centre. It builds on the design options of the Colt modular data centre announced last year, adding dynamic flexible options that can be implemented throughout the lifecycle of the data centre, without having to take it offline. There are 3 core considerations for any datacentre: power, cooling and space. Colt ftec introduces dynamic flexibility to each of these elements to reduce forecasting risk and reduce total cost of ownership.

The 500m2 Colt ftec data centres with powerflex technology can now scale from 500 kW to 1000 kW to 1500 kW dynamically, without loss of service. In a business growth scenario, capacity demand can quickly spike. For example a CIO may require 1000W/m2 now, but will know that there is potentially a need for higher density in the future. Colt ftec powerflex gives the option to provision for 1000W/m2 now and upgrade anytime in the future without any downtime, at a fraction of the cost of building a new data centre. This will reduce the total cost per kilowatt and enable delivery of up to 3 times more power to the data centre.

Colts coolflex technology is scalable to meet changing cooling demands with changing power without any downtime. Should the compute power required remain lower than expected, the cooling can be dynamically altered to run at peak efficiencies, resulting in considerable operational savings over the life of the data centre. Colt’s coolflex delivers a variety of cooling options in design phase too, including fresh air only, DX only, indirect, mixed mode or chilled water cooling.

The Colt spaceflex technology provides flexibility in the layout and building to maximise the space and footprint. It will allow the customer to change and mix the densities within the data centre both at design phase and while the data centre is live. To support this the reinforced flooring allows heavier equipment for higher density compute to be moved in at any time. The Colt ftec data centre has a number of design phase features, such as the option of single or double levels without the need for extensive building works. It is also available with fully weatherproofed cladding, negating the need for a shell building. It provides internal space flexibility with contiguous space of 125-500m2, multiple rack layouts and hot aisle containment – enabling maximum effective use of available space.

-Ends-

Notes to editors
For additional information please visit: www.colt.net/coltftec

About Colt ftec

Colt ftec is the companies next generation of data centres which have been specifically designed to provide an agile data centre to reflect the nature of modern business. This new version is based on Colt’s modular data centre and carries with it all the benefits of the modular system such as delivery and installation in 16 weeks, market leading efficiencies, configuration options to suit the customer needs from footprint to tiering.
What is different about Colt ftec is not just the availability of new options relating for power, cooling and space on delivery but also the ability to change some of these features throughout the lifecycle of the data centre without any service interruption. This reduces the risk in data centre planning and puts control firmly back in the CIOs hands.

Flex technology is Colt’s proprietary technological response to client demands for greater power, space and cooling flexibility, with a financial model that suits business needs.Flex technology is made up of:

Colt powerflex enables power to be scaled to match exact data capacity requirements throughout the lifetime of the datacentre maximising efficiency even when at partial loads
Features:

  • Grow power across your IT capacity without affecting operations – Dynamic provisioning of power to meet future demands, extending the useful life of the data centre. Upgrades can be carried out while the data centre is in production and from outside the IT area, eliminating disruption to IT services or a costly process to shut down, upgrade and recommision the data centre
  • Support for higher density (up to 3000W/m2) – Meet today’s demand for higher rack capacity and future demands for IT growth
  • Extra high density – up to 230KW per row (up to 25 kW per rack) for HPC type applications
  • Centralised and distributed UPS
  • Options from N to 2N+1

Colt coolfex offers a range of cooling options to suit customer needs and supports Colt powerflex by adapting cooling in line with power usage throughout the lifecycle of the data centre
Features:

  • Flexible scaling to match Colt powerflex capacity without effecting operations
o Upgrades can be carried out while the data centre is in production and from outside the IT area, eliminating disruption to IT services
  • Cooling can be controlled dynamically to maximise efficiency even at partial loads
  • Colt cooling systems function in free cooling mode, switching to highly efficient DX mode only when required
  • The ability to configure cooling systems to operate in fresh air, indirect, chilled water or DX mode as required
  • Options for N to N+1
  • Little or no water required in standard operation

Colt spaceflex allows you to optimise the space you have available, providing a more complete, ready to operate data centre in a much reduced timeframe
Features:

  • Mixed power densities in the same data centre or the same hall
  • Internal space flexibility:
o 125-500m2 contiguous space
o Rack layout options to maximise space
o Optional factory fitted racks
o Optional hot aisle containment
  • Shell flexibility:
o Multi stack ( single or double story layout in the same footprint without the need to build mezzanine floors in the shell building)
o Debox/meetme rooms
o Corridors, lifts, stairs
o Office space
  • Cladding options (A fully clad building making it weather proof with everything required for a functional data centre means no shell building is required and it can be built almost anywhere)

About Colt

Colt is the information delivery platform, enabling its customers to deliver, share, process and store their vital business information. An established leader in delivering integrated computing and network services to major organisations, midsized businesses and wholesale customers, Colt operates a 22-country, 43,000km network that includes metropolitan area networks in 39 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 18,000 buildings and 20 carrier neutral Colt data centres.

In 2010, the Colt Data Centre Services business was launched to deliver innovative high quality data centre solutions at a Colt or customer site. Our Innovative data centres are rapid to deploy, flexible and highly efficient.

In addition to its direct sales capability, Colt has four indirect channels to market; Agent, Franchise, Distributor and Wholesale which includes Carriers, Service Providers, VARs and Voice Resellers.

Colt is listed on the London Stock Exchange (COLT).

Colt Press Contact
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Colt Investors / Financial analysts’ contact
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1Gartner Hype Cycle for Data Center Power and Cooling Technologies, 2012, 24 July 2012, John R. Phelps

* based on a conventional data centre versus Colt ftec data centre at 15% load with target PUE of 1.5 and 1.21 respectively and low load PUE of 2.5 and 1.39 respectively.

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