IBX
One of the doyens of the Irish data centre sector is Maurice Mortell, now managing director for Ireland and Emerging Markets in the Equinix group, following its 2013 takeover of the TelecityGroup where he held a similar role for some years. Equinix is a US-headquartered multinational specialising in data centres, which it interestingly calls ‘International Business Exchanges’ or, naturally, IBX.
“It’s a very different environment today, and in ICT terms, we see it as a hybrid world internationally. For a start, the decision makers are not about to migrate everything to the cloud. It would be putting data and applications where they are not in full control. There are also going to be issues of security and data sovereignty, particularly in some regions. So that is all driving the hybrid cloud model in which an organisation can choose and direct where its data sits at any time, particular cloud services or hosted or on-premises. It can leverage the scalability of the cloud and at the same time meet required its security standards.”
But it is also a new ICT environment, Mortell points out, that is developing rapidly and posing new choices and challenges, from multi-cloud to Big Data to the Internet of Things to new computing architectures like containers. “The point is that it is difficult for an organisation to decide on an ICT strategy that will be good for a reasonable period into the future. Where data centres like ours play is more and more in the performance and connectivity that realistically are not possible on-premises for the vast majority of organisations — even large enterprises and state bodies. For example, we have edge nodes and direct connect POPs right on-premises for Amazon WS, Microsoft Azure, Google and others. That means direct connections with minimal latency, which is important for many applications and becoming increasingly so across more sectors.”
Workload requirements
There are also many different types of workload, with different technology requirements fulfilled by different service providers. That is hybrid in a new way, changing and developing all the time. We see it as global, complex digital ecosystems that enable clients to do more of what is essential today, competitively and for many other reasons, but impossible on your own premises and with just your own resources. That’s a compelling business discussion rather than a purely tech one.”
Which is clearly the thinking behind that addition to our industry jargon from Equinix, the IBX. It is not a bad one in truth, and in plain language which is always good. Where do clouds meet? In the IBX, of course.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers