< PreviousKao Data ramps- up hyperscale cloud connectivity with Megaport partnership Kao Data, developer and operator of advanced, carrier neutral data centres for high-performance colocation, has announced a partnership with Megaport - a Network as a Service (NaaS) provider. This agreement expands Kao Data’s capabilities to provide on-demand cloud connectivity from major hyperscale providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and many others. The partnership with Kao Data is set to increase the data centre’s global cloud and connectivity capabilities and will provide a strategic location north of London, as well as the closest Megaport presence to Cambridge’s academic and high-tech and scientific communities. This seamless accessibility and flexibility into cloud providers alongside their capability to house high density, industrial- scale, high-performance computing (HPC) environments reinforce Kao Data as the home for HPC and intensive compute within the UK Innovation Corridor. “Enterprise, HPC and AI organisations depend on high-performance, low-latency connectivity, with varying peering and interconnection demands, many requiring local data centre capacity that links directly to their chosen cloud provider,” said Lee Myall, CEO, Kao Data. “We’re proud to offer our clients in Cambridge, London and beyond, a world-class home for their compute. Our partnership with Megaport further strengthens this, offering them unrivalled cloud accessibility through agile networks complementing the already strong foundational carrier attributes present across the campus.” “We’re excited to partner with Kao Data to provide their customers with on-demand cloud connections,” stated Eric Troyer, Chief Marketing Officer, Megaport. “Megaport’s industry-leading SDN platform removes traditional cloud access complexities and costly overheads. Through our global ecosystem of service providers, Kao Data’s customers will be able to choose and rapidly connect to the services that are right for their needs in a matter of minutes, not months. ” Kao Data’s partnership with Megaport will provide direct, secure and private software-defined networking (SDN) access to a global cloud and connectivity ecosystem. Customers can connect to leading public clouds, software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, and benefit from the direct data centre to data centre interconnections. Multi Cloud and Cloud-to-Cloud connectivity are also available through the Megaport Cloud Router (MCR). Bypassing the public Internet provides customers with improved security and higher availability, guaranteeing service, ultra-fast connectivity speeds, predictability and resiliency. On-boarding to the service is accessed via Megaport’s point of presence (PoP) within the Kao Data ‘Meet-Me’ suite, whilst the services are delivered through a self-service portal, allowing customers to enable and adjust the capabilities as and when required through point and click provisioning. n LogicMonitor partners with Fusion Global Business Solutions LogicMonitor has announced its partnership with Fusion Global Business Solutions (Fusion GBS), a specialist in delivering measured outcomes for enterprise customers with AI-powered service management and operations. Fusion joins an elite group of resellers, systems integrators, managed service providers (MSPs) and technology integrators within the LogicMonitor Partner Network. “We are thrilled to add LogicMonitor to our solution portfolio,” said John Mohan, CEO of Fusion GBS. “The extraordinary strain organisations are currently experiencing in their IT environments calls for a market-leading platform like LogicMonitor to provide insights and expedite digital transformation. We chose to partner with LogicMonitor because of its robust AIOps functionality, end-to-end visibility, and user-friendly reporting.” Fusion GBS is the first specialised multinational partner within the LogicMonitor Partner Network. As a partner, Fusion will leverage its expertise, along with LogicMonitor’s best-in-class monitoring and observability platform, to help organisations automate workflows, improve productivity and gain visibility into all components of their hybrid IT environments. This partnership allows Fusion to further expand in the market for IT hybrid infrastructure monitoring. n www.networkseuropemagazine.com NEWS IN BRIEF 10 HMS Networks has announced a new Intesis protocol translator that integrates between EtherNet/IP and BACnet IP/MSTP-based Building Management Systems. Due to its unique design, it is easy to bring data from a factory network to a BMS. Many of the processes in a factory are depending on proper monitoring and control of the building where the factory equipment is installed. For example, temperature, humidity, and air quality can be monitored and controlled to ensure beneficial manufacturing and working conditions. In the same way, lighting in the building can be aligned with working hours to reduce energy waste or to improve the management of emergency situations. When trying to connect all these factory and building installations, system integrators often struggle as not all systems communicate using the same protocol. BACnet is mostly used in Building Automation applications like HVAC, lighting controls and access control, while EtherNet/ IP is used in PLCs and networks within industrial automation. With the new Intesis protocol translator from HMS Networks, system integrators can easily integrate any Ethernet/IP-based PLCs, such as Rockwell Allen-Bradley PLCs models, with any BACnet BMS. The gateway offers bi-directional communication between EtherNet/IP PLCs and BACnet controllers. With a capacity of up to 1200 data points, the gateway is a BACnet IP/MSTP server/ slave on one side and an EtherNet/IP adapter on the other, featuring independent Ethernet ports. The gateway has been BTL-certified for BACnet and carries the UL mark in order to guarantee the highest communication and quality standards. It is also ODVA pre-certified thanks to its inbuilt Anybus CompactCom module. n New Intesis gateway makes communication between EtherNet/IP and BACnet easy Proximity expands UK edge data centre network Proximity Data Centres Limited has announced the immediate availability of three more facilities. The new sites in Liverpool, Chester and Coventry add a further eight megawatts (MW) of IT load capacity and more than 80,000 square feet of net technical space to the company’s growing UK network of strategically located internet edge data centres. These latest acquisitions join the company’s Wakefield, Nottingham and Bridgend locations, adding a further 21 employees who are predominantly in engineering and operational roles. The announcement is in line with the company’s growth strategy which will expand Proximity’s UK network of regional edge data centres to 20 sites within the next 12 to 18 months. This will enable the company to offer UK-wide coverage with all its edge data centres selected for their proximity to major conurbation areas. “In these uncertain times we are especially pleased to have successfully completed our latest edge data centre acquisitions,” said John Hall, Managing Director, Proximity Data Centres. “With the ongoing support of our funding partner, ICG Real Estate, we are locating high quality, high capacity, scalable and extremely resilient regional internet edge data centres within easy reach of enterprise businesses, cloud and content providers. Ensuring low latency connectivity will help them achieve maximum operational efficiency and deliver excellent customer service. “Our customer pipeline is growing rapidly as organisations from many different sectors, including technology, government, gaming and industry, strive to increase and maintain their competitive edge. By bringing data closer to their users they gain the added benefits of fast connectivity and lower data transit costs compared to using centralised colocation facilities. At the same time, they can make considerable financial savings on colocation space, especially compared to London M25.” n Do you have news to share? Would you like to contribute a feature article? Contact the editor at: editor.networks@abacus-comms.co.uk Vital Energi invests in a sustainable future with 20 new ‘green’ apprenticeships Vital Energi has marked a milestone in its investment in the future of decarbonisation, with the announcement of plans to recruit 20 new apprentices in 2021. The company is committed to developing the key industry skills needed to achieve net-zero and create a sustainable workforce of the future, as well as helping tackle the post-Covid economic recovery across the UK. The program will support the wider goals set out by the UK Government’s 10 point green recovery plan to create 250,000 clean energy jobs in the industry. Vital Energi specialises in low/zero-carbon energy generation and heat networks which will play an increasingly important role in meeting the UK’s net-zero objectives. The Minister for State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, Kwasi Kwarteng MP, recently called for up to £1billion of investment in the industry by 2030. As part of the ambitious Vital Energi Training Centre and its well-established apprentice programme, the company has already employed its first Building Services Design Technician apprentice, Alex Spencer, under the new initiative. The creation of this new role will allow Vital Energi to meet growing demand from new and existing clients by linking green ambition with new talent. Vital Energi is looking to recruit apprentices to all areas of the business, site and office-based, from design engineers through to project delivery engineers and operational engineers as well as support service opportunities. Vital Energi’s training academy aims to be a ‘centre for excellence’ and will provide hands-on product training as well as integrating with courses at other universities and colleges with practical and theoretical education. The company has purpose-built two district heating demonstration trenches which will be used to educate students and existing employees about techniques such as jointing and welding pipes, insulation processes and moisture control. The facility will also benefit Vital Energi’s existing employees by providing engineers and designers with skills development opportunities and state-of-the-art collaboration areas. Rob Callaghan, Vital Energi’s Managing Director London & South, said: “Announcing the creation of these roles during National Apprenticeship Week will be a welcome boost to many local communities, young people and education centres throughout the UK. “As we begin to build the sustainable workforce of the future, our apprenticeships are a fantastic way for both school leavers and graduates to forge exciting new career paths in clean energy.” n www.networkseuropemagazine.com NEWS IN BRIEF 11 ExtraHop announces distribution agreement with exclusive networks to meet growing European demand ExtraHop, cloud-native network detection and response, announces a new distribution agreement with Exclusive Networks, a specialist IT security distributor, to cover five countries across Europe including Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Netherlands. The agreement spans the entire portfolio of ExtraHop security and cloud products and services. Exclusive Network’s sole focus is on the distribution of innovative cybersecurity solutions to protect systems, data and applications across hybrid networks and modern distributed workforces. As a true Value-Added Distributor, Exclusive offers a full range of technical and business services which are made available to partners through the Exclusive partner success programme, a unique best practice engagement methodology. “Exclusive Networks brings a wealth of expertise with the ability to leverage innovative technology solutions that complement ExtraHop’s world-class NDR, helping our partners to solve today’s complex cybersecurity challenges,” said Mark Fitzmaurice, vice president of global channel sales at ExtraHop. “Europe is a fast-growing territory and this agreement recognises the pressing enterprise need to raise visibility, improve real-time detection of critical threats, and offer streamlined guided investigation.” Exclusive will help onboard new partners into the ExtraHop Panorama Partner Program and support accreditation training that offers partner sales engineers a deeper technical view of the ExtraHop solution including demos, key use cases and competitive differentiation. In addition to accreditation, the ExtraHop partner portal provides easy access to just-in-time (JIT) sales and training materials that help ExtraHop partners rapidly identify use cases and fast-track solutions for their customers. nVantage Data Centres on schedule to deliver 40MW hyperscale campus near Zurich Vantage Data Centres, provider of hyperscale data centre campuses, announces it has reached a major milestone with the completion of a concrete shell and is on schedule to deliver its first greenfield European hyperscale data centre in 2021. Located in Winterthur, Switzerland, just 25 kilometres northeast of Zurich, this 40MW development is part of the company’s US$2B European expansion and will provide customers with large scale, sustainable data centre facilities built for the unique needs of hyperscalers, cloud providers and large enterprises. The seven-acre (three-hectare) campus will be home to four multi-story, state-of-the-art data centres totalling more than 400,000 square feet (37,000 square meters) once fully developed. Vantage is constructing the shell of the initial facility with 8MW of capacity as part of its standard design practice. This allows for rapid time to market to meet customer demands. “Vantage recently achieved two major milestones in our fast-track European expansion, including the completion of our first greenfield data centre shell near Zurich along with the grand opening of our flagship Frankfurt campus,” said Wolfgang Zepf, Vantage’s managing director of Switzerland. “We look forward to welcoming customers to this highly secure and connectivity-rich facility in the third quarter of next year.” Like all of Vantage’s data centres, the campus will prioritise reliability along with sustainability and environmental responsibility. The campus will employ hyper-efficient cooling with outside air economisation using minimal water. This approach, along with other design features, enables Vantage to achieve industry-leading power usage effectiveness (PUE) and water usage effectiveness (WUE). Additional green characteristics of the campus will include a solar facade, electric vehicle charging stations, drought-resistant landscaping, a green roof and motion-sensor LED lighting. In February 2020, Vantage entered the European market with the acquisition of Etix Everywhere and greenfield developments in Berlin, Frankfurt, Milan, Warsaw and Zurich. In July, the company acquired Next Generation Data in the U.K., Europe’s largest data centre campus. n Share your news. Contact the editor at: editor.networks@abacus-comms.co.uk Another step forward in diversifying the Greek cybersecurity market Following continued expansion into the European market, Nettitude has chosen Athens as their next location for operations. This is a big move for their global organisation as they continue to try and identify strategic locations in which to offer their threat-led services that span Technical Assurance, Consulting and Managed Detection and Response. With specific industry expertise in the Financial, Retail, Maritime and Defence sectors, Nettitude is strategically placed to offer their cybersecurity services and skillset within the Greek market. As a Maritime nation by trade, Nettitude looks forward to developing strong links with Greek shipping organisations. Acting as the cyber arm of Lloyd’s Register, a global technology and business services organisation and maritime classification society, Nettitude is able to leverage their unique insight created by the combined knowledge of industry- based cyber research and the extensive marine and offshore experience. Karen Bolton, CEO of Nettitude comments: “Nettitude is excited to be locating its southern European operations in Athens, Greece. It not only enables us to be closely located to the financial services, maritime and other critical infrastructure industries of the region but also affords Nettitude the ability to tap into the tremendous technical cybersecurity skillset of this market”. As part of the expansion, Nettitude announces the launch of their new Greek website, offering an enhanced and more tailored user-experience for clients and prospects within Greece. Iraklis Mathiopoulos, Head of Cyber SEUR and Global Head of Pen Testing comments: “We are very excited to be able to establish a new home in Southern Europe. This new office will enable us to better serve our clients in this growing and maturing area and support close collaboration with local industries, regulators and governments. We are actively building local delivery capabilities for our wide-ranging, technical and business- focused cyber assurance services. n NEWS IN BRIEF www.networkseuropemagazine.com 12 Eurosat and TP-Link UK future proof London office with business-class wireless network infrastructure Eurosat, a satellite and aerial equipment distributor to the trade and TP-Link UK, provider of consumer and business networking products have announced their latest partnership. The two companies have successfully provided a cloud-enabled business-class wireless network to a London- based office. The 17,000 sq. ft office space in Richmond was transformed when work began in July 2020. A full Grade A refurbishment was conducted across five floors, with Eurosat supplying the site with a complete enterprise-grade infrastructure, featuring TV Satellite feeds, 760 Cat6A points and 48 patch panels. This included full implementation of high-specification wired and TP-Link wireless networking solutions, designed to future proof the office as the connectivity requirements of the office building increase. To create a seamless wireless network, a total of 25 TP-Link AC1750 Wireless MU- MIMO Gigabit Ceiling Mount Access Point (EAP245) units were supplied and installed throughout the building. As part of TP-Link’s Omada cloud Software-Defined Networking (SDN) range, the EAP245 provides superior business Wi-Fi performance and supports seamless roaming, to ensure video streams and voice calls are unaffected as users move between locations. The cloud-controlled access points streamlined network configuration to save time, whilst the centralised management, various authentication options and intelligent monitoring through the Omada app will simplify ongoing management and security for the office’s network managers. With advanced 802.11ac Wave 2 MU-MIMO technology, EAP245’s deliver 1750 Mbps Wi-Fi speeds and long-range coverage over 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless bands. “From enterprise equipment to everyday digital communication tools, the office of the future will be increasingly underpinned by connectivity, with networks at the heart of these efforts. Working closely with our longstanding specialist partner, Eurosat, we have successfully provided the network infrastructure required to keep offices and the businesses in the buildings operating effectively within the space,” commented Will Liu, Managing Director of TP-Link UK. nSchneider Electric EcoStruxure IT Expert wins ‘Data Centre Intelligent Automation and Management Innovation of the Year’ Schneider Electric has announced that its EcoStruxure IT Expert software has won the ‘Data Centre Intelligent Automation and Management Innovation of the Year’ category at the DCS Awards 2020. The award recognises the innovative use of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and data analytics within its next- generation, vendor-agnostic, data centre infrastructure management software. EcoStruxure IT Expert provides visibility into the health and status of data centre components, gathering data from IoT-enabled physical infrastructure assets, including racks, switchgear, power distribution, cooling and UPS systems. Using AI and machine learning, it consolidates performance and alarm data, producing proactive recommendations to rectify unplanned issues before they become critical. The platform also enables users to increase visibility into the data centre environment from remote locations, delivering data-driven recommendations that improve uptime, drive efficiency and reduce costs. “I’m proud to accept this award for our next-generation DCIM EcoStruxure IT Expert,” said Marc Garner, Vice President, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric UK&I. “Data centres provide the foundations for digital transformation and by creating vendor-agnostic DCIM software platforms that are built on the cloud, our customers can gain greater visibility into mission-critical IT environments, and leverage AI to proactively mitigate downtime.” Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT Expert is the industry’s first cloud-hosted monitoring platform, which is vendor- agnostic and powered by AI. n Riello UPS extends NextEnergy range with 600 kVA version Riello UPS, manufacturer of uninterruptible power supplies and standby power solutions, has upgraded its super-efficient NextEnergy (NXE) series with a new 600 kVA model. The NXE 600 is designed to protect larger data centres including hyperscale or colocation facilities and is capable of powering parallel installations up to a massive 4.8 MVA. It joins the series’ already popular 250-300-400-500 kVA versions and shares the same advanced transformer-free technologies that enable it to deliver unity power (kW = kVA) and TÜV-certified operational efficiency up to 97% in online UPS mode. With front to top ventilation and full front access for maintenance eliminating the need for rear clearance, the NextEnergy range offers operators fantastic installation flexibility (i.e. against the wall, side-to-side, back-to-back). It also works with or without a neutral connection, reducing distribution costs for data centres not requiring a neutral line. Like the rest of the range, the new NXE 600 incorporates a host of energy-saving features that reduce operators’ power consumption and running costs. These include an innovative Active Eco operating mode that offers enhanced efficiency of 98.5% by powering the load using the bypass line, which filters harmonics on the mains whilst avoiding the need for any power factor correction. It also incorporates an Efficiency Control System that optimises power consumption in parallel installations at low loads by automatically putting some UPSs into standby and sharing the workload amongst the rest, ensuring they run at the highest possible efficiency. The NextEnergy series is compatible with lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors as alternative energy storage options, while it also provides three peak shaving options: static (pre-programmed at commissioning stage); remote-controlled (by the user/operator); and dynamic (adjusts in real-time according to site conditions). n NEWS IN BRIEF www.networkseuropemagazine.com 13 Delta expands its UPS product line with new high-performance DPS 300 kVA UPS Delta has added a new Ultron DPS model to its family of uninterruptible power supplies. This latest Ultron online UPS is rated at 300 kVA. With it, the Ultron DPS series from Delta now offers capacities ranging from 300 to 600 kVA. Up to eight units can be run in parallel for megawatt- scale installations. This makes DPS 300 online UPS systems suitable for mission-critical applications that demand high performance. “The latest generation of our Ultron DPS series was developed especially for use in hyperscale data centres seeking to lower operating costs. Our conversations with colocation and cloud service providers revealed that, in addition to reliability and efficiency, other requirements have become extremely important, too. Megawatt-scale power capacity, a compact footprint, and ease of operation,” explained Rakesh Mukhija, Head of Mission Critical Infrastructure Solutions (MCIS) at Delta EMEA. “With the Ultron DPS series, we now cover the entire power range from 300 kVA to 600 kVA. Soon, we’ll be expanding the Ultron family again and launching the DPS 1000 kVA and the DPS 1200 kVA to offer megawatt capacities in a single unit. This way, our customers can choose the Ultron DPS UPS that is an exact fit for their needs.” The DPS 300 kVA is a monoblock UPS system with the highest available power density and the smallest footprint on the market. By conserving space, it provides more room for revenue-generating IT racks. The new Ultron DPS achieves AC-AC efficiencies of up to 96.5% during normal operation and 99% in ECO mode, reducing energy costs considerably. In addition, it delivers the full rated power (output power factor > 0,99) for maximum availability without power loss. The ability to choose valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) or environmentally friendly lithium-ion batteries also offers a means of optimising battery investments. Dual CAN bus systems are one example of how redundant core components ensure the availability of this new Delta UPS system. The DPS series offers proactive intelligence to warn IT managers of impending failures before they occur. This reduces the risk of downtime as well as the time and expense that maintenance work involves. Advanced event analysis including up to 10,000 event logs and waveform capturing allow abnormalities to be identified, ensuring high availability. The user-friendly 10-inch LCD screen of the UPS displays information on security, temperature, fire protection, and cooling as required to simplify local control. Optional battery management software also allows operators to view battery status information on the touch panel. IT managers can access all the components of the UPS from the front of the unit. This way, they can easily replace the modular components as needed, considerably reducing mean time to repair (MTTR). n y2-in-1 plug connectivity yRight power combination every time yHigh retention outlets Is Our New Standard Get the ultimate cable management you need with the 2-in-1 Vertiv™ Geist™ C13 / C19 Combination Outlet . Eliminate accidental device unplugging with smart colour-coded P-Locking sockets. Let us be flexible for you and your future rack power needs. Flexibility Configure your outlet here: Vertiv.com/rPDUFinder © 2021 Vertiv Group Corp. All rights reserved. Vertiv™ and the Vertiv logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vertiv Group Corp. All other names and logos referred to are trade names, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. What’s Your Edge? Vertiv.com/Networks-EuropeSeagate joins I4DI in driving design of World's fastest AI supercomputer Seagate is the newest member of the Innovations for Digital Infrastructure (I4DI), a partnership of innovative global technology leaders that are developing European-based supercomputing solutions to advance the region’s capabilities in solving the performance, power and efficiency issues challenging the industry today. It joins founding members PosAm, Towercom and Tachyum, and thus the partnership with SAV (Slovak Academy of Sciences) and MIRRI SR (Ministry of Investment, Regional Development and Informatisation of the Slovak Republic) within the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC). I4DI provides freedom and openness similar to Open Compute to the European HPC market. The consortium brings together companies in storage, networking, rack manufacturing, power, software, services and telecommunications spaces to help transform the entire EU region from an importer of data centre and supercomputer technologies to an innovative leader in research for worldwide AI and HPC solutions. Seagate brings to the I4DI its 40+ years of experience in helping overcome data growth with its hard drives, solid-state drives, systems and recovery services. “We recognise the importance of working with fellow technology companies to develop solutions that better both the industry as a whole and our standing within it,” said Mohamad El-Batal, EDS Chief Technologist and a member of the Seagate CTO office. “Joining the I4DI provides us with the opportunity to expand innovation that addresses the specific needs of the EMEA region while advancing technologies that can then be deployed to a worldwide marketplace.” The EU consumes 30% of the world’s supercomputing resources but has only 5% of the world’s capacity based on a recent EU report. This discrepancy has led the EU Commission to set out to determine its destiny by building its supercomputers and data centres, with improved efficiency and resource utilisation to combat increased carbon emissions and global warming associated with traditional infrastructures. I4DI-designed data centres will serve as a blueprint for future government or commercial cloud initiatives such as InoCloud. Because of dual-use – both commercially and for government/AI workloads, new I4DI data centres will be more efficient, enabling hardware utilisation rates to improve to more than 90% vs. their current 40% utilisation rates. n Indigo Telecom Group set to recruit 100 people in Limerick 4site, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Indigo Telecom Group Limited, a global provider of telecom and data centre network support services, announces it will be recruiting more than 100 people, over the next three years, to support its plans for international expansion. With open-location and office-based roles across Ireland, the roles will span from Fibre Planners, GIS Engineers, Design Engineers, Telecoms Surveyors and Project Managers to business support roles in accounts, sales and operations. Indigo Telecom Group will be recruiting locally from Limerick and the Midwest in the vicinity of the company’s Irish headquarters at Raheen Business Park. n HUBER+SUHNER expands critical communications portfolio HUBER+SUHNER has announced the expansion of its critical communications portfolio with the full integration of Kathrein Special Communications. This development further strengthens the company’s ability to provide a host of products and solutions for critical applications. Suitable for use in critical communications networks across the industrial, energy, blue light, defence, government and rail sectors, the portfolio meets the rising demand for versatile, resilient and secure high- performance connectivity. In recent years, the security industry has experienced increasing pressure to provide effective and efficient services which ensure the safety of the public, military and emergency mobile field teams. Consequently, the professional mobile radio (PMR) networks must remain operational and secure at all times, particularly in the event of a crisis where ensuring reliable and resilient connection is critical. “Traditional PMR networks can no longer meet the growing demand for stable broadband digital connectivity. To support mission-critical activities, we specially designed our portfolio to provide reliable and flexible connectivity in every component – all from one supplier,” said Andre Berninger, Vice President of Special Communication at HUBER+SUHNER. “With over 30 years of engineering design experience, the complete critical communications portfolio from HUBER+SUHNER is unlike any currently on the market, offering significant advantages over existing connectivity products through the development of broadband solutions combining TETRA and professional LTE.” n NEWS IN BRIEF www.networkseuropemagazine.com 15 Telia Carrier has announced that it is preparing to converge their IP and optical networking layers to simplify their networks. Using Acacia’s 400G coherent modules that are plugged directly into Cisco routers, this architecture will enable Telia Carrier to address increasing bandwidth demand while significantly reducing both capital and operational expenditures. In preparation for this new solution, Telia Carrier has already deployed open line systems and terminal equipment that can support new 400G pluggable technology. As an early adopter of this architecture, Telia Carrier is one of the first network operators to perform full end-to-end validation of the solution. Leveraging Acacia’s 400G QSFP-DD coherent modules with OIF 400ZR and OpenZR+ operating modes, the solution can support data rates from 100G to 400G depending on the desired reach. The modules also support client n x 100GbE multiplexing functionality as well as 400GE transport. “Conventional architectures and technologies built on decades of accumulated complexity and yesterday's truths fall short in helping us keep up with customer demands for more, consistent bandwidth and a high-quality experience. Starting in the metro, standardised coherent pluggable modules are the next natural step in evolving cost structures, efficiency and scaling capabilities. This follows our global deployments of open optical line-systems and bandwidth- optimised switch-router silicon already powering thousands of 400GE capable ports in the network,” said Staffan Göjeryd, CEO at Telia Carrier “Pluggable 400G coherent optical transceiver modules are important to enable service providers such as Telia Carrier to migrate to a more converged network architecture capable of enabling OpEx and CapEx savings, as well as a pay as you grow business model,” said Fenghai Liu, Vice President of Product Line Management at Acacia Communications. “Coherent pluggables, like Acacia’s 400G coherent module, have been designed to provide a scalable and cost-effective way to meet increasing bandwidth demands.” n Telia Carrier embraces coherent pluggableswww.networkseuropemagazine.com casting reflections 16 While Nostradamus may feel differently about foretelling the future, it could be said that making predictions is a futile exercise. After all, who might have predicted a viral pandemic that could affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of people on a global scale in 2020? Yet one must always reflect backwards in order to move forwards, with last year giving us many lessons on how to advance our technology quickly and efficiently. And why not use those learnings to set goals and devise strategies? By Laura Vallis Editor Networks Europe Casting reflections on 2021www.networkseuropemagazine.com 17 casting reflections 17 The COVID-19 pandemic will have an enduring effect on our lives and the end of the Brexit transition period may also play a role in the UK and EU networks industry. Success will depend on how quickly and how well technology is harnessed to build platforms that differentiate business practises and help people do their best work — whether remotely or on-site. We asked some of our readers how 2020 impacted their operations, whether 2021 will see them changing their business direction and what new trends they expect to see this year. How did 2020 impact your operation? Did Covid-19 positively affect your business? Events of 2020 forced us – like most businesses - to adapt quickly to the myriad impacts of Covid. With a sudden shift to remote work for a large number of our employees, alongside rigorous travel restrictions, guaranteeing application performance for our digital applications, especially the UCC stack, became more critical than ever before to maintain seamless operations and healthy collaboration among our teams. Fortunately, this is our speciality – we’ve always been leaders in ensuring user quality of experience for business applications, and we had the tools at our fingertips to stay agile. Consequently, we were able to remain productive and responsive to market demands, and quickly deliver new capabilities to help our customers adapt as well. Working closely with key channel partners and customers, we introduced new solutions designed specifically to ensure business continuity and resilience for businesses transitioning to a “work from home” practice, by enabling corporate IT to govern and prioritise business application traffic at the corporate WAN Edge, in a rapidly deployed, low touch model. In fact, partnering with our customers to understand and resolve their network challenges within the “new normal” has significantly influenced our product strategy and vision moving forward, as we expect many of the changes to the market to endure into the future, as an outcome of last year’s events. Casting reflections on 2021casting reflections www.networkseuropemagazine.com 18 Whilst the impact of the global pandemic has most definitely been a challenge for all businesses, 2020 was another record year for VIRTUS Data Centres as the adoption of Cloud services and colocation continued apace. Some of this is attributable to the pandemic. Almost everyone has turned to online services for remote working and/or recreation – with the usage of video conferencing and collaboration tools, online fitness classes, gaming and shopping all seeing dramatic increases in demand. And data centres have been instrumental in enabling and supporting the rapid switch to home working at scale. However, COVID has meant that we, like many other businesses, have had to adapt the way we do things. As a company that is actively building data centres, we have been affected by challenges such as social distancing measures, staff needing to isolate and difficulties with some deliveries of key plant equipment from around the world. These have slowed some projects down, but due to the scale of what we do, we have been able to minimise the impact. Mitigating construction challenges has been helped by data centres being reclassified by the Government in 2020 as critical business infrastructure. For us at SEH Technology, COVID-19 meant that all our employees started working from home, wherever possible. We made sure that our Support team could continue operating as normal and offer the highest level of customer service. In addition to email and call support, we ensured that product tests could be conducted from home with a VPN connection to the company’s test lab with access to UTNs and DUTs. At the same time, for our Purchasing and Procurement team, we established a short-term parallel supply chain to optimise component procurement and availability. Our team also investigated possibilities for external board assembly to meet the increased demand for our UTN products. This was especially important as the dongle server products continued to be in great demand by customers looking to build their home office strategy. We are pleased to say that SEH Technology customers did not experience any difference in product availability, support, quality and availability in 2020, compared to the pre-COVID times. Business continued to thrive throughout the lockdowns, and thankfully, with over 80 colleagues, we have not had any infections or had to resort to redundancies. Everyone working here works as one – we are all in this together and we continue to stay positive and look forward to the next normal. Like many other businesses we have embraced Teams and Zoom, we have been working from home when possible to reduce contact and travelling. How do you see your operation changing over the next 12 months in reaction to 2020? As we move in 2021, SEH Technology’s operations will continue to work towards our high standards regarding product development and customer support. We don’t expect that there will be a real “post-COVID”, so instead, we will monitor the market and evaluate customer requirements, especially due to ever-changing working environments. Our team will also continue to focus on new products, in line with customer demands, to optimise the procurement, purchasing and production side of the business. We added three new data centres to our portfolio in 2020 and have two more going live in 2021, so our Operations team was already growing significantly to support these assets. We will continue to recruit the very best talent to service our customers and seek new projects for future builds in 2021 and beyond. The continued focus on IoT and the use of AI in applications is driving ever greater IT infrastructure needs. This year, we have some exciting deployments that include highly sophisticated super compute cloud deployment solutions. We will continue to monitor supply chain pressures caused by COVID and look to de-risk our business and our customers’ businesses by buying ahead of demand on larger plant items. Due to the increased awareness of energy consumption of IT densities and the exponential growth of remote working and the introduction of edge, we are focusing on empowering our customers to adopt sustainable 100% water savings and massive CO2 reductions. Events of the past year have played a significant role in shaping our product vision for the next year, as businesses emerge from 2020 fundamentally changed. The acceleration of cloud adoption has altered the corporate WAN such that it is no longer limited to the physical boundaries of the corporate perimeter. At the same time, security has reached paramount importance to IT leaders. Additionally, if we’ve learned anything from 2020 it’s that agility is essential. For these reasons, we have evolved our SD-WAN product portfolio to deliver a solution that makes it possible for corporate IT to fully realise the cost and agility benefits of cloud technologies, while maintaining rigorous security standards and ensuring impeccable performance for their digital experiences, in a unique consumption-based licensing model that mirrors cloud-consumption frameworks. In the next 12 months we’ll be introducing several critical capabilities, including cloud-delivered security, SD-WAN for multi-cloud, and a novel cloud-based approach to full mesh, to name just a few. And, as always, we will continue to deploy our solutions in a low-touch, rapidly implemented migration path that delivers immediate ROI without the disruption to the business that typically accompanies a network upgrade. Ultimately, the casting reflections www.networkseuropemagazine.com 19 goal is to help businesses build a high-performance, resilient network that scales with business growth, allowing them to stay competitive in the face of market disruptions. What trends do you think we will see in the networking and data centre industry this year? We can recognise the sea change in the industry to prioritise and actively reduce the carbon footprint and unnecessary waste of drinkable water within the industry and the emphasis on sustainable expansion. We expect cloud adoption to continue to grow at an unprecedented rate, forcing businesses to take a new view of how to build, manage and grow their wide area networks to realise the full benefits of their cloud investments. Multi-cloud environments (SaaS, IaaS, XaaS) introduce huge opportunities and possibilities to help businesses innovate and grow, however, they also present challenges in terms of ensuring security and user quality of experience for business applications. Agility will be essential for businesses to stay afloat and even more imperative for them to thrive. Ease of deployment, commercial flexibility and speed to market will have greater impacts on consideration and decision- making when enterprises are evaluating SD-WAN solutions. And cloud delivery of critical functions such as security and orchestration will become a prized characteristic, owing to its immediacy, flexibility, minimal “footprint” and always up-to-date nature. There are a number of networking trends that we can expect to see in the coming years, specifically looking at multi-domain control and virtual networking. These trends are part of a wider shift in the network space, as data centres continue to move into cloud or hybrid networks. This is especially prevalent as 2021 will bring further changes in the way businesses operate remotely and how employees can access data from home. Other trends will include SD-WAN implementations and WiFi 6 upgrades, as businesses are beginning to demand networks that support emerging digital services, creating time-saving efficiencies, and extending the reach of the traditional networks. Market demand has been growing year on year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future as more and more devices connect to the internet and more data than ever is produced. As long as the increasing data needs to be analysed and converted into information, there will be a continued demand for data centres to both processes and store it. Due to constant price pressure, we spend a great deal of time and investment on research and development of every aspect of our solutions - from cooling systems to distribution, to security, to monitoring. We are the sum of many parts and each support industry is innovating. We put these parts together to make a robust and secure solution. Trends like immersion cooling, back-up power solutions and generation solutions are all interesting areas for the future. A key concern for all businesses is sustainability and we continue to look at what our industry can do to help to mitigate climate change. We have listened to our customers and whilst carbon neutral is the stated position of many of our competitors, we have gone further and are carbon zero. We do this through the use of guaranteed power from wind, solar and tidal sources only. Will you be using any innovations to increase productivity this year? We already have some interesting deployments for HPC implementations utilising direct ‘on-board’ water cooling. For our University clients under the JISC framework, we have several super-compute solutions that provide data processing for exciting projects with Cancer Research and pandemic management. These HPC environments require innovative cooling solutions to ensure they can run optimally. When it comes to sustainability, VIRTUS is already delivering above and beyond its goals, and we continue to investigate alternative sources of back-up power. To date, nothing is workable at the scale our customers need, especially when the primary purpose of generators is only to be used in an emergency. In the UK we are very fortunate to have extremely stable National Power. Another innovation in the pipe is the wider adoption of fuel cells as a standby energy source. At present, as with the back-up power, this technology is not available at the scale required for large data centres. We will continue to work with our supply partners and customers to innovate, enhance product development and adopt where we can. Our team will continue using dongle servers to ensure that USB dongles are available over a network, allowing SEH Technology employees to access software remotely and stay productive in the long-term. These tools will allow our remote workers to access and share USB dongle devices securely via the network. With an encrypted point-to-point connection between the user and the dongle server, we can dynamically assign which user is authorised to access each dongle, ensuring everyone can retrieve everything they need. Our employees can also request access as soon as a license becomes available, and once the software has been used by that individual, it will be securely relocated to the next in line. As pioneers in application intelligence, visibility and control, we have a long-standing heritage of making sure that business applications perform seamlessly and align with business priorities. We use our own SD-WAN technologies and implemented key capabilities this year to support the transition to remote work and stay adaptive and collaborative in the new all- virtual world of business today. Because we have always been a global business, our employees have been able to take the ups and downs of 2020 in stride, letting us stay focused on delivering innovations and business value to our customers, in 2020 and beyond. Our innovations are always evolving, organic growth and knowledge ensure our cooling products are always unrivalled in both energy-saving and outstanding performance – a perfect marriage. n With many thanks to the following for their comments: Zabrina Doerck, Director of Product Marketing, Global Enterprise, Infovista Alan Hayward, Sales and Marketing Manager at SEH Technology USystems Limited innovators of ColdLogik Rear Door Cooling Solutions Darren Watkins, managing director for VIRTUS Data CentresNext >