Why Telecity added Microsoft Office365 ?

So where is the growth coming from?

No one really knows what will happen when the Equinix acquisition completes but Telecity needs to keep growing its customer base and the decision they have made in matching supply with demand is clearly a sensible one. Sensible that is assuming that they can convince potential customers that they have the best solution.

Adi sees demand for colocation services falling into three categories:

“In the first instance we are seeing … existing colocation customers starting to deploy hybrid architectures and part of that involves breaking out into Microsoft Azure or into any other SaaS or technology service provider or services. So in that sort of an instance we currently provide co-location services, a number of add on services and Cloud IX services.

“The second category is that we are seeing customers pick up co-location services on the back of Cloud-IX being available and … we are seeing a combination of co-location services, a number of add on services as well as Cloud-IX services.

“The third category is a reseller partner channel that we have developed which consists of major tier 1 and tier 2 operators, Managed Service Providers and System Integrators who do happen to be our co-location customers. In that case they are offering Cloud-IX services to their end customers who may located anywhere across the whole of EMEA.”

That Telecity is leveraging its channel is not surprising and certainly the eight soon to be live “supply” side providers are just a part of this ecosystem that they intend to use to help grow. This ecosystem is something that is being replicated by others though, such as Tata IZO™, Verizon SCI and Equinix Cloud Exchange. We asked why Telecity felt how Cloud-IX was different from its competitors

“The first is that Cloud-IX is based on an underlying layer 3 network that interconnects all our data centre locations, thirty eight of them. This essentially means that our customers who might be anywhere can connect to any of these cloud services providers wherever they have their services or wherever they have their nodes with us.”

While Telecity are one the larger hosting companies in Europe this does not seem much of a differentiator, most of the other larger companies offer something similar. Perhaps it is because this is an unsung story that it makes a difference. Cloud-IX reaches not just to Europe and those 38 data centres but also into Africa and the Middle East through the Telecity Partner network.

“The second is essentially the integration that we deliver into the back end of these cloud service providers and this is where it’s worth drawing out the additional value that our customers get. For example the endpoint integration that we deliver into Microsoft Azure or into Office365 will via Cloud-IX., those integrations are deeper so that minimises the amount of configuration work or set up work that our customers have to do themselves and this is available via the automation of the platform that we have engineered.”

What these integration’s actually are Adi did not elaborate on but it is something that is definitely worth asking about if considering Telecity in more detail. So where does Office365 fit into this?

(Next: Microsoft Office365 via ExpressRoute.)