Answering 5 questions on Cloud connectivity together with Ficolo
The growth of the cloud computing for the last 5- 10 years has been exponential. Enterprises are rushing to host their data and services on cloud instead of private servers. Year 2020 marked the jump in demand for moving into virtualization. Now, when people are primarily working remotely, IT is looking to migrate into the cloud even faster. Here is where connectivity becomes highly important.
Cloud computing is flexible and scalable. It gives enterprises freedom in adjusting requirements of cloud services and cost based on the level of actual demand. This is impossible to perform with physical servers. Apart from scalability, there are multiple other benefits including subscription-based pricing, improved security, flexible service rollout and cost optimization which will make cloud services an excellent solution for all companies from start-ups to large corporations. Thus, IT experts expect a huge increase on SaaS services within the next two years but the success of these cloud migrations are many times dependent on the connectivity and network performance.
Additionally, cloud services are going hybrid. This optimizes the resource usage, add more functionalities but also adds complexity. Achieving great connectivity and having an optimal cloud for each case is an ideal goal but there is a problem on how to manage everything at the same time. How do you find the issue if the user experiences problems? How do you manage connectivity?
Therefore, we could not miss the chance to discuss cloud connectivity trends with the true expert in the field – Ficolo. You can watch full recording of the related webinar here:
Data centers & network performance monitoring: Cloud connectivity becomes just as critical as compute
We’ve summarized some of the key questions from the webinar below.
1. How 5G deployments will impact the importance of connectivity for cloud services?
Obviously, 5G will be used for cloud services. Mobile broadband services are already used for certain cloud services. Today many of these cloud services like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure are provided from a centralized location through the core network. However, especially edge computing will become really popular mainly because 5G will introduce ultra-reliable, low-latency services. This means the cloud computing instances need to be really close to the customers, and these instances will be business-critical. Low-latency, high-reliability and the highest possible quality will increase the importance of connectivity going forward.
2. What are top 3 DC selection considerations when developing technical services provided as cloud services from a data center?
• Make sure that the company is able to deliver – in every sense. Strong references, speedy delivery and committed support.
• Ensure that the company has sufficient expertise in connectivity for current and future needs. Ask about options for backup connections along different routes.
• As you will be outsourcing something that is critical, make sure the security and business continuity plans are of high quality. A good way to do this is to use a certified company, e.g., ISO 27001 and ISO 22301.
3. In Cloud Management Platform, what are meaningful KPIs to commit to Client?
The KPI which is used would be highly dependent on which application(s) the connection is used for. However, generally speaking, latency and packet loss likely would be the most important KPIs. This would apply for normal business applications, whereas if you are providing for instance a voice service, jitter would also be very much in focus. For TCP based application: latency and packet loss, for voice: latency and packet loss and for video – jitter and packet loss are the most important KPI’s. As an example, 2% packet loss for TCP based application will double the latency.
4. You mentioned in the webinar Megaport: What is Megaport and how does it work?
Megaport is a solution which provides on-demand connectivity to other datacentres. Megaport is hosted in several hundreds of data centres, 600+ around the world. Ficolo-IX connectivity hub in Helsinki allows to access Megaport’s global network of cloud platforms. Once you have the Megaport you can connect to any of 600 data centres no matter of the location just by a “point and click” interface. Not only that, you can connect to different clouds. Megaport supports AWS, Azure, SAP Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, OVH cloud and a broad range of others. Once the solution is up and running and you want to set up an instance in a cloud you can immediately have the connection to it. So, networking as a service basically can and should be through the cloud.
5. What kind of measurement probes are typically used in the datacentres / customer virtualization platforms?
Typically, data centre /cloud providers have to use virtual probes. For example, as a part of Microsoft Azure, there has to be a virtual probe. Creanord has a full portfolio of different virtual probes, and as of today, we have 3 different virtual probes available. All of the probes can support the same capabilities and features but what makes them differ is scalability. The scalability varies from PULSensor Virtual 200 to PULSensor Virtual 3000 by how much vCPU, vDisk and vMemory they require and how well they scale in number of circuits that can be monitored. All of the probes can be used in different cloud platforms such as IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure. All hypervisors and commonly used cloud providers are supported.
About Ficolo:
Fast-growing private equity company with in data canter and cloud services business with growing world-wide recognition founded in 2011. Ficolo started out as colocation & data canter services and first brought colocation as a concept to Finland. Now Ficolo has following Finland-based datacentres: “The Rock” (Pori), “The Deck” (Tampere), “The Air” and “Ficolo-IX” inter-connecting point (Helsinki) with on-going expansion projects. Data centres use 100% Green Energy (wind + own solar power plant) and holds the best Dark-Green rating by CICERO.
Ficolo highlights of 2020:
• Shortlisted for Multi-Tenant Data Center Design award by Datacenter Dynamics in December
• Taking “The Air Helsinki Phase 1” into use in Q2 with several customers already installed
• Frank Korsström, ex Accenture Nordics Managing Director named Chairman
• Own solar power plant at The Rock DC opened in September
• Named a leader in colocation in the Nordics by ISG
• Shortlisted for M&A of the year by Data Economy/Finvest in February 2020 for our Fujitsu sale & leaseback deal