London-based Virtus Data Centres has added more than 200 network providers to its portfolio available to its colocation customers and partners – more than 50 of whom are cloud and other managed ICT service providers.
Announcing the increase in network providers, Virtus CEO, Neil Cresswell, explained: "We’ve been able to expand access to so many new network providers at a stroke thanks to our new deal with Openreach who have extended their massive fibre network into our LON1 facility in Enfield."
The open, wholesale nature of Openreach’s network means that all UK communications providers can access its fibre network on equivalent terms. This allows Virtus to offer their customers high speed Ethernet and other connectivity services from a wide choice of communications providers.
Tim Barclay, MD, sales, marketing and customer engagement, Openreach, commented: "This deal with Virtus is part of a major push into the UK data centre market by Openreach. Our extensive and rapidly expanding fibre network means we are well placed to increase our foothold in this market so we expect to sign more deals over the coming months.
"We are the ideal partner for data centres looking to adopt a carrier neutral approach given our open, wholesale access model. We’re also speeding up the provisioning of our Ethernet services by building fibre links direct to major UK data centres well ahead of any customer orders."
The dedicated fibre link from Openreach will provide a range of high bandwidth options, from 10Mb/s up to multiple 10Gb/s services. This is said to allow Virtus’ customers to access their mission critical information stored at the data centre via fast, secure and resilient backhaul links.
Virtus recently introduced CoLo-on-Demand, a new product set designed to enable cloud providers and other customers with short-term dynamic capacity needs, to satisfy their data centre requirements.
Cresswell added: "Virtus already has a number of Tier I and Tier 2 carriers on-net including Level (3), Virgin Media, Geo Networks, Exponential-e, C4L and BT. The Openreach diverse resilient fibre network adds far more carrier choice which will be particularly beneficial for our CoLo-on-Demand customers."
