Colt : Choices, legacies and a tale of transformation

Since the beginning of the year, we have welcomed six new carriers at our data centres across Europe - SSE (UK), Zayo (France), Tutor (France), SIPARTECH (France) , Willy Tel (Germany) and Cogent (Switzerland). Furthermore, we plan to continue this momentum throughout the year and open our doors to some of the biggest and best carriers across the world to accompany our existing community of approx. 200 carriers across our 29 data centres in Europe and Asia.

Connectivity is King

Having a range of carriers at our data centres offers you freedom of choice to pick the best service providers that suit your business requirements, whether you are a media house that requires real time data replication and high bandwidth or a trading companythat requires extremely low latency. In this era of Internet of Things, connected machines, buildings and societies, one thing we have in abundance is choice. Therefore, the colocation market must offer their customers the same level of flexibility when it comes to the choice of carriers as well as cloud providers.

This choice not only adds diversity but also drives a healthy competition amongst carriers and various cloud providers which often results in a better deal for the end customer. Additionally, freedom of choice in a carrier and cloud neutral data centre allows you to switch from one provider to another instantly without having to move any of your physical equipment.

A legacy old and new

Carrier neutrality is a famous but frankly 'old' buzzword in our industry. However this doesn't mean it has lost its importance or legacy. In fact, having a carrier neutral data centre is no longer an option but a necessity for most businesses. Our big data dominated world relies upon low latency, economically and energy efficient data centres so no wonder that the 'roots' connecting these data centres are constantly under scrutiny due to their legacy infrastructure.

Cloud neutrality however, is a new concept which has seen a rapid growth in the last few years. With the adoption of cloud technology across a spectrum of industries, there is a surging demand for data centre providers to deliver unbiased, direct connections into cloud platforms. As the market craves cloud neutrality more than ever, many data centre providers currently in a monogamous courtship with a cloud provider can face similar constraints as carrier affiliated data centres of the past.

We are currently witnessing the creation of a new legacy of cloud neutrality and looking forward in playing a crucial part in this journey.

'Colt and carrier neutral? No WAY!'

From our humble beginnings in 1992 as City of London Telecommunications (COLT), we have come a long way in establishing ourselves as key players in Networks, Voice and Data Centre markets. It is however the data centre services business which has seen tremendous growth since we first started. Now focusing purely on providing colocation solutions to our customers from a range of sizes and industries such as cloud providers, financial institutions, FinTech and other enterprises, Colt DCS is growing faster than ever.

Our key goal is to provide all our customers the flexibility, efficiency and choice they deserve when working with a colocation provider and yes, we really are carrier neutralwith an average of 8 carriers per data centre and growing!

There is more - we are also cloud neutral, meaning we can provide access to a cloud service provider of your choice, no sides taken. You choose, we connect, simple!