Where the Internet Meets in the Largest Data Center in the World

Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.

The 10 Biggest Data Center Stories

Here are the 10 most popular stories that ran on Data Center Knowledge

Safe Harbor Ruling Leaves Data Center Operators in Ambiguity – Europe’s annulment of the framework that made it easy for companies to transfer data between data centers in Europe and the US while staying within the limits of European privacy laws has caused a lot of uncertainty for businesses that operate data centers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Which Data Center Skills are in Demand Today – As their approach to infrastructure changes, organizations are looking to invest in good people to support new initiatives.

Equinix Doubles Down in One of Internet’s Most Important Locations – Equinix broke ground on a brand new Ashburn, Virginia, campus that has the potential to grow to 1 million square feet of gross building space – a data center build-out that would cost $1 billion by the company’s estimate. Inside an Equinix data center. (Photo: Equinix)

Telx Acquisition Closed, Here’s Digital Realty’s Plan – Interconnecting Telx meet-me rooms with its big wholesale facilities over private network links is Digital’s new value proposition. Digital Realty data center in Chessington, U.K. (Photo: Digital Realty)

Growth Continues in Secondary North American Data Center Markets – While top data center markets like New York, Silicon Valley, and Dallas get most of the attention, a lot of growth is taking place in markets considered secondary. Markets like Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, and, more recently, Reno, Nevada, are seeing a lot of multi-tenant data center construction and take-up.

Windstream to Sell Data Center Business for $575M – Windstream has more than 20 data centers, most of them on the East Coast, with some in the Midwest, South, and on the West Coast.

Who is Winning in the DCIM Software Market? – While the very top players are the same, competition for their market share is heating up, as new vendors enter the market, and as previously existing ones step up their game.

The Billions in Data Center Spending behind Cloud Revenue Growth – Every quarter, cloud giants Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Google collectively spend billions of dollars on servers and other hardware for their cloud services and data centers around the world to house all that gear, and the quarter that ended September 30 was no different. A technician at work in a data hall at Facebook’s Altoona, Iowa, data center. (Photo: Facebook/2014 Jacob Sharp Photography)

Facebook to Build Third $200M North Carolina Data Center – The company has been on a data center construction tear this year, which indicates that its user base continues to grow quickly.

HP Launches Open Source OS for Data Center Networking – The move to open networking is about giving users more control of the configuration of their networks, as well enabling Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization capabilities. Stay current on data center news by subscribing to our daily email updates and RSS feed, or by following us onTwitter,Facebook,




Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.

The Next Information Revolution Will Be 100 Times Bigger Than The Internet

Every day I see something I want to know more about, something I can experience at a deeper level, and share with my friends and family. I’m hardly alone in that; the average citizen of any connected country is an avid consumer, seeker, and sharer of information —driving over 5.7 billion Google searches each day. But what happens when you see something you can’t describe? Or when you encounter something you can’t accurately communicate to a friend, let alone a search engine?

Sadly, the platforms and tools of the current age of information aren’t much help when trying to learn about. They restrict our ability to learn more about things we cannot describe with words. And while the Internet has powered a new era of human networking and intelligence, the first information revolution fell short of realizing the potential of technology to provide us with the keys we need to fully unlock the world around us in any given moment. This isn’t a new development. Throughout history, our ability to express curiosity for the world around us has been limited only by the technology available.

To get a sense of the far-ranging implications of a new information revolution, we can consider the massive shift the search business drove in the wake of mainstream Internet adoption. As PCs became cheaper and connectivity improved, millions of consumers needed a better way to access the wealth of information that was now available within their homes and offices. In meeting that need, the search industry established the infrastructure that is today continuing to disrupt everything from print advertising to brick & mortar retail. The best example of the long-term ramifications of an information revolution is, of course, Google.

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Ambarish is cofounder and CEO of Blippar.




Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.

Data Center 101 Colocation and Security Tips For Your Company

Leaders from Microsoft and Dell tell us what we should know about our data centers, before we build them. Also, learn what technology and market trends are driving the need for high-density, high-performance solutions in the data center.
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Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.

Mid-Year 2015 U.S. Carrier Ethernet Leaderboard, Telecom Top Companies for Layer 2 Transport

U.S. Carrier Ethernet Leaderboard

BOSTON, MA, AUGUST 24, 2015 – Vertical Systems Group’s U.S. Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD results for mid-2015 are as follows (in rank order based on retail port share): AT&T, Level 3, Verizon, CenturyLink, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, XO and Cox. Port shares were calculated using the base of enterprise installations of Ethernet services, plus input from surveys of Ethernet providers. The LEADERBOARD threshold is four percent (4%) or more of billable port installations. “U.S. Ethernet port growth was unprecedented in the first half of 2015 and easily surpassed previous estimates.

This market seems to be defying the law of large numbers, as there are few indications of the typical slowing growth patterns that we look for when services reach this size and maturity,” said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “Primary drivers for growth are massive migration from TDM to Ethernet services, robust demand for higher speed Ethernet private lines and rising requirements for connectivity to public and private Clouds.”

Other providers selling Ethernet services in the U.S. are segmented into tiers as measured by port share. The Challenge Tier includes providers with between 1% and 4% share of the U.S. retail Ethernet market. The following six companies attained a position in the mid-2015 Challenge Tier (in alphabetical order): Bright House, Charter, Cogent, Lightpath, Windstream and Zayo.

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Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.

4th Quarter Selling Strategies That Do Not Involve Discounting

It’s the 4th quarter and that means the race is on to make the yearly number. What it also means is we’re only a few weeks away from the time of year when stupid ideas start to become reality. Sad comment is there is no reason for anyone to do anything stupid, and when I say “stupid,” I’m referring to offering discounts to gain a sale before the end of the year. Eliminate right now the idea that making the number requires price cuts. Price cuts make it onto the list of year-end strategies only because nobody took the time and effort to develop other strategies early enough in the year to avoid year-end price discounting.

First, examine where each salesperson is spending their time.
The focus is on gaining business this year, not next year. Too many salespeople get themselves into trouble because they’ve spent too much time dealing with prospects who have zero ability to become customers this year. From October on – and even earlier for some industries – the focus must be on customers who will generate business this year. Some people will take this to mean I’m implying sales shouldn’t be focused long-term. No, that is not the case. As much as the 4th quarter is geared toward closing immediate sales, the 1st quarter should be geared toward long-term business. The objective is to optimize how you use your time.

Second, look for ways you can secure more business from existing customers.

This is often overlooked, and even if it isn’t overlooked, it is rarely capitalized on fully. Reason it makes sense to focus on existing customers is because they are already set up in your company’s system and you’re set up in their system as a supplier. Last thing anyone wants to hassle with at the end of the year is suddenly facing problems with accounting and credit in getting new accounts set up in a timely manner.

Third, develop packages that make it easy for both existing and new customers to buy from you.

Look at your product offering and find areas where you can strip away anything but the basics. Idea is to make it incredibly simple for the customer to buy. Beauty with this tactic is for many companies it means also having the ability to service orders quickly. That allows for new customers to experience your superior level of service even faster.

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Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.

SMBs Poised to Fuel the Cloud Services Market

SMBs Poised to Fuel the Cloud Services Market
by Cameron Bell

If there’s a need for more proof that the cloud services market is here to stay for the foreseeable future, research from Compass Intelligence on small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) demonstrates it. The cloud services market as a whole is growing, and the SMB sector is one of the fastest-growing areas. Currently, there are more than 12 million SMBs in the U.S.–and 22 million worldwide–and they’re already spending more than $150 billion on telecom services. This sector is growing rapidly and has been for the last decade. As a result, the SMB cloud market currently has a 40 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), and it’s projected to remain so for at least the next five years. What’s driving the high CAGR?

1 – Lower Barriers to Entry One of the biggest factors driving SMB cloud adoption is that the Internet is making it far easier for small and medium-sized businesses to get started. When all someone needs is a website to have a business, that means a lot of hungry SMBs looking to grab customers any way they can.

2 – Reduced Need for Expertise On-Staff Currently, 70 percent of SMB cloud spending comes from companies with five to 99 employees. Companies on the low end of that scale simply might not have the budget for an extensive list of contracted experts. Being able to outsource matters like IT management or CMS (content management system) platforms means companies can focus on their core business without spending their budget on in-house experts.

3 – Increased Data-Handling Regulations In most of the high-tech countries around the world, more regulations are being implemented concerning the proper handling of data, especially confidential customer information. Regulations on storage, access, and length-of-retention can change rapidly, but the responsibility is on businesses to be informed of the regulations and to comply with them. SMBs lacking on-site expertise increasingly need industry partners who can ensure their regulatory compliance. Otherwise, the financial penalties from even a single data breach can be ruinous.

4 – Simplified Contact Pathways One area experiencing large booms, even within the cloud industry, is that of telecoms offering direct hosting for computer systems. Besides allowing SMBs to remain relevant to existing customers, this allows SMBs to pare down the list of contacts handling their services. Being able to consolidate all telecom-related tech support to a single partner is a major selling point for SMBs who are currently juggling too many vendors.

5 – Predictable Billing Most SMBs are running on tight month-to-month or even week-to-week budgets, and they cannot afford to have significant spikes in service fees. Since most cloud vendors offer guaranteed contracted rates and sometimes even include hardware upgrades with their fees, it makes both IT and telecom expenses far more predictable from a budgeting perspective.

If a SMB has had one or two “near misses” with an unexpected service bill that nearly breaks the budget, that SMB will be listening when a cloud provider says it can eliminate that uncertainty. How to Grow the Cloud Business The cloud industry is booming among SMBs, who are ready and willing to pay for services that bring convenience and cost savings. Cloud providers that can illustrate these benefits to SMBs will grow their client portfolio, and the SMB clients will be better poised to focus on their core business without unnecessary distractions.

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Contact me at tduggan(@)Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable IP Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.