The Challenge
Digital Planet discovered this when they decided to invest almost €2 million in the latest high-performance server, storage and deployment technology to support their recently launched cloud solution. Harder to come by, Digital Planet also wanted a partner who could help drive the business forward. Digital Planet chose Interxion as the partner to grow with — and gained fifty new customers in the first eighteen months of trading.
Interxion makes life very easy for Digital Planet. As we grow, we know they can accommodate our needs. As our responsibilities to our customers increase we know Interxion will provide the bedrock facilities for us to meet them. It’s a great relationship and it’s one that’s going to last
Hugh Dawson
Digital Planet
The Solution
What sets data centres apart is their ability to drive their customers’ points of difference. As one of the few managed cloud service providers in Ireland — offering managed cloud infrastructure services for both public and private clouds — Digital Plant foresaw rapid growth in this market; and as such, in the demand which would be put on any data centre infrastructure the company relied on. It needed a data centre with proven capabilities in delivering flexible space, and the power and cooling required to support its cloud infrastructure; but also, a provider that could be responsive enough to help the company gain a competitive edge. To satisfy their high expectations they undertook a complete survey of the Irish data centre market.
"Only one provider fit the bill,” says Hugh Dawson, Service Development Manager. “Interxion’s Dublin data centre, DUB1, not only provided the power and space we needed — with the option for future European expansion — but our customers are reassured by Interxion’s reputation. And, as if this wasn’t enough, they have also offered us access to a community of other potential customers.”
As Digital Planet’s business has developed, the Interxion name and reputation has helped reassure their customers that their cloud computing is in safe hands. Interxion has also facilitated meetings with customers within the same data centre who might require managed cloud services.
Digital Planet’s clients include DoneDeal and one of Ireland’s biggest online trading sites, which receives over 2 million visitors a month. Clients such as these demand constant uptime — they’re prepared to accept nothing less than the highest SLAs for availability, backed by providers who can prove their expertise in delivering them. Despite tier 1 and tier 2 data centres being readily available, Digital Planet was determined to search long and hard for the superior quality that Interxion’s tier 4 data centre offers — high levels of reliability and quality of service are essential to Digital Planet’s customer proposition.
Interxion Dublin also houses the Irish Neutral Internet Exchange (INEX). This provides the reassurance of continued low-latency Internet access in the event of telecommunications failovers. Dawson commented that moving into the data centre was a significant step forward in Digital Planet’s growth.
It is imperative that Digital Planet delivers 99.999% availability to its customers. The company wanted to maintain complete control over its own infrastructure — which meant having the ability to manage and monitor system performance 24x7x365. Since the company has housed its network operations centre (NOC) within the Interxion facility, a Digital Planet on-site support team now treats Interxion as its daily workplace.
The combination of the company’s own NOC with Interxion’s high-level SLAs has given Digital Planet an “uplift in service that other operators in our industry simply cannot offer in Ireland,” says Dawson.
Dawson places huge emphasis on trust and support: “Our customers look upon Digital Planet as a trusted advisor — we’re in a position of enormous responsibility. Their production platforms, websites, and ultimately their businesses are in our cloud. Downtime is not an option, there’s a knock-on effect: our customers lose revenue — even customers. So we have to be able to rely on our data centre operator to keep us up and running all the time. Interxion has never let us down.”
Having signed up with Interxion at its inception, Digital Planet has gained fifty new customers in its first eighteen months of trading.
Digital Planet has a clear vision for the future. Its next phase will include extending its services to mainland Europe; relying on Interxion’s pan-European data centres, located in key business hubs.
“Interxion makes life very easy for Digital Planet,” says Dawson, “As we grow, we know they can accommodate our needs. As our responsibilities to our customers increase we know Interxion will provide the bedrock facilities for us to meet them. It’s a great relationship and it’s one that’s going to last.”