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ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO THE MINNEAPOLIS /ST. PAUL BUSINESS JOURNAL work with are increasingly looking for access to the hyperscale cloud pro- viders with more security than they can get by connecting via the public Internet. These customers are looking to use services like Amazon's Direct Connect, Microsoft's Express Route or IBM Softlayer's DirectLink. These on- ramp services create private, secure connections from the customers' equipment to cloud infrastructure. Today in Minneapolis, customers lever- age these services by choosing from a range of network service providers who are pre- approved by the cloud providers. Cologix's meet -me -rooms have the most approved network ser- vice partners in our markets which our customers value to ensure cost effec- tive services for ever - increasing traf- fic volumes. Based on Minneapolis's strong economy and our experience in other markets, we believe that the cloud providers will extend their net- works to Minneapolis which will cre- ate a lower latency access point for local customers that does not require a backhaul service to a different mar- ket. Cologix is regularly championing markets like Minneapolis to the hyper - scale cloud providers as a logical next step for expansion. Patel: Our products address this challenge a little differently. If direct connectivity is needed within the building, from these larger customers, it requires a lot of fiber. The amount of fibers required tend to clog path- ways and meet -me rooms. Our meth od to address these challenges is with smaller products that are more dense. This allows Graham and Earnest to meet the fiber glut and still provide the diversity and cross - connections. Knutson: Our customers' number one problem is connectivity to cloud services. When they're in their own building, with their data center on- premise, they can have direct connec- tivity right into the services they're consuming. But if we're going to pick that up and drop it into a smaller pipe or pipes, what happens if that one pipe goes down? We're talking about multiple paths, carriers or routes to get to those services. They ask, "Why doesn't this act the same? Why is it not as good ?" It's because we made the pipe smaller. We don't just need good connectivity, but also diverse connectivity. Sampera: Flexibility and accessibil- ity are the keys to connectivity. Enter- prises need choices as well as the agil- ity to shift when their business needs change. In an environment like ours, companies can determine best -fit car- rier options. The connectivity is just a cross connect, and you get the best of both worlds. You can deploy one and interconnect many, as opposed to try- ing to engineer networks to wrangle many to one. Knutson: If you're in a large metro- politan area like Minneapolis -St. Paul, you just do a cross - connect. But in the secondary and tertiary markets, they don't have that luxury. So it's not the 11 .... a .... 0 connectivity into the data center, it's the connectivity out of the customer; we have to map both ends. For us, it's not always the data center that's the bottleneck; sometimes it's the cus- tomer themselves. Othoudt: How do companies choose where they locate their data center? Patel: As it relates to the data cen- ter, the availability of low -cost pow- er is a big issue. And people forget that when you build these big data centers, it takes talent and people to work in them. It might be beneficial for latency and cross - connects in one location, but the talent to run these things may not exist there. Williams: First and foremost is location. In Minnesota, what can be a 20- minute drive in summer can be an hour and a half in winter. If you are concerned about connectivity, you want to sit at the physical inter- section between the metro fiber and the long -haul fiber, at the 511 building near the Vikings stadium. Looking at service providers, the first thing cus- tomers do and should look at is: Will my services always be on? Data cen- ters area physical infrastructure busi- ness. The people who are really good at this have big generators that are well maintained and managed. They have redundancy so that any given piece of equipment can fail and the entire system stays up. For anyone who hasn't gone through the pro- curement process with a provider, go see the data center. You can look and see and touch the equipment, and the difference will become very clear very quickly. All of the things we've been talking about really don't mat- ter if you lose power or air condition- ing. Start there, and the next choice is connectivity, making sure that service providers come to you as opposed to you having to chase them. When you have to unbolt servers from the floor, and drive them across town and rebolt them somewhere else, that is a painful, expensive, risky process. Sampera: While some enterpris- es still prefer to be in close proximity to their data center, there are other important considerations to the loca- tion choice. As we've talked about, interconnectivity gives you the abil- ity to reach your various user popu- lations with high reliability and mini- mal latency. It may also be important for IT teams to choose a data center that offers other sites relative to dif- ferent geographical areas they need to reach. The other important value proposition is reliability. If you have a business continuity need, which is becoming more prevalent, there's an issue relative to the consistency of service, the infrastructure, and the methodology for maintaining equip- ment. Beyond location, look at a data center's standard operating process- es, and ask maintenance questions. That's going to tell you that you have a service provider who lives and breathes the IT issues you're facing every day. Williams: Internet exchanges are a really important driver and attractor of demand. Minneapolis has a great story overall in terms of overall Inter- net traffic that's coming to the mar- ket, and that's best seen through the Midwest Internet Cooperative Exchange (www.micemn.net). It's a huge economic development driv- er because it allows companies to exchange internet traffic without paying for it. So it drives cost down and performance up. We've seen big names like Google and Netflix and Akamai come into the market here, where that traffic exchange used to happen in places like Chicago. Traffic on the MICE exchange is growing fast- er than internet exchange overall. The state is becoming more important in the global internet than our peers in other states. Othoudt: What are companies look- ing for in terms of disaster recovery when considering data center sites? Williams: Security has to be multi - layered and incorporate physical and logical security. Our customers come to us to ensure 24 -7 guards at the site and the front of the building, and that there is dual- factor authentica- tion only for authorized users, with all users tracked throughout and records kept. If you go into a data center that doesn't have video cameras with stor- age of the videotapes, you should go find another one. Sampera: Disaster recovery is tak- ing on new meanings today. Beyond the traditional definitions, there is quite a bit more focus on prevention and proactivity. For example, we're starting to see customers imple- menting RFID technology. Custom- ers want physical asset tracking as part of their security. As you can imagine, in a lot of these data cen- ters, moves /adds /changes occur dai- ly. We've implemented asset tracking using RFID technology, and custom- ers can access it through their portal. Knutson: We've found that one thing is often getting left out: You should know where your data is. We had a customer whose contract said that the cloud provider could move their data out of the United States, depending on loads. For this custom- er, that wasn't okay; they needed their data to stay in the U.S. Othoudt: Where do you see the industry going in the next five years? Sampera: We think it's going to continue to grow. Cloud computing is becoming cheaper, and given the fact that more and more devices are going to be using the internet, that more and more analytics are going to be calculated, latency will be more important. There's going to have to be more data centers in more mar- kets, and the question is, how do you anticipate the next market? That's the $64 question for all of us. Williams: People forget that the growth of the internet and mobile APRIL 28, 2017 27 traffic and IoT has a physical mani- festation, that as you do more on your phone, there need to be more rout- ers and switches in the data center. We also expect to see enterprises outsource more and more. For over- all footprint, I think there's going to be a consolidation, as enterprises let go of their own DIY data centers and consolidate into more efficient foot- prints in a co -lo provider. Othoudt: Final thoughts? Patel: What does everyone think about retail versus wholesale? Sampera: In terms of the value cus- tomers are looking for, we see more and more enterprises doing multi - deployments. Retail data centers deliver a more hands -on experience, which in our case means people who are on staff 24/7 to the reboot lay- er, the physical rack and stack. With virtualization and hyperscale, we see more footprints consolidating, and in many cases, customers are having to deploy smaller edge -based comput- er nodes to maintain and optimize performance. It's a pretty interesting ecosystem that leverages the cycle of growth to benefit all data center customers. Williams: Our view is that we're going to continue to see growth in retail and wholesale. They're natu- ral environments in the data center and there will be customers for both. Across retail and wholesale, connec- tivity becomes more important for each, and we're seeing larger enter- prises that five years ago needed two megawatts in 10,000 square feet, but now can fit more in a higher density. So they'd like a smaller footprint — but they have to be close to connectivity. There may be a blurring of retail and wholesale, largely in a space where traffic and outsourcing are going to rise both retail and wholesale boats. Patel: You know, our end users often have similar pain points. What in your business helps reassure them that they're making the right decision, whether it's to stay in their own data center, or go to the cloud, or a co- location facility? Williams: For us, it's robust infra- structure and redundancy. They come to our site and they see our genera- tors and our cooling and our UPSs and say: These guys know what they're doing and this is better than what I can do. Also, connectivity. Customers walk out thinking: We have maximum choice, and that gives us a lot of con- fidence beyond knowing that our ser- vices will never go down. Knutson: In the small to medium enterprise sector, they might have limited IT staff. Their IT people are doing things like running a help desk when they really should be focused on strategy, becoming more efficient and making more money. It's about how to maximize the talent they have and offload the tasks to IT staff so they can help drive business value instead.