365 Data Centers unifies its 17 facilities with new cloud storage service

365 Data Centers unifies its 17

facilities with new cloud storage

service

24 Sep, 2014

Multi-tenant datacenter provider 365 Data Centers has embarked on a steady climb up the stack. Armed with 17 datacenters, primarily in major emerging markets, the provider will roll out services to unify its facilities under a single platform. The latest service, 365 Cloud Storage, is an on-demand, pay-for-use cloud storage service with hourly pricing and self-service provisioning. Because the cloud storage services are housed locally in each of the 17 datacenters, customers will benefit from low-latency access to on-demand storage whether they are colocation customers or not. Later in the year, 365 Data Centers intends to launch managed firewall services, managed storage and managed backup services.

The 451 Take

When 365 Data Centers purchased the facilities that had taken a back seat in Equinix's footprint, we believed that the assets not only needed an infusion of capital to bring them to industry standards, but also the launch of services to bind them together. The company is doing both. We see 365 Data Centers' most significant opportunity coming from the steaming media/content space, where the goal is to push content as close to the edge as possible. However, this on-demand storage option could also attract SMBs and enterprises with databases, 'big data' and enterprise applications that require large blocks of secure local storage.

365 Data Centers was founded in 2002 as 365 Main. It began offering colocation service in a single datacenter in San Francisco. Over the next eight years, the company grew its footprint to five datacenters totaling roughly 919,000 square feet. In 2010, it sold its datacenter portfolio to Digital Realty Trust for about $725m, including the flagship 365 Main St. facility in San Francisco. In April 2014, 365 Main rebranded to 365 Data Centers.

An investment group led by 365 Data Centers that included Crosslink Capital and Housatonic Partners purchased 16 datacenters from Equinix for $75m in Q4 2012. The facilities spanned

280,000 gross square feet, and all customers and employees were transferred to 365 Data Centers. Following the acquisition, 365 Data Centers doubled capacity in its Manhattan facility, and the company acquired a datacenter in the Oakland suburb of Emeryville, California, from Evocative Inc. Collectively, the 17 datacenters offer 194,406 usable square feet and are roughly 40% utilized in aggregate. The datacenters are located in Buffalo, New York; Chicago; Cleveland; Dallas; Detroit; Emeryville, California; Indianapolis; Nashville, Tennessee; New York; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Pittsburgh; Reston, Virginia; San Jose; Seattle; St. Louis; and Tampa, Florida.

365 Cloud Storage

This offering is not a managed monthly service. Rather, it is akin to public IaaS services where resources may be spun up (or down) quickly through an online portal. The two big differences between 365 Cloud Storage and competitive offerings such as Amazon EBS or Microsoft Azure are that customers don't need to move their applications and servers into the cloud to gain access to on-demand storage, and 365 Cloud Storage is available in 17 US markets.

365 Data Centers has partnered with Zadara Storage to leverage its virtual private storage array (VPSA). 365 Cloud Storage supports both SAN for block-based (iSCSI) storage and NAS for file sharing (NFS/SMB) and can be accessed securely via a datacenter cross-connect within 365's facilities, via carrier Ethernet or metro fiber. It offers redundancy support for customized RAID configurations and encryption of data at rest and in flight. There is built-in data protection through automated snapshots, cloning and remote mirroring. The service can scale to hundreds of terabytes per storage volume and can be integrated with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure

would like their resources to reside in, and how many dedicated SATA, SAS or SSD drives they want. Pricing is transparent and by the hour, with the lowest rate currently $0.08 per hour for a 200GB SSD drive and $0.12 per hour for a 5TB SATA drive. Upon launch, the company is offering a free trial, fittingly for 365 hours.

There are two ways to gain access to 365 Cloud Storage. First, 365 Data Centers' colocation tenants may hire a cross-connect from their servers to a 365's storage switch in the facility, which grants them access to VPSAs. Alternatively, customers that are not colocated with 365 Data Centers may layer a VLAN on top of a fiber connection running to one of 365 Data Centers' locations, as long as the end user is less than 100 miles away and has sub-four-millisecond latency. To migrate large amounts of data, 365 Data Centers offers 10Gbps and 1Gbps access along with an option to seed the data locally by providing a hard drive.

Competition

Most of the competition for 365 Data Centers comes from local providers that serve SMBs in each of the 17 markets it serves. Nationally recognized CenturyLink Technology Solutions is present in nine of 365's markets and has done well preserving an SMB focus while continually scaling its footprint. Additionally, Peak 10, which is in two of 365's markets, has done well pioneering eastern emerging markets with high-quality SMB-focused offerings and maintains a managed cloud storage offering for its customers. ViaWest maintains a similar model with facilities in the western US and also maintains a managed cloud storage offering. 365 Data Centers believes that its cloud storage differs from Peak 10 and ViaWest's offerings, which lack online sign-up, support for both SAN and NAS, and hourly pay-per-use pricing. EdgeConneX, a new provider that targets media/content customers with facilities in emerging markets, will definitely put competitive pressure on 365 Data Centers specifically when it comes to that vertical.

The fact that 365 Data Centers will market 365 Cloud Storage to non-colocation customers opens it to direct competition with mega-scale cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Platform. The company believes that its differentiation will be its ability to offer large amounts of block-based storage and NAS rather than just object storage or small block-based storage designed for Web applications.

SWOT Analysis

This is an innovative service that should appeal to a variety of customers. Its availability across 17 markets immediately also gives it a head start on any similar offerings to come from competitors.

Other providers in emerging markets, such as ViaWest and Peak 10, offer high-touch consultative services, which 365 Data Centers currently does not have, to complement automated, self-service offerings.

Opportunities Threats

The fact that this is available to colocation and non-colocation customers could, if advertised enough, bring many additional customers to 365 Data Centers with, potentially, demand for additional services.