ATMonitor talks with Volta at the launch of their new Data Centre

Transcription

1 ATMonitor Q&A 25th September 2013 ATMonitor talks with Volta at the launch of their new Data Centre

2 Commercial Director, Volta Data Centre As commercial director, Julian brings a wealth of experience from the data centre and other business sectors to his current role. Previously, Julian was Commercial Director at Global Switch (a global wholesale data centre provider) where he had responsibility for the group s commercial and sales strategy. Julian joined Global Switch in 2002 at a time when the sector was suffering the effects of the demise of the dot com boom and was instrumental in repositioning the business to attract global corporates and their reseller partners. Previously Julian had served as European Managing Director of HQ Global Workplaces, one of the leading operators of serviced offices worldwide, and held other senior positions in connection with Real Estate development. 2

3 Today is clearly a big day for Volta and the result of years of planning and re-building, with the official launch by Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor for Business and Enterprise. What does it mean for you? It has been an exciting journey and we are really thrilled to be standing here today, in our live data hall, to celebrate our opening with the members of the communities we serve on our doorstep: financial services firms in the City of London, but also the communities of entrepreneurs in TechCity and the Silicon Roundabout. It is also a real honour to have Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse here today; his presence is testament to the fact that our investment in the infrastructure needed to keep these communities competitive, aligns very much with the mayoral priorities for London as a place to do business. Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor for Business and Enterprise What can Volta s new data centre offer trading firms in the City of London? The truth is that historically, central London and the financial services community in particular, have suffered from a lack of infrastructure, such as sufficient data centre space to meet the future demand for trading engines, proximity services, data processing services, not to mention back up sites demanding a different location. Three years ago, when we began this project we were convinced that if London was to continue to compete as one of the world s major trading hubs, then it needed a state-of-the-art data centre in the heart of it. We have been encouraged that even before we have completed the fit out there has been considerable interest from a wide range of financial services firms, London based or as far reaching as Russia and China. Matthew Dent, CEO, Volta David Philips, CEO, Glebe Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor, Commercial Director, Volta 3

4 Co-location and low latency is extremely important to both the buy-side and sell-side in the Equities markets. How do you see the increasing regulation across other asset classes affecting demand? From the outset, we could see increasing demand for a high quality data centre catering for the Square Mile. We could see how the changes that have transformed the equities world, with increased fragmentation, a regulatory drive towards more transparency and consequently a high demand for data storage solutions, could spill over into other asset classes. And MiFID 2 is a clear indication that regulators are looking to apply some of the changes that transformed the equities landscape onto other asset classes in the future. How can Volta aid firms looking to enter say the FX market? Any trading firm needs to be able to access liquidity. They need low latency connectivity to the exchanges on which they trade, access to other sources of liquidity and be able to connect to the network of suppliers in their community. For the FX trading community, international links are incredibly important and our new data centre is not only located close to the City of London but our tier one carriers offer customers a choice of high speed international connections from day one. 4

5 Fast facts about Volta The first new data centre in central London to open in a decade, Volta s Great Sutton Street facility provides a resilient, secure and sustainable IT environment for businesses requiring a central London location. Volta s data centre offers high speed domestic and international connectivity provided by some of the world s leading telecommunication carriers, including BT, Cable & Wireless, Colt, eunetworks, Geo, Level 3, Thus, Verizon, Vodafone, Zayo, Fusion Media Networks, Custom Connect, Venus Business Communications and Optimity. VOLTA & THE INDUSTRY: 30% of all data centre space contracted across the Eurozone in 2012 was in London, making it the largest single market. There are 3 million sq ft of carrier neutral colocation space in the UK; Volta offers 45,000 sq ft of space in central London. VOLTA & LOW-LATENCY CONNECTIVITY High speed, resilient connectivity is essential to many industries, including financial services, technology and media. Transatlantic fibre optic cables have reduced the round-trip latency between London and New York based financial markets to 64 milliseconds. This means an order to trade and the confirmation of that trade will be returned to a market participant in 64 miliseconds. At this speed, a piece of information could travel around the world 4.34 times in one second. VOLTA FAST FACTS: Over 250,000 man hours have been invested in the refurbishment of Volta s Great Sutton Street data centre. An average of 175 staff have worked on the site every day, for nearly a year. Volta Great Sutton Street has a diverse power supply of 9.6MW whereas 9MW is sufficient to power the Shard or 2,000 homes. With feeds from two separate parts of the national grid, virtually the whole of London would have to suffer an outage before Volta s back-up power systems are required, making it one of the most resilient data centres in the UK. In the unlikely event that diesel generators are required, Volta has level 2 priority refuelling, meaning that in case of a London wide outage, the diesel tanks would be refueled straight after the government and emergency services. 5