Logicalis Expands Cloud, Data Center Offering To Midwest

Cloud and managed services provider Logicalis is expanding its U.S. data center offerings to the Midwest through a partnership with a data center provider IO, the companies announced Thursday.

New York-based Logicalis will leverage Phoenix-based IO's established data center in Springboro, Ohio, to bring hosted private cloud access to clients located in the central area, said Bob Mobach, director of data center solutions at Logicalis.

"We now have more footprint to host private cloud environments with overlying Logicalis managing capabilities," said Mobach. "It will allow us to provide more data center-as-a-service offerings, and to offer the data center as a server where they don't have to spend money on billing or operating these things. It also allows a more on-site presence for remote support."

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Logicalis currently has a presence in both the Western and Eastern United states with facilities in Phoenix and Edison, N.J., but only a dispersed presence in the Midwest. Now, Midwestern clients from Chicago to Cincinnati to Indianapolis will benefit, said Mobach.

"To fill out the robustness of an East, Central, and West data center for our national clientele, we are streamlining our data center offerings, and we have realized that, with IO in all of those, it goes on a strong private backbone network," said Mobach.

Logicalis chose IO as a supplier of data centers because of its modular data technology and "smart" data center, said Mobach.

"IO has been a pioneer with modular data technology, and it's the next generation of data center that's efficient and easy to deploy," said Mobach. "IO's smart data center deploys an operating system called IO-OS and that runs the data center and all of the operations -- [including] the power, cooling, access control, the monitoring and alarming -- so our customers have access to a Web portal to see what's going on. It's one system that does everything for us."

In the past, Logicalis has built its own data centers, and while its international headquarters in the U.K. currently has its own, Logicalis U.S. made a decision to follow through with a strategic approach in straying from that, said Mobach.

"It takes a lot to run data centers efficiently, and IO concentrates on building and operating them versus being an operator like us," said Mobach. "That's their core competency and ours is to manage and outsource data center environments. We feel by concentrating on our core competencies, it's a better strategy in managing cloud and we can all work it out together."

NEXT: With More Cloud Demand Comes More Bandwidth Demand

Currently the demand for cloud comes from IaaS, SaaS, small startups and legacy companies, said Logicalis' Mobach. Various industries are looking to make the transition, including the health care, financial and e-commerce sectors, as well as traditional manufacturers, said Mobach.

"We see cloud demand come from a variety of companies that are drawn to cloud performance because they don't want to invest in expensive hardware and data centers," said Mobach. "Businesses are getting some help for the operational side and [looking to] offset their IT manpower so they can be able to concentrate on what IT should be doing, which is working with the business and making it more successful instead of doing break-fix types all day, which can be leveraged by companies like us."

As customers require more bandwidth, it is essential to be able to supply it to them, said Mobach.

"It's the key ingredient for more power and success," said Mobach. "Our customers want some sort of recovery and failover form; they want to replicate if the data center fails, for one reason. There will be a backup recovery, and in order to replicate data, you need a lot of bandwidth."

Although Logicalis deploys both private and public cloud, in 2014 customers can look for more public cloud offerings from the company with built-in capabilities as well as an increased footprint in Asia and Europe, said Mobach.

"Planned for next year, Logicalis will start moving with IO in Singapore for a fourth point of connectivity to Asian customers in the Pacific Rim area," said Mobach.

PUBLISHED JAN. 17, 2013