NorthC runs a nationwide virtual data centre for cloud services
NorthC is a market leader in regional data centres, colocation and connectivity services with ten data centres in the Netherlands and two in Germany. NorthC offers customised connectivity and hybrid cloud solutions to its customers, who include business and financial services, government, IT service providers, the healthcare sector, many small businesses and large multinationals. By collaborating closely with regional IT partners, NorthC offers its customers complete solutions to support their digital transformation journeys. Driven by the North-European digital transformation, NorthC saw a growing demand for high-speed, reliable connectivity between its regional data centres.
NorthC Region Connect Ring
Together with our partner Nokia, we delivered an integrated IP/optical data centre interconnect solution for the NorthC Region Connect Ring. Together we created a nationwide virtual data centre via reliable fibre optic connections, which offers substantial benefits to customers. The high-speed Region Connect Ring provides scalable and reliable data centre interconnection and cloud connectivity.
NorthC customers located in one data centre now have access to applications, services and connections in all other data centres. Local data centres are now the enabler of cloud strategies and the gateway to regional and international services.
"The digital transformation of the Dutch economy and the growing role of regions within it means there is a growing demand for local data centres and for high-speed, reliable connectivity between regions. The Region Connect Ring allows customers to directly access network and cloud services that are not available in their own region." - Mario Hangjas, Senior Director Information Technology for NorthC
NorthC high speed, scalable and reliable data center and cloud interconnect platform
NorthC Datacenters describes how Nomios and Nokia delivered IP/optical data centre interconnection for its Region Connect Ring to offer customers fast, scalable and reliable data centre and cloud connectivity.
Interconnecting data centres in the cloud ecosystem
What do we mean by interconnecting data centres? In short, interconnection routes traffic between multiple networks, connecting customers with cloud services, applications and workloads wherever they are located.
To be more specific, interconnection involves routing traffic from one network to another and between different operators’ data centres in a process known as peering. This enables two networks to connect and exchange traffic directly without having to pay a third party to carry traffic across the internet. In some cases, it involves multiple networks, each peering with the other to pass traffic from the source to the destination. For example, from a customer office to an application running in a core cloud data centre.
Public peering provided by an internet exchange provider enables one network to exchange traffic with multiple other networks. Once connected to a public peering exchange, operators can set up or remove connections to other operators’ networks without needing to physically re-provision circuits. Private peering, typically between only two parties, enables one network to exchange traffic with another network. For example, either physically using a fibre connection or virtually using a VLAN.
Peering typically takes place in carrier-neutral data centres, where many participants in the cloud ecosystem are colocated. These richly connected data centres are valuable assets and are the ideal location for interconnection, whereby any party can connect with any other colocated party to gain access to cloud services and applications – wherever they are located. This interconnection ecosystem is enhanced by automating network connectivity and peering, and by using web portals to make it easy for customers to self-provision connectivity to cloud applications and services, or to connect to partners, suppliers and other enterprises in private ecosystems.
Enabling interconnection with Nokia IP routing solutions
Nokia IP routing solutions enable interconnection at scale, offering secure IP routing, peering and data centre gateway functions at speeds of 400GE, 800GE and above. They support high-speed access to data centres and high capacity, high-performance backbone routing between data centres, and enable network architecture that supports rich features such as traffic engineering and security at the edge while scaling, simplifying and increasing the efficiency of the core.
Nokia’s integrated IP/optical solution combines high-performance 7750 service routers with high-capacity 1830 photonic service switches and network automation. The solution deployed by Nomios enables NorthC to improve its customers’ data centre connectivity speed and reliability by offering Layer 2 IP/MPLS interconnection services between its data centres to meet their bandwidth, latency, and performance needs.
Already deployed is the Nokia Network Services Platform (NSP), a software-defined network automation solution that allows full management of NorthC’s customer connections and data centre interconnection. As a result, NorthC can improve response times and reduce service delivery times to hours rather than days so that customers can always operate at full speed, growing and scaling up connectivity as needed.
"Nomios and Nokia enabled us to implement the best solution for our Region Connect Ring" - Mario Hangjas, NorthC
Nokia & Nomios partnership
Nomios is a Nokia Enterprise Partner with advanced specialities and the distinction of multiple certified engineers on staff. Our engineers are recognised by Nokia Enterprise as technical experts and advocates of Nokia Enterprise solutions. That means you can count on us for the technical know-how and hands-on experience to accurately assess your business requirements, and design, implement and manage a Nokia Enterprise Software-based solution to suit your needs.
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