Telehouse, owned by Japanese telecommunications giant KDDI, is a global provider of carrier-neutral co-location services, ICT solutions and managed services. As the primary hub of the London Internet Exchange, Telehouse London hosts a large number of data carriers and has a high level of latency, making it one of the key internet hubs in the world.
Opening in 1990, Telehouse North in London was Europes first purpose-built neutral co-location facility. It was followed by three other London data centres, Telehouse Metro, Telehouse East, and Telehouse West, and a fourth is planned.
But Telehouse now operates far more globally, with data centres around the world. It has centres in two locations in North America, New York and Los Angeles. In Europe, there are centres in Paris, Frankfurt, Turkey and Moscow, and Telehouse also reaches south to Cape Town and Johannesburg, and east to Hanoi, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Seoul, as well as having 11 data centres in Tokyo and a further six elsewhere in Japan.
Current services
Telehouse has over 2,000 co-location customers around the world. They range from start-ups to huge multinationals, largely due to the flexibility and scalability of Telehouses data centres. Racks are available from 2kW and 10kW per rack, and the end-to-end managed data centre solution can be integrated with companies existing IT infrastructure.
With its data security and hosting experience, the company has often been the provider of choice for financial institutions as well as telecoms providers. Its service level agreements guarantee 99.999% up-time, and it also has international quality standards accreditation for many of its data centres, including ISO/IEC 27001:2005 for information security, ISO 9001:2000 for quality management and ISO 14001:2004 for environmental management.
Expansion plans
KDDI is building a new Telehouse facility in London, with total new investment in London Docklands of $230 million. It has also announced plans to build two new Telehouse data centres in Tokyo and Osaka, at a cost of $270 million. The Tokyo centre will open later this year, and Osaka in 2016. These are designed to meet demand for private and public cloud, and both will provide high-density co-location services. Between them, the two new Japanese sites will offer 2,000 racks of space, 1,300 in Tokyo and 700 in Osaka. Globally, that will allow Telehouse to offer 371,000 square metres of data centre space in 46 sites across 13 countries and 24 cities.
Both Tokyo and Osaka are key economic centres in Japan, with Osaka being the second-largest city after Tokyo. Many companies choose to base their disaster recovery and backup facilities in Osaka. In an earthquake-prone country like Japan, disaster recovery is more than just theoretical, and Osaka is a long way south of the area affected by the 2011 earthquake, making it an attractive option.
A move into healthcare
Telehouse hasnt just been expanding its infrastructure, it has also been trying to break into new markets and customer segments. It has recently completed compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and is using that to break into the healthcare vertical, with a certain amount of success.
For example, back in October last year, Spire Healthcare and Telehouse announced that Spire would move into Telehouse North, in Londons Docklands area. Since 2012, the Docklands data centre has been served by Telehouses own onsite primary substation, giving it high quality reliability. The migration happened over a period of 18 months, with a goal of a centralised IT infrastructure for Spire within the UK. The new infrastructure has already resulted in a 50% reduction in lead time for Spire, and improved customer satisfaction. Both Spire and Telehouse consider that a win.
Scalability, flexibility and connectivity
Like many big data centre providers, Telehouses key offering is scalability and flexibility. Customers get the benefits of Telehouses bargaining power, keeping costs relatively low. As a big provider, Telehouse is also in a good position to set up its own generators and onsite substations, ensuring high power reliability and relatively lower costs for its customers. The close co-location with key customer sites, including London Docklands and the City of London, has made Telehouses data centres attractive to customers.
But perhaps Telehouses selling point is its connectivity. As the hub of the London Internet Exchange, it is uniquely placed to provide high levels of connectivity. Coupled with up-time guarantees of very nearly 100%, this is a high quality offering from a provider that is hungry to expand.