COLOTRAQ - August 2020

Data center sourcing made simple IN ASSOCIATION WITH

COLOTRAQ

DIGITAL REPORT 2020

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Data center sourcing made simple

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COLOTRAQ

Dany Bouchedid, CEO of COLOTRAQ, on his vision to provide colocation, managed hosting, cloud, network and data center services globally

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reat businesses often spring from very small seeds: the seed that grew into COLOTRAQ was a lecture, one of a

series, from an early .com entrepreneur to a final year ‘ecommerce’ class at NYU’s Stern School of Business in 1999. The internet was largely unex04

plored territory to the students of management including Dany Bouchedid, who approached the entrepreneur at the end of his talk, expressing his interest and asking him for a tip. After a moment’s thought, Jeff Bezos (for it was he) answered: “Infrastructure.” The class hadn’t yet tackled this subject but Bouchedid was sufficiently interested to ask his professor for a reading list. “I never looked back,” he says. After thoroughly acquainting himself with the data center infrastructure that supports the expanding internet, he founded COLOTRAQ as a full-service consultancy to help companies and institutions source data center colocation.

This proved a winning business model, and today COLOTRAQ uses a global network of data centers from over 400 service providers and has helped more than 10,000 clients, giving them access to

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COLOTRAQ

“ When it comes to the whole as-a-service concept, where does the rubber meet the road? It’s in the data center” — Dany Bouchedid, CEO, COLOTRAQ

upwards of 3,000 colocation and managed hosting facilities. Its custombuilt cloud-based software DCITRAQ allows them to instantly identify, with granular detail, the best data center infrastructure (DCI) to deliver their business goals. It also lets them compare, in real time, the technical specs of the different options facing them.

DCITRAQ was launched five years ago, and has evolved since then with new features. It is available to customers, their consultants or agents

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to dynamically compare and source data center services such as physical or wholesale colocation, managed hosting, cloud and cybersecurity, he explains. “You can have multiple vendors compete for your business through DCITRAQ.” Essentially, DCITRAQ is a reverse auction model for the data center industry, costing the client nothing to gain a transparent view of the physical, virtualized and hybrid offerings available from a huge pool of providers.

It gives the client all the information they need about a provider from their physical facilities to their software capabilities and carriers. “The power

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of DCITRAQ lies in 21 years of experi-

bookseller should have set such a

ence and thousands of projects. All

store on infrastructure. “It wasn’t till

this information is collected to an intui-

Amazon launched AWS almost a

tive dashboard – all your deal history,

decade after Bezos gave that talk that

communications all fully integrated

his master plan became clear: he had

with COLOTRAQ’s cloud based enter-

been the retail king but now he was the

prise accounting platform – and that

infrastructure king!”

information is always up to date.”

Though the rise of the internet was

When the corporate flight to the cloud started, Bouchedid heard people

clearly going to drive demand for data

say the colocation business might

center services and be the basis for his

suffer as people started to abandon

business expansion plan, Bouchedid

on-premise solutions and put their

did wonder at first how someone who

data and their operations in the hands

seemed no more than a clever online

of AWS, Oracle, Azure and the like. w w w.c o l o t ra q . com

COLOTRAQ

favor a hybrid approach: good news for COLOTRAQ, which is uniquely placed to help them navigate these waters.

For 21 years COLOTRAQ has been pitching digital transformation, virtualization and outsourcing. Suddenly the arrival of a global pandemic has meant that instead of a phased introduction, corporations are faced with an urgent need to move to a distributed workforce and off-prem systems as an immediate survival strategy. As an example, he cites telecoms: “You’d be 08

surprised at the number of organizations that still retain PBX systems: we are seeing an unprecedented take-up Far from it, he soon realized: “When

of UCaaS.” For 10 years COLOTRAQ

it comes to the whole as-a-service

has maintained its core systems

concept, where does the rubber meet

including its DCITRAQ platform in the

the road? It’s in the data center!” For

cloud so it experienced no disruption

COLOTRAQ, the effect has been that

whatever when lockdown came in.

the lower value, high churn business

Many businesses were totally

did reduce as small business clients

unprepared for the pandemic. One of

moved to the cloud, but that was good

COLOTRAQ’s biggest projects cur-

news. Its biggest market is now among

rently involves digitizing a large law

mid-market to large enterprises as well

firm’s entire caseload and building

as the providers of services over IP, such

an enterprise portal enabling them

as VoIP, UCaaS, IaaS and a host of ser-

to virtualize all the complex informa-

vices driven by technologies like IoT or

tion that litigation requires, work on

blockchain. Large enterprises do tend to

the case and present it at a Zoom

court session through screen shar-

who have not done so will be urgently

ing. “Law is just one vertical that is

virtualizing their entire value chain.”

still quite archaic in many ways, with

So called ‘traditional’ industries like

lawyers showing up at court with

law or real-estate may be racing to

piles of papers – that is not much use

catch up, but the need of tech-based

at a Zoom meeting. The many firms

verticals is just as pressing, for slightly

E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E :

Dany Bouchedid Title: CEO

Company: COLOTRAQ

Dany Bouchedid is a relationship-driven entrepreneur, leader and visionary with a proven track record of success in building, growing and managing multimillion dollar enterprises. In 1999, he founded and is currently CEO of COLOTRAQ, a full-service sourcing and consulting firm that helps companies and institutions source data center colocation, managed hosting, cloud computing, network infrastructure and other related telecom services in 140 countries. Dany has been published and quoted in various industry publications and has been a speaker at several industry conferences. He has served on several boards for both non-profits and corporations. Dany is the founder and president of The Bouchedid Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization whose mission is to identify and evaluate thousands of charities and non-profit service organizations and rank them using a proprietary algorithm to determine which causes to fund directly.

The foundation considers a multitude of variables including the focus of the charity, the urgency and direness of their cause, and the level of disenfranchisement and vulnerability of the group they service. The ultimate goal is to fund the most immediate and worthwhile causes that are affecting the most underprivileged and neglected groups. w w w.c o l o t ra q . com

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Data center and colocation providers like Equinix are investing in expanding their footprint to meet the demands of their consumers and changing technologies.

Equinix and Colotraq: joint data centre pioneers Jules Johnston, Vice President, Americas Partner Sales at data centre company Equinix, discusses the company’s collaborative approach to interconnection.

Jules Johnston is Vice President, Americas Partner Sales at data centre company Equinix. Having joined in early 2016, she has overseen a move to new sales channels as part of the company’s work. “The team we’ve put together in the last few years has helped the company go from what was single digits in terms of partner-connected selling to something greater than 30% of our bookings globally,” she says. “We’re on a path and committed to do the majority of our business with partners, so it’s been very exciting to be part of that. The team I lead today is the 40-person Americas partner sales organisation, and our job is to work with partners so that we can help our field and inside sellers meet at the customer.”

While Equinix is renowned as a co-location and data centre organisation, Johnston is clear that the company takes a broader view. “We really think of ourselves as an interconnection company and as the global platform for digital business. So when companies build their digital infrastructure and platforms within Equinix, what they’re able to do is dynamically connect to the world’s largest ecosystem of clouds, data, suppliers and customers.” Constructing such an ecosystem has required a significant amount of infrastructure. “Equinix has invested in over 210 data centres around the world, or international business exchanges, IBXs, as we call them. That allows Equinix to be able to meet the needs of any company today with global aspirations.”

Equinix works closely with colocation broker Colotraq, with the organisation having been one of Equinix’s master agents for around five years. “Colotraq is a fellow pioneer in the data center space,” says Johnston.

“As one of the oldest master agents in telecom, they’ve intersected with us naturally. Equinix started as a place for the world’s networks to come together in a neutral fashion and Colotraq also prides itself on being network neutral.”

The partnership extends far beyond the surface level, with Colotraq agents and Equinix solutions architects jointly meeting with customers to advise on digital edge strategy briefings.

Jules Johnston @ Equinix

“One of the places that we intersect is in helping customers in their network optimisation strategies,” says Johnston. “We have the largest collection of networks in the world in Equinix data centers, and Colotraq advises companies on optimising their network strategies and spend. We’ve had a really long, productive association given that overlap.”

Incoming trends such as 5G, AI, IoT, blockchain and more all signal a bright future for Equinix and its cloud offering, with the company continuing to prove invaluable for customers even during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Equinix was able to help a global financial powerhouse stand up 120,000 employees remotely in three days. In this current climate, companies have a real need for that.

We’re able to use our digital platform to help companies make those kinds of moves.”

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different reasons. Another big current project involves a very popular online gaming company: “They are expanding their footprint like crazy, and they need to get to the edge. Edge computing has been a huge driver: any business where there’s consumption of streaming content or which is bandwidth-intensive like streaming media, music or online gaming needs to push its network out to the edge, closer to its end users and subscribers. That is good news for colocation because 12

with edge computing you need to control the location of your data center equipment.” The mantra of ubiquity, where it no longer matters where the physical equipment is as long as you have access to your application, does not work for edge computing architecture he noted. “Many businesses of this nature are moving towards hybrid models now. 20 years ago it was all about location, then it shifted to the notion of ubiquity: now we’ve come full circle.”

Blockchain is another major disruptor, he continued. “You can’t have your blockchain nodes on a public cloud platform: the whole point is to have the controls in place for all the

“ It’s vital for any entrepreneur to make sure he is not outpaced by the market he is in” — Dany Bouchedid, CEO, COLOTRAQ

different blockchain nodes, and the only way to do that is by having racks in each of your key markets, with georedundancy.” Edge computing and blockchain are developments where a one-size-fits-all approach won’t answer in the post-Covid world.

Looking ahead the company is keeping a close eye on the internet of things (IoT), in particular industrial IoT or IIoT. “We have seen only the tip of the iceberg: as manufacturing and logistics really starts to implement IIoT devices throughout the supply chain it will create so much big data, for storage and to have the computing power at the edge, to be able to feed back data in real time to those devices. This will escalate the demand for colocation, create more ‘sprawl’ and get us closer to the edge, where customers and subscribers actually live and work. Many data center providers to my knowledge are investing in expanding their footprint.” The industry has come full circle when even AWS and VMware have gone physical for the first time ever with their recently launched Outposts, an integrated hardware rack that seamlessly connects to Amazon’s public cloud. w w w.c o l o t ra q . com

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COLOTRAQ

COLOTRAQ is a company that thrives on change, and nothing drives change like a pandemic. Every client he speaks with is scrutinizing its IT infrastructure and architecture like never before, and that presents opportunities in every aspect of the IT value chain from their data center infrastructure to their communications and their networks. Security is again at the forefront: “Hackers are having a field day thanks to the lockdown, where businesses secured their offices but not their 14

employees’ home networks, so we are seeing cybersecurity projects coming in relating to the post-pandemic world.”

“ Over 21 years I have been blessed by having rock stars for my employees and that makes it really easy to lead the company” — Dany Bouchedid, CEO, COLOTRAQ

The terrible economic and human cost of the crisis will accelerate the pace of change. Already the data center industry was predicted to grow at an annual rate of 25% over the next five years. “It’s vital for any entrepreneur to make sure he is not outpaced by the market he is in. For COLOTRAQ, if we feel we can’t handle demand at this scale we may raise a capital growth round and staff up – it will be a great problem to have!”

It would be nice if the realization that IT consumes far more energy

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worldwide than any other activ-

visible by DCITRAQ – it’s a good case

ity would drive the greening of the

where the triple bottom line is driven by

industry, but in Dany Bouchedid’s

profitability as well as social pressure

opinion that goal will more probably

to combat climate change.

be reached though economic pres-

Meanwhile COLOTRAQ is happy to

sure. “All operators are under pressure

share access to its platforms with the

from their shareholders to lower their

many entrepreneurial players entering

operating expenditure, and energy is

the colocation space, and work with them.

the biggest part of that. And that OpEx

“There will be more than enough space for

is passed on to customers. There’s

everyone, and I see new entrants as co-

a direct correlation between better

opetition rather than competition.”

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