Logicalis high-density datacentre and cloud heads into academia
Logicalis has announced that its high-density datacentre and cloud services are now natively connected into JANET, the network that serves the majority of education and research institutions in the UK.
In the first deal of its type, the agreement will allow educationalists to gain access to a range of new services at potentially lower cost than creating in-house mini datacentres. JANET, which receives most of its funding via the Government, connects UK universities, Further Education (FE) colleges, research councils, specialist colleges and adult and community learning providers, providing a shared network backbone and high performance computing facilities at a national and international level. Part of the idea of JANET is to allow its buying power and aggregated services to improve the reliability and reduce cost for its users.
Logicalis’ connection to the high bandwidth academic network will provide a range of datacentre and cloud services, including Infrastructure as a Service, application hosting for ISVs servicing the education community.
Growing trend
According to Chris Gabriel, director of solutions and marketing for Logicalis UK: “JANET is seen as a unique asset by the HE community. What [this agreement] allows us to do is leverage JANET’s scale and scope and take what we do and give them access to new services that are suitable for their needs. We think what we have done is part of a growing trend of how communities like JANET will access new services.”
Says Gabriel: “We are working with a university now that had the option of rebuilding its data centre or doing something different. They are instead building a small centre and accessing our resources across the JANET network... this is driving costs over a longer period of time.”
Adds Tim Kidd, operations director for JANET (UK) “one of the things we would like to do is to help universities to more of their changing work patterns and encourage the private sector to be able to provide services in the best way possible...As long as it’s good, high quality stuff, people will be buying it and keep using it.”
Kidd believes it’s entirely around cost, “universities are doing things for all different kind of reasons.” highlighting increased outsourcing, changing courses, flexibility and funding pressures as some elements. Hosted virtual learning environments are also a potential driver, especially with the ability to spin up and down entire environments at relatively short notice.
Kidd believes that there will be growth of shared admin and back office type applications as universities aim to save money. The upgrade to the core network is part of JANET long term trending which suggests that more cloud-based services will require a faster network, higher capacity network in the future
Vibrant marketplace
However, the agreement with Logicalis is not an exclusive deal and Kidd is keen to promote “a good vibrant marketplace for commercial folks to provide good quality products to universities and colleges” and suggests that other providers are likely to be invited to connect to JANET.
The Logicalis data centre is still pretty empty but the firm is now actively recruiting ISV to help populate its services portfolio. “If there is one shout out it’s in the ISV space and we are making a concerted effort to the engage with ISVs that support the sector,” explains Gabriel. To this end, Logicalis will be meeting with ISVs and potential clients on February 23 at an ICT in Education Innovation Day to showcase its new cloud computing and datacentre services offerings.
