Digital Realty
Digital Realty is the wholesale supplier in the market. “We have more square footage of space than even Equinix,” says Omer Wilson, marketing director APAC for Digital Realty. “We’re larger than any other player out there.”
This large amount of space means that Digital Realty plays at the high-scale end of the market, providing space to public cloud providers as well as other service providers. “Equinix is a customer,” says Wilson. “IBM SoftLayer is our largest customer globally.”
“We measure opportunity size by the kilowatt,” says Wilson, who views four or five racks as “very small”. Digital Realty thus suits only large enterprises or cloud providers who need quite a lot of space, or are looking to grow rapidly and need a wholesale provider. “We’re looking for any of the mid-size, growing cloud providers. We’re very much looking to grow that network and welcome them into our buildings.”
That’s just how SoftLayer originally started, before being acquired by IBM. Wilson also mentions Facebook as another customer that started small and then grew to be very large indeed. For those who are looking for more modest amounts of space, Wilson says there is still value in talking to Digital Realty.
“We provide co-lo down to a certain size, and then we work with our partners [to provide smaller amounts],” he says. But even if Digital Realty itself does not have the right solution, the company may be able to advise MSPs on other suitable companies in their network. “We have so many different cloud providers in our network,” he says. “You can ask us ‘This is how much space I need, what would you advise as Digital Realty?’”
Wilson’s advice for evaluating a co-location provider is to be aware of the reliability and security of the facility. “You are giving them one of your most important assets, if not the most important asset, which is your data.”
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