COLT Telecom Group Limited

Leveraging Sun to Deliver New Utility Services That Reduce Operational Costs by Up to 33 Percent

With 50,000 business customers and 14 data centers, COLT is one of Europe’s largest fixed line (land line) telecommunications providers. In Germany, the company is third in the rankings of alternative providers. With its own 20,000-kilometer-long fiber-optic network, this company provides voice, data and managed services solutions to business customers.

Business Issues

Develop a new system architecture that supports utility “pay-as-you-go” services offerings
Rapidly integrate customer systems into the architecture, with the ability to dynamically increase or decrease RAM and disk capacity
Support Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris 10 Operating System environments, as well as x64- and SPARC-based systems.

Solution

This provider implemented a Sun clustering solution that is comprised of a range of Sun servers and the Solaris Cluster software. The Solaris 10 Operating System and Solaris Cluster 3.2 software provide the link between SPARC- and x64-based systems. Sun disk and tape storage systems provide archival support.

Business Results

Provided a new service to customers, with the ability to pay for services based on actual consumption
Helped customers reduce costs by up to one third compared to conventional services

Products/Services/Solutions

Success at a Glance

With conventional hosting solutions, server, network and security components are often redundant from customer to customer and this results in an environment that is complex to manage. In addition, COLT clients are always looking for ways to reduce costs. So, COLT was searching for virtualization techniques that could meet the demands of a production environment, such as availability, continuity, stability and failover capabilities. It commissioned Sun Advantage Partner TDN, a company that specializes in virtualization, to implement the cluster solution.

Server control is performed based on Solaris Cluster software. A proprietary solution from TDN takes care of system monitoring, as well as usage-related invoicing to calculate the actual usage for customers.

“ The systems are running with total stability. So far, we haven’t had a single platform failure. ”

— Frank Budenz, Head of CMS Consulting, COLT Telecom Group Limited

When a COLT customer chooses the utility-based services offering, COLT takes care of the implementation. The utility services include tasks such as provisioning, maintenance and expansion of hardware, updates, upgrades and patches for operating systems or applications, configuration of systems, networks and firewalls, 24 x 7 systems surveillance and proactive monitoring. Customers can start out with a small system and grow the solution over time as needs change without incurring migration costs.

Depending on the type of service used, customers may achieve savings of around 33 percent compared to conventional architectures. This service provider is able to guarantee up to 99.99 percent availability because of the redundant design of virtually all infrastructures and a loop configuration of all connections. In the event that a connection goes down, data traffic is switched to another branch within milliseconds, making the problem barely perceivable.

Since the model anticipates an excellent return on investment of 12 months, COLT is currently planning to implement the utility services concept in other European datacenters.