The global infra provider formed a partnership with Utah's Novva Data Centers to run a diverse four fibre, dark fibre ring connecting Novva's flagship Utah facility to major aggregation hubs in the state.
The data centre opened way back in September, but the two have only this week disclosed details of the project. Their announcement said that in addition to the fibre ring, Zayo supplied the data centre with 100G dedicated internet service, and that the new connectivity allows for Novva to scale to meet future requirements.
The result, according to Novva CEO Wes Swenson, is that the firm is armed with the capabilities to roll out its "wholocation" approach to hosting.
Explaining the portmanteau, Swenson said: "Our goal in Utah was to build at scale, and when you achieve that, you can do what we call wholocation, which is wholesale colocation. You can do wholesale of substantial clients, five, 10, 15, megawatts in the same building or campus. Zayo’s network makes that possible."
Commenting on the aggregation points, he also said: "They're broad, deep, and highly resilient, translating to less downtime. This allows for low latency that, at times, beats other carriers by 10 to 20% in speed.”
Ahead of the facility's September opening, Swenson told Data Economy that Novva had to overcome additional challenges during construction, due to Covid-induced supply chain constraints and higher prices for key materials, such as steel.
He said at the time: "In general, we look at the market long term, and have seen similar episodes in the past few years. One example is the growth of enterprise centric hyperscale data centres, such as Facebook, purchasing from the same vendors as colocation operators. We are competing for the same supply chains, and it ebbs and flows."
Advising that preparation is key, Swenson continued: "It can and will probably result in higher prices over the next few years, especially as inventory is absorbed, and expansion building comes under more financial pressure. These types of events also create a new window of opportunity to innovate with more modular builds, and consolidation of key components in power management into smaller footprints… The higher commodity prices have not affected our plans for construction and expansion at this moment, but we are monitoring it daily. Demand for data centres seems unabated by the pandemic, and surging to meet the demands of new applications, storage, analysis and performance."
