Many managed hosting companies have ramped up their footprints and tiered offerings of late to boost their market share and appeal to potential tenants, and colocation provider PEER 1 Hosting in particular has recently been engaged in a flurry of activity. Over the last few years, PEER 1 has been expanding its presence in multiple continents, offering key cloud hosting and data center solutions that help companies better manage their infrastructure and decrease their energy consumption.
Based in Vancouver, Canada, PEER 1 operates in the United States and the United Kingdom as well, offering 19 data centers for lease to more than 13,000 customers. While most of their growth in the data center real estate market stems from expansion, in some cases it’s addition by subtraction. Last year, the company migrated more than 1,600 devices, containing over 120 terabytes of SAN data, to an environmentally-friendly data center in Portsmouth, England. The consolidation of their data center needs to the new facility, which offers 57,824 square feet (5,372 m2) of space, entailed a careful project in which the company moved small groups of devices from one center to the other in the middle of the night.
PEER 1 would power down no more than 60 assets each night, transporting them to the new facility in individual flight cases and with the aid of a truck outfitted with air suspension between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. All of their tenants were notified in advance of the move and several reported that PEER 1 made the extra effort to be transparent and forthcoming with project details. They were able to accomplish the move without any issues or incidents.
“The moved happened so swiftly that some of our customers were transferred without even noticing,” stated Dominic Monkhouse, Managing Director EMEA, PEER 1. “The migration project was a massive milestone for us and our customers and I couldn’t ask for a better result.”
Consolidation, Expansion in U.S. Data Centers
The colocation provider used its experience from a similar project in 2010, when they consolidated two data centers in Atlanta, Ga. to one facility, to help make the process as painless as possible. Consolidation hasn’t been the only form of growth for PEER 1, as it recently quadrupled its colocation space for lease in the popular Pearl location in San Antonio, Tex. The company announced that it signed a commercial lease contract to rent 25,000 square feet of space at the facility. Peal is a 22-acre urban neighborhood located in what used to be a brewery and offers premium data center design options for a growing market. The location’s proximity to downtown and the burgeoning Riverwalk district makes it an enticing option to companies looking for managed service hosting.
“PEER 1 Hosting is exactly the kind of company we want to bring to Pearl – a growing, innovative company that is committed to the San Antonio community,” stated Pearl CMO Elizabeth Fauerso. “We are proud that it chose to call Pearl its home.”
Focused on being the most “human” company in the managed services market, PEER 1 offers managed hosting, cloud hosting and colocation solutions that combine state-of-the-art infrastructure and connectivity solutions for enterprise occupation. Their data center research credentials include a zero network downtime Service Level Agreement, best-in-breed hardware options and the FastFiber Networkâ„¢, a 10 Gbps network actually owned and operated by the company, a rarity in the data center circuit. They were also recognized as a Challenger in the 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting in the U.S.
