Analyst: Stefanie Beaubien Rick Kurtzbein
Houston-based StratITsphere and San Diego-based ScaleMatrix have formed an alliance to provide customers with geographically diverse colocation, cloud, IT hosting and disaster recovery services. The companies will each leverage a dedicated and secure cage deployment in the other’s facility, supported by a private transport ring. Customers of each provider will be able to migrate or replicate data and applications between the two facilities. Customers will have options to chose from active/active, active/passive or geographically load-balanced setups, leveraging either or both of the facilities.
StratITsphere reported to T1R that the two companies share a similar vision of providing quality equipment, personnel and customer service, making the two companies compatible partners. In Houston, StratITsphere’s datacenter was selected based on physical infrastructure, reputation and client service capabilities. T1R was also informed that the ScaleMatrix datacenter in San Diego was chosen for similar reasons, one of which is its ability to host high-density customers requiring up to 30kW per rack in extreme density cabinets. The companies will jointly invest in a 10Gbps transport ring to establish high-speed, low-cost and low-latency transport services directly between the two facilities.
About StratITsphere
StratITsphere was founded in 2008 as Cirrus Consulting, which was the result of several small consulting firms merging. At the time, the company was focused on IT consulting for Fortune 500 energy clients, but soon revised its strategy to emerge in the Houston, Texas datacenter market. The company re-branded in 2009, and began developing plans for cloud services and its flagship facility named Alpha in Katy, Texas. The company also operates its Echo facility in Tomball just outside of Houston, and its Foxtrot datacenter in FIBERTOWN’s Bryan datacenter about 100 miles away. The company provides cloud, colocation and infrastructure and security consulting, along with a variety of support services to include 24×7 security, remote troubleshooting, configuration, setup, system administration and more.
The Alpha datacenter is located 25 miles northwest of downtown Houston and opened in January 2011. The datacenter is outside the 500-year flood zone, removed from any major thoroughfares, and located near the Houston West Medical Center to ensure reliable, upgraded and robust power supplies. The master plan for Alpha includes 100,000 gross square feet, with phase 1 consisting of 40,000 gross square feet and 18,000 square feet of operational datacenter space divided into a three-pod design. This leaves approximately 60,000 gross square feet available for later expansion. Alpha supports peak densities as high as 500 watts per square foot, with 2N redundancy, and mechanical aisles designed for space and energy efficiency.
About ScaleMatrix
ScaleMatrix was founded in 2010 and has its corporate headquarters in San Diego. The company is a private cloud products provider specializing in colocation and dedicated server technology. ScaleMatrix designs, deploys and manages private cloud and colocation services. Other services include public and hybrid clouds for customers ranging from small startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. The company operates a datacenter in the San Diego suburb of Kearny Mesa named ‘The Green Giant’ and is adding a second facility in the same location to create a campus environment.
The Green Giant datacenter is a 50,000-gross-square-foot facility, and had over 20,000 square feet committed in less than a year. The company implemented a cabinet design and thermal management to enable the ability to provide high-density space of up to 18kW per cabinet for standard cabinets and up to 30kW in its second-generation extreme density cabinets. The ability to leverage this high-density space allows the customers to maximize their hosting investment. The datacenter is designed for rapid scalability and on-demand expansions.
T1R take
This strategic partnership provides the providers with two things: a cost-effective way to respond to demand for geographically diverse services, and a solid strategy for expanding into a new market. Because the strategy is a true partnership, the companies will share in the investment to deploy individual private cages and to establish the transport ring for the most direct connectivity possible between the two facilities. Both companies have previously created partnerships with other providers such as CoreSite, Interxion, Level 3 Communications and Global Switch to provide global locations for their customers. T1R believes that StratITsphere and ScaleMatrix have developed an effective way to establish presence in a new market by developing a relationship with a similar-minded provider to eliminate the capex involved in building in each market.
T1R believes that this method of expansion will provide both companies with the ability to meet customer demand for geographically diverse locations to support their own growth strategies. The ability to provide business continuity and disaster recovery services from halfway across the country will assure each provider’s customers that information and applications will continue to function if one of the datacenters is affected by power interruption. Additionally, it will position both companies for customer wins by meeting a fairly common datacenter selection criterion as reported to T1R. We believe that both the providers and their current and potential customers will benefit from the ability to leverage both facilities, and we expect to see additional reports of growth from both companies based on this partnership.
Reproduced by permission of 451 Research; copyright 2011. This report was originally published within 451 Research’s Daily T1R.
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