Catalyst2 Case Study

The company’s rapidly growing business initiated an in-depth review of Catalyst2 current and future data centre requirements, recognising the central role of a successful partnership with a premium data centre provider. Executives at Calalyst2 carefully evaluated an extensive list of key growth requirements for comparison against service offerings by all major data centre providers in the London metropolitan area.

Paul Redpath, Operations Director at Catalyst2 explains: “To cope with Catalyst2’s growth and evolution in services, it was decided that a full review of our data centre requirements was needed to ensure that we have a partner in place who can provide reliable, future-proof services and supply hands-on, knowledgeable onsite operations staff.”

Redpath explains, “In particular, we required our customer service systems to be hosted in a site that can accommodate a high density of powerful servers, yet also allow for interconnection to a number of carriers. The chosen data centre had to allow full deployment of our specifically designed rack configuration which comprises of deep racks, suitable power and cooling, and flexible cabling services. Our customers expect extremely reliable network services, and as a standard, both network and infrastructure had to be deployed in a minimum configuration of N+1.”

“In addition, many of our customers are not technically focused, which means we need to be able to deploy network services in an efficient manner without the customer becoming involved in the complexities of deployment. Having a data centre partner who can provide facilities that interconnect to a good range of larger network service providers (NSPs) and to London’s Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) was crucial.”

After reviewing all potential data centre partners Catalyst2 chose to expand on the existing and successful relationship with Telehouse, being convinced by the high quality of service Catalyst2 had received.
“Our decision to continue the partnership with Telehouse was an easy one, but considered numerous key factors for reasons of fairness,” explains Redpath.

“Firstly, our relationship with Telehouse has proven to be very positive over the years. Telehouse gives us the ability to expand our infrastructure with the level of flexibility and reliability we require for growth. In addition, each of our upgrades has been implemented smoothly, carried out efficiently and exactly to our specifications.”

“Secondly, challenges presented during deployment and maintenance have always been faced as a partnership. Telehouse possesses excellent operational staff with skills second to none, who are always on hand to solve routine and ad-hoc issues in a quick and efficient manner. Keeping service disruption to a bare minimum for our customers is critical and Telehouse’s contribution in ensuring everything runs smoothly is paramount.”

“Telehouse has allowed us to interconnect with new carriers via intra-site cross-connects, rather than paying for expensive back-haul options around London. This has helped to keep our operating expenses to a minimum, allowing us to invest in expanding and improving our infrastructure. Being able to reinvest has allowed us to deploy highly reliable and resilient systems – which in turn has allowed our business to become highly successful.”