“You won’t find a better advocate of Telehouse products and services than me. This has been a very, very successful partnership, since 2004.” - Tim Anker, former Director of Colocation, Pulsant
Pulsant
A rapidly-growing, expert cloud-provider in the UK for small and medium-sized clients, Pulsant needed rack space in London. By selecting Telehouse to support with colocation services, Pulsant has gained new customers and built a market-leading position by investing in fast, new connectivity with the capital’s key colocation eco-system.
5
Data halls in Reading
1,000
Racks of white space
80
Racks in London with Telehouse
Client
Pulsant, based in Reading, is an expert cloud, colocation and connectivity services partner which is highly successful in providing specialist services to small-and-medium-sized clients. Among its customers are 45 members of the London Internet Exchange (LINX). Its flagship Reading data centre was built in 2012 and the first customer went live in May 2013.
Since then, Pulsant has continually evolved and expanded its infrastructure, capability and capacity. Its 6.5MVA Reading data centre now has five halls, with more than 1,000 racks of white space, and an average power density of 3.6kW per rack.
A dynamic and rapidly expanding business, the company rebranded in 2018 following the merger of the founder team’s previous businesses, iCloud Hosting, Everest Data centres and Crosspoint Colocation. Pulsant is a large buyer of colocation in third-party data centres and is one of the biggest cross-connect users in the London market.
Challenge
As Pulsant’s proposition proved highly successful in its target market, it sought colocation space in London for clients such as smaller network operators needing access to highly connected colocation ecosystems such as Telehouse. Pulsant’s customers start with quarter racks, but over time, expand to three or even four racks and frequently want a point of presence in the capital.
Pulsant needed a partner that shares its dedication to service but also has the technology, connectivity and flexibility to support its ambitions. It wanted to bring its customers full access to the connectivity eco-systems of a major colocation provider.
Telehouse was selected as the provider for the new colocation space required. Pulsant’s senior team were confident Telehouse would provide them with their exact requirements, having worked with the company over two decades.
“There is so much evidence to support the leading proposition offered by Telehouse. For example, the high proportion of LINX ports in the Telehouse London Docklands campus.”
– Tim Anker, former Colocation Director, Pulsant
Solution
Once the partnership was agreed, Pulsant began offering its customers quarter racks at Telehouse’s London Docklands. This gives them cost-effective access to one of the capital’s most important colocation eco-systems at the heart of UK internet connectivity.
The success of this proposition has led to Pulsant having up to 80 racks at any time across all four Telehouse London Docklands data centres, becoming a major user of cross-connects.
The expansion led Pulsant to recently invest £2.5m in a major network upgrade with the London campus, adding significant new transport capacity and enhanced diagnostic capabilities. Despite all the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, this went live in May 2020, attracting new customers eager for seamless, dual-site data centre deployments between Telehouse Docklands and Pulsant’s Reading data centre.
The partnership has provided Pulsant with a market-leading position, having its own data centre in Reading plus its own dark fibre ring connecting to the four Telehouse buildings. The new Pulsant network now has total capacity of up to 16Tbs per route and latency of less than 1.2ms on the most direct route from Telehouse to Pulsant Reading.
Many of Pulsant’s wholesale customers now locate in Telehouse. This includes overseas customers from areas as diverse as Nepal and South Africa. As Pulsant has grown, Telehouse’s investment in data centre capacity has enabled Pulsant to move between Telehouse buildings on the Docklands campus, expanding from Telehouse North to Telehouse East and West. The opening of Telehouse North Two in 2016, was a critical moment in this journey.
“We are, in effect, looking after clients that are sub-scale for Telehouse,” says Anker. “We know the individuals at Telehouse very well and one of the most important aspects in selecting the company is its stability – the stability of the team and of the Telehouse model.
Results
This partnership has proved to be a perfect fit, enabling Pulsant to continue its expansion and offer seamless connectivity services to customers who want a presence in the London eco-systems. “You won’t find a better advocate of Telehouse products and services than me,” says Anker. “This has been a very, very successful partnership.”
The mutually beneficial nature of this partnership means Telehouse often refers small clients to Pulsant. Anker adds: “The key thing is that all parts of the network relationship are looked after through this partnership. Even though we may have clients using a quarter rack at the Docklands campus, they still have full access to the Telehouse support team, along with the advantages of a state-of-the-art data centre. They get cost-effective access to one of the most important eco-systems in the world.”
Although Pulsant works with many providers, Telehouse has become one of its most important partners. “We are looking forward to more of the same,” said Anker. “Telehouse’s ongoing investment and expansion is very important for us as we continue to grow, because we have become such a very, very big user of cross-connects.”
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