Virgin Media Business: Delivering on Carrier Ethernet Opportunities in the Cloud

CEN Feature (Sep 27 2011) Cloud

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   Providing network connectivity to support cloud-based applications is an important and fast growing opportunity for Carrier Ethernet service providers — and one carrier that is having success leveraging that opportunity is U.K.-based Virgin Media Business.

   When providers of cloud services look for connectivity to their data centers, “Ethernet is usually the first service they request,” comments Andy McEwan, head of point-to-point product management for Virgin Media Business. The reason, he says, “is all about bandwidth and the capability to scale bandwidth and deliver great chunks of bandwidth at a cost-effective price point.”

   Carrier Ethernet connectivity to support cloud services is a booming area at Virgin Media Business. “We see huge demand from customers to connect to data centers and from data center operators,” McEwan comments.

   Different data center operators and cloud providers have different attitudes toward connectivity, McEwan comments. Some data center operators steer cloud provider customers toward a particular network operator, while others want to remain carrier-neutral and encourage competition. A third group prefers to resell connectivity services with their cloud services.

   But even data center operators that want to be carrier-neutral need to recognize the importance of connectivity, McEwan argues. Otherwise, he says the data center might as well be “a roundabout without a road.”

   Virgin Media Business is seen by a lot of data center providers as a key partner, McEwan notes. Many cloud provider customers want data center operators to have resilient access — and he says Virgin Media Business is well positioned to provide just that type of access.

   Cloud services also are driving a need for increased bandwidth and flexibility from businesses that use cloud services. Depending on how the cloud service is implemented, this may manifest itself as an increase in Internet bandwidth — and McEwan points to Virgin Media Business’s “Big Red” Internet access service as an offering that meets the needs of organizations that use cloud services.

   As McEwan explains, it’s very common for an Ethernet service provider to provision lower-speed connections over a 100 Mb/s pipe. But if a customer’s bandwidth requirements increase, upgrading is not as easy as it might seem because the customer may then have to negotiate a new contract.

   When Virgin Media Business deploys service over a 100 Mb/s pipe, the customer gets the entire 100 Mb/s capacity at a rate comparable to a lower speed connection from another carrier, offering a higher level of flexibility and future-proofing, McEwan says.

   That sort of flexibility could become increasingly important to customers that use Carrier Ethernet to connect to cloud services because of the nature of cloud services. As Informa analyst Camille Mendler noted recently, the ability of cloud services to dynamically increase or decrease the storage and infrastructure capacity available to a business is likely to cause businesses to ask why they can’t have the same flexibility on the connectivity side.

   Big Red is one example of how Virgin Media Business differentiates its Carrier Ethernet service from that of its competitors. Another consideration, McEwan says, is that the company has a strong track record in Carrier Ethernet, having offered the service for more than a decade.

   Virgin Media Business serves more than 30,000 sites across the U.K., including locations that deliver 60% of U.K. emergency services, notes McEwan — and that, he says, gives the company a lot of credibility.

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