Bastionhost Debuts ‘Dataville’

Bastionhost Ltd., a Canadian a data services / IT infrastructure company that provides hosting,
storage, co-location and protection of mission-critical applications
and data to enterprises and governments throughout North America and
Europe, unveiled its ‘Dataville’ concept in a presentation at an IT industry event in Boca Raton, Florida.

Dataville is designed to address the fundamental infrastructure problems of the booming data centre industry, the power-hungry but nearly invisible sector that underlies a growing portion of the modern economy.

Besides its insatiable demand for space and power, the industry has been challenged to find better ways to manage risk–from terrorist attacks to extreme weather and power outages, to changing regulatory environments.

The conference, End-to-End Reliability: The Green Outlook, is hosted by industry association 7×24 Exchange, the leading knowledge exchange for the enterprise information infrastructure sector.

“Our aim is to help Wall Street and the City of London address a critical infrastructure problem,” says Anton E. Self, Bastionhost’s founder and Chief Executive.

Bastionhost is creating a secure campus of state-of-the-art data centers in repurposed military surplus data center buildings that benefit from reliable and affordable power sources and geothermal cooling. From a single unobtrusive location in Dataville, Bastionhost can perform functions that used to require two or more data center sites.

As the economy becomes more data dependent, there is a growing shortage of data centers to serve mission-critical enterprise functions such as on-line banking and airline reservation systems. Moreover, data centers also house the millions of computer servers that power the Internet.

According to data center industry association AFCOM, global demand for data center space outpaces supply by three to one. In Europe, the ratio is six-to-one. Meanwhile, the data center sector has become a leading consumer of power, on a par with the global airline industry.

Dataville is located in Atlantic Canada, on the Great Circle Route between New York and London, where it benefits from highly scalable telecommunications, power, and cooling infrastructure. Serving most major markets in North America and Europe – from a safe distance – the Dataville campus is reached in milliseconds through multi-terabit fiber optic cables that cross the Atlantic and branch to cities on both continents.  

“Data center operators today are looking for new ways to create much-needed energy efficiencies and ‘green’ initiatives from the ground up,” says Scott Good, Manager of Technologies, Turner Logistics. “Dataville appeared on our radar for just these reasons.”

Bastionhost has analyzed the banking industry, where firms require 24/7 access to secure and reliable data. All major global banks have operations in both New York and London. Each location has its own primary data center, plus an alternate backup site. Along with the shortage of data center space in metropolitan areas, each backup site is exposed to the same risks as the primary site. “Many institutions are still exposed to too much risk, while paying tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars for one data center too many,” says Mr. Self.

Bastionhost serves both markets from a convenient ‘mid-Atlantic’ location. “New York is looking west for alternate data center sites,” says Mr. Self.  “Meanwhile, London is looking east. If they looked toward one-another instead of away, they just might find what they seek. Why pay for two alternate or even primary data centers in New York and London, when one Dataville in the middle will serve you better?”

Mr. Self also notes that “what’s good for the environment can be good for the bottom line.” He points out that Dataville’s operating and power costs are lower than most locations. Instead of cooling blade servers with chillers, which account for one-third of power consumption in the data center, Bastionhost is able to tap a vast geothermal cooling resource.

Bastionhost also offers protection from the prying eyes of Big Brother. Canadian privacy laws, unlike those in the United States, meet the stringent standards of the European Union. Companies operating on both continents are challenged by the fact that European data cannot be hosted in the United States, a situation exacerbated by the US Patriot Act.

Mr. Self is a native New Yorker now operating out of Halifax. He and his colleagues have spent their careers building data centers and the telecommunications networks that link them to Wall Street banks, Fortune 500 Companies, and Internet service providers.