Supply chain disruptions are causing lead times as long as 52-weeks for data center switches, routers and servers. That trend began a few years ago, when the demand for equipment capable of meeting modern IT requirements for data handling and application performance started drastically exceeding supply. Then COVID came along, triggering manufacturing shutdowns exacerbating the problem to the point that supply shortages reached a historically elevated level at the end of 2021.
How can any enterprise achieve top business objectives – market expansion, capitalizing on partnership opportunities and offering differentiated customer experiences at the edge – in the face of today’s unprecedented uncertainty?
I’m optimistic about solving the problem. One reason is our recent announcement that Zenlayer, a long-standing solution partner in the CoreSite marketplace ecosystem, has made their Bare Metal Cloud product and other services available through the Open Cloud Exchange® (OCX).
What does that have to do with supply chain disruption, you ask? Wade Chen, director of partnerships and alliances at Zenlayer, gives you an answer to that. “Zenlayer’s Bare Metal Cloud takes supply chain issues out of hybrid IT deployment. It enables you to instantly connect to dedicated servers in CoreSite data centers in the U.S. and around the globe.”
In bare metal environments, you have full access to pre-provisioned physical servers and key hardware resources including CPU, storage, GPU and networks. Zenlayer’s Bare Metal Cloud offers the advantages of private server deployments – high security, no “noisy neighbor” impact on performance and the agility to respond to bursts in demand – leveraging equipment in place and ready for action. The OCX is a carrier-class services platform enabling connectivity to major cloud providers, automated interconnection to IT service providers and simplified multicloud management.
With the OCX orchestrating the connections between your enterprise and Zenlayer’s Bare Metal Cloud, you can quickly deploy applications worldwide, scale as needed and create excellent, low-latency user experiences, even in underserved markets. CoreSite’s data centers act as core hubs for data transport to and from the U.S., with subsea cable interconnections allowing you to tap into fast-growing, emerging markets such as Asia-Pacific, India, Indonesia and Brazil.
Networks are another piece of infrastructure where unpredictability is a big headache. Predictable network connectivity and low latency are essential, especially for real-time interactive applications with global users. Gaming companies and multi-national enterprises with offices scattered around the world are just two examples of where no-jitter network performance and routing control are critical to delivering an optimized end user experience. Zenlayer Cloud Networking lowers latency and jitter by up to 40% compared to the public internet.* CoreSite’s direct cloud onramps further ensure consistent application performance, while reducing data egress fees as much as 70 percent.**
Both the OCX and Bare Metal Cloud are offered as month-to-month commitments, and you can even pay for Bare Metal Cloud resources on an hourly basis. Unfortunately, no one can predict when the supply chain will return to normal, or if there will be another “new normal” for us to deal with in terms of supply and demand. Considering the flexible pricing, the risk is low to engage both services to solve your immediate multicloud IT needs and pivot if it makes sense. Then again, once you experience the application provisioning simplicity and OpEx spend control, you might never go back to your old architecture.
So, how does the CoreSite/Zenlayer partnership help a business address the challenges I described at the start of this post? Wade says that the option for extending reach into a lot more international locations opens opportunities for revenue growth, with the time to market and capital expense significantly reduced.
I fully agree. Plus, with the ability to leverage colocation and the OCX, even more revenue opportunities are generated through our partner ecosystem. Add to that direct cloud access and network diversity, and you can deliver a winning user experience in any market.
You can count on that.