Responding to the new pressures faced by IT leaders, including measuring and forecasting the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on their digital infrastructure as well as driving down carbon emissions across the network, Colt Technology Services has made 130,000 extra locations in the UK, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland accessible on its Colt On Demand network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform.
The NaaS enhancements come after recent research of 1,500 chief information officers (CIOs) conducted by the digital infrastructure company found 58% saying they were using more on-demand or NaaS features as a result of the growth in AI usage.
Some 81% of respondents in the study also highlighted the positive impact of NaaS on their carbon reduction goals, with almost 30% citing it as a direct contributor to carbon reduction.
This latest in a series of enhancements, served by dedicated fibre to the x, is designed to support a move to greater automation for the company and its customers, bringing businesses, it said, greater choice, flexibility and cost control, while the energy efficiency gained from consumption-based networks can help contribute to businesses’ power-saving goals.
It also bolsters the 32,000 Colt connected buildings, 1,100 datacentres and 275 cloud points of presence already accessible to customers through Colt On Demand. This is in addition to locations delivered via carrier partners in over 180 locations.
The new locations are offered via Colt’s ecosystem partners, with an additional 20,000 locations expected to be available through the platform by the end of the year, bringing the total to more than 180,000, of which 32,000 are “on-net”, connected to Colt’s own digital infrastructure.
Colt claims that as well as benefitting from the scale and reach, businesses selecting the on-net locations benefit from real-time quoting, ordering and delivery, and in-life, real-time flexing.
In addition, a new user interface to Colt’s On Demand platform is claimed to have made it even easier for businesses to navigate and support their geographic expansion plans through the platform, so they can quickly adapt their bandwidth requirements to meet business demand and respond to changing market dynamics.
“We pioneered network as a service over seven years ago,” said Peter Coppens, vice-president of infrastructure and connectivity solutions at Colt Technology Services. “Since then, our multi award-winning On Demand platform has connected thousands of businesses to sites across the world, and we’ve refined and enhanced the platform based on their experiences.
“The latest customer-driven changes are the most significant yet, giving businesses access to five times as many locations as before, providing unrivalled scale and improving automation,” he said. “This is the beginning of a new era of NaaS, and once again, Colt is leading the charge.”
The advancement in NaaS comes hot on the heels of Colt partnering with Rivada Space Networks to provide what they said would represent a unique, next-generation low Earth orbit satellite connectivity network with the resilience and performance to drive digital innovation and transformation.
