With a focus on mid-market customers, the company has grown to a £100m business. Highly acquisitive over its first five years, buying 19 businesses, original owner Penta sold 6DG to new backers, Charlesbank Capital, a Boston and New York-based investment business with more than $3bn of assets under management in 2015.

Changing structures

Following the change of ownership, Six Degrees has more recently undergone a change in leadership with the appointment of David Howson as CEO in February this year. Upon his appointment, Howson who previously held senior positions at Zayo and Level 3 Communications, said he was looking forward to “helping Six Degrees establish itself as the market leader for mission-critical managed services and to drive growth both organically and through strategic acquisitions”.

Howson spent his first 60 days looking at the company’s capabilities, strengths and opportunities and to shape his view on strategy and what had already been put in place by the company’s founders. He also talked to many customers and clients. “I have spent a lot of my career in front of customers and I used that experience heavily in this process,” he reveals.

One of the first things Howson has done is to change the organisational structure of 6DG to align with three key areas: advanced solutions, converged solutions and partner solutions. These key business units are backed by two platform units, Network Services and Platform Services, and the company has consolidated its product offerings under the Six Degrees Group brand.

The reorganisation comes on top of a major investment in the internal platform using ServiceNow for customer experience and Tableau for live management information. Howson says the ServiceNow investment is already delivering value and will provide the foundation to significantly scale the business.

A process of alignment

One of the company’s aims this year is to combine the capabilities from its 19 acquisitions into a converged offering for the mid-market and develop a set of specialisms that are better matched to clients to drive higher growth.

“The key is alignment,” Howson says. “We are integrating the five standalone companies. We are making sure all our services are available to all our clients.” He believes that the company’s strengths in individual capabilities should put it in an even stronger position when it converges them for customers.

Howson is keen to stress that the company will not deviate from its commitment to owning its own infrastructure. “It’s about delivering on customer SLAs and that is the main reason why we own our infrastructure.”

In terms of verticals, Six Degrees is particularly strong in financial services and retail, but the company plans to become more heavily involved in other sectors going forward. When it comes to operating in other countries, Howson stresses that the company intends to continue its focus on the UK market for now but it can deliver international capabilities for UK customers with overseas needs if they want to deal with a single converged provider.

Focusing on the customer

After making 19 acquisitions in five years, Howson says Six Degrees is concentrating on “getting to grips with the acquisitions”. There are no immediate plans for more M&A activity in the near future, “We are internally and customer focused at present, but are always seeking inorganic opportunities that create additional value,” he adds.

For now, most of the focus is on bedding in the new operational model and ensuring top line and EBITDA growth. “Going forward, we aim to make sure all parts of the business are growing, although some will grow faster than others,” Howson states. “The plan is to grow revenue and EBITDA.”

The upward trajectory of the global modular UPS market shows no signs of abating. According to a report published last year by global research body, Frost & Sullivan, the market is expected to grow twice as fast as the traditional UPS market (forecast period 2015 – 2020), with a general acceleration in growth predicted post-2017.  

Data centres continue to dominate market revenue in the modular UPS sector. Thanks to the internet of things, smart devices are fuelling huge demand on data centres and this is only going to increase. For data centres needing to achieve rapid expansion in order to keep pace with demand for increased processing, the modular UPS provides a raft of benefits.

Modular UPS solutions, which can be scaled up in tandem with the growing demands of a business- removing the risk of oversizing a UPS unnecessarily at the outset, offer the maximum in availability, scalability, reliability and serviceability whilst also ensuring high efficiency, low cost of ownership and a high-power density. And, whilst modular systems can be scaled up to meet increased demand, data centres can easily switch modules off too, guarding against under-utilisation. The modular UPS also addresses the issue of limited floorspace, which is increasingly an issue for data centres. Modular component UPS systems can be expanded vertically, provided there is room within the existing cabinet for additional UPS modules, or horizontally with the addition of a further UPS cabinet.

Modular Maintenance

When it comes to maintenance, Modular UPS systems are marginally easier to service and repair in situ than a standalone UPS system because a failed UPS module can be ‘hot-swapped’. The failure or suspect module is then returned to a service centre for investigation. To return a standalone UPS system to active service may require a board swap.

Maintenance, of course, is a hot topic currently – in the wake of the UPS-related issues experienced by British Airways earlier this year, which had disastrous consequences for the business. As this example shows, the way in which maintenance is carried out needs to be carefully considered, whether you choose to implement a modular or centralised UPS system.

Human error is the main cause of problems occurring during maintenance procedures; engineers may throw a wrong switch, or carry out a procedure in the wrong order. But, whilst it might be easy to lay blame solely at the feet of the engineer in these instances, errors of this kind are often the result of poor operational procedures, poor labelling or even poor training. By ironing out these areas right at the start of the UPS installation, risks can be avoided.

For example, if the solution being deployed is a critical system comprising large UPS’s in parallel and a complex switchgear panel, castel interlocks should be incorporated into the design. Castel interlocks force the user to switch in a controlled and safe fashion, but are often left out of the design to save costs at the start of the project. This is a common occurrence and the client could pay dearly in the future if a switching error occurs.

Monitor equipment and competency

Round-the-clock equipment monitoring also offers robust protection and should be part of the maintenance package, as UPS’s will alarm if any parameter of their operation is wrong – if an increase in heat, a fan failure or a problem with the batteries is detected, for example.  It is highly unlikely that UPS failure will be limited to times when the engineer is carrying out the annual maintenance visit, so constant monitoring is critical.

Rigorous training is also vital and, to protect themselves, clients must ensure that the attending engineer is certified to carry out the work. It is the responsibility of the client to ask the maintenance company for proof of competency levels – pertaining both to the company itself and to the engineers it uses. Risk averse clients should also check ‘on the day’ that the engineer on site is competent and isn’t, for instance, a last-minute sub-contractor sent in because the original engineer is off sick.

Read the small print

A strong maintenance package should also ensure that when the UPS does fail, the response is timely and effective. Service level agreements need to be appropriate to the criticality of the application. There is no point having a maintenance contract for a UPS 24/7 response if access to the UPS can only be gained during normal business hours. Transversely, if operations are 24/7 and very critical to the business, then 24/7 response is a must.

Caution should be applied wherever maintenance contracts seem too good to be true – can a two-hour response really be guaranteed, for instance? Anyone who drives on the M25 might question this! It is also worth checking exactly what constitutes the ‘response’ - will it just be a phone call or will it be someone coming to site, and, if so, will that someone be a competent engineer? It’s important to pay attention to the guaranteed fix time too as it doesn’t matter how quickly an engineer arrives on site if the problem then takes a week to fix because of parts being delayed and so on.

Finally, if the UPS can’t be fixed with a certain timescale you need to understand what your course of redress is; will the UPS be replaced and so forth?

Maintenance continues to be a key concern for any business investing in a UPS – be that modular or stand-alone. Ease of maintenance is, no doubt, one of the differentiators helping to drive growth in the modular UPS market but, whatever UPS product businesses select, it is essential they apply proper due diligence to their maintenance approach. Watertight maintenance processes and procedures should be in place and relevant documentation must be easily and readily available. As well as ensuring that switches cannot be thrown by accident, businesses need to check that engineers are competent and should study the SLAs in maintenance agreements. By adding technologies like thermal imaging into the maintenance mix they will help to reduce the likelihood of issues further. Stringent maintenance processes should be the constant factor in an ever-evolving market. 

We are living in a digital age, where an increasing number of items are connected to the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) and consumers are both consciously and unconsciously providing companies with a significant amount of personal data. With a greater number of public and private sector businesses placing more emphasis on ‘big data’ in regard to how it can produce vital statistics and potentially drive sales, it is perhaps obvious that the number of data centres is on the rise.

With increasing levels of data, come not only potential security issues, but also power problems. Recent information produced by the Payment Card Industry Security Standard Council (PCI SSC) has warned UK businesses they could face up to £122bn in penalties for data breaches. Alongside this, as the scale of data and the cost of electricity from both the National Grid and energy providers increases, it is predicted data centres will require three times as much energy as they do now in the coming decade, with all the financial implications this entails. With this in mind, it will be essential to have engineered energy solutions installed that ensure a constant, stable supply whilst reducing electricity consumption and CO₂ emissions.

As recently documented in the national news, power supply quality issues, such as blackouts, brownouts, voltage spikes and dips can cause significant damage to highly sensitive areas, resulting in major disruption for companies and their customers. Keen to avoid the implications of data centre power failures, many facilities implement a full backup power or Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) functionality.

Historically, backup power has been provided by the use of combined heat and power (CHP) units or generators, both of which are still present across many facilities within the UK. However, even though CHP and generators provide energy off the grid and offer sufficient backup power, they are ageing systems in a technologically advanced world. They also do not allow power to be provided instantly to the load - a data centre for example – when required.

In contrast, one of the most recently discussed and effective UPS innovations is large scale battery-based energy storage technology, ranging from at least a 50kW output. Battery-based energy storage simply replicates what you would find on most electrical devices, in that the battery will charge from the National Grid, or if possible from renewable sources, and will store it to provide energy to a load, or facility, almost immediately when required.

Even though it is a modern solution, battery-based energy storage is already in operation within data centres across the world and provides a host of UPS benefits. A bespoke engineered storage solution will constantly monitor and measure electricity supply to the load, and will intelligently recognise when support is required, such as during high demand periods on the National Grid or when power quality dips. When the support is triggered, the batteries will respond automatically within a three-millisecond timeframe, providing electricity to the sensitive load during a period of up to two hours. 

The nature of battery-based energy storage technology also provides a ‘future proof’ solution for high-technology critical locations, such as data centres. Frequent changes in the processing power and speed of IT equipment, along with a range of electrical equipment connected to wireless controls and the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) means more scalability is required. By having a bespoke engineered energy storage solution, provided by a company that has undertaken a full site survey prior to installation, it is a simple process to understand the capacity required by the current energy storage system and plan for any future batteries that may need to be installed and connected if and when demand increases. 

DUoS and Triads are established tariffs that the National Grid place on businesses for consuming energy at periods of high demand throughout the day. The charges can account for approximately 15-19% of a typical non-domestic electricity bill and seem to be unavoidable, as they are charged by the Distribution Network Operator that has a local monopoly on the supply of electricity.

To avoid DUoS and Triad tariffs some companies will reduce or switch off all electrical equipment at peak tariff times, usually Monday – Friday between 16:00 – 19:00 hours. However, it is evident that a shutdown procedure cannot be implemented in critical data centre facilities.

With DUoS tariffs being published in advance, the charge can be completely avoided by using energy storage technology. Such solutions can store the less expensive electricity generated at night or during off-peak periods, usually from 00:00 – 07:30, 21:00 – 24:00 and across the weekend. The battery technology will then be able to discharge the stored energy at a DUoS period, allowing companies to save up to 24% on electricity cost. Triads are more difficult to predict but due to available data, both current and historic, can still be very accurately predicted, allowing energy storage solutions to bring companies off the grid when a period is highly likely. 

Crossrail Limited is building a new railway for London and the South East, running from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. It is delivering 42km of new tunnels, 10 new stations and upgrading 30 more, while integrating new and existing infrastructure.

The £14.8 billion Crossrail project is Europe’s largest infrastructure project. Construction began in 2009 at Canary Wharf, and is now more than 80% complete.

The new railway, which will be known as the Elizabeth Line when services begin in central London in 2018, will be fully integrated with London’s existing transport network and will be operated by Transport for London (TfL). New state-of-the-art trains will carry an estimated 200 million passengers per year. The new service will speed up journey times, increase central London’s rail capacity by 10% and bring an extra 1.5 million people to within 45 minutes of central London.

Crossrail plans to handover the new railway and all assets, including IT, to Transport for London once works are complete.  Crossrail worked with Fruition Partners to implement ServiceNow to provide IT support during construction right through to handover.

Improved IT Service for a delivery project

Crossrail’s project nature means there is a high volume of joiners and leavers as employees are on-boarded to deliver contractual requirements and off-boarded once works are complete. This directly translates into a higher than normal volume of IT requests for new starters, movers and leavers amongst other IT requests.

Crossrail implemented a self-service solution that allows its users to easily make IT requests and ask for help, automating the delivery of requests for improved service and reduced operational cost.

Why ServiceNow?

Having decided to bring IT support in-house, ServiceNow was selected as the chosen solution through the standard procurement process using the Government’s Digital Marketplace (G-Cloud Initiative). ServiceNow demonstrated the best value for money and quickest return on investment allowing for quick adoption to generate savings before the transfer of assets to TfL in 2018.

Alistair Goodall, Head of Applications and Portfolio Management for Crossrail Ltd said, “ServiceNow is unique, with the grounded architecture we were looking for in terms of SaaS. It was our chosen solution for a quick route to market, with competitive prices making it the most cost-effective solution for Crossrail.”

Using the Governments G-Cloud Initiative Fruition Partners were chosen to implement the solution as a Gold Sales and Services Partner of ServiceNow. “They helped keep us on the right track throughout, and their workshops and training ensured we got the knowledge transfer we needed into our own team” said Alistair Goodall.

Implement fast and then evolve

One of Crossrail’s key requirements was an ability to go live rapidly and then evolve where necessary because it was important to achieve payback well before handover of assets to the future operator. 

By using out of the box solutions wherever possible, such as Service Request and Incident, the Discovery phase of the project was completed within 70 days, with Phase 1 going live within less than eight months, delivering Service Requests and CMDB. Phase 2, providing Incident Management and Change then went live shortly after that. 

The roll-out to 3,000 staff across sites across London was facilitated by a programme to educate the site administrators, supported by Fruition Partners. Referring to workshops held as part of the project, Alistair Goodall says “The construction site administrators were key to the success of the project and they were pleasantly surprised by how intuitive the system was to use and how it would make their lives easier.”

The user interface is a significant part of this: at Fruition’s suggestion, the design was approached from an end-user perspective, rather than following strict ITIL principles of ‘ticket classification’. Instead, the ethos is oriented to enable the user to ‘tell me your problem in the easiest way possible’.

Return on Investment within one year

At a headline level, Crossrail has achieved a payback on the project within a year, using a platform that has also improved end-user experience. Crossrail’s annual survey showed happier users and, according to Alistair Goodall, “a more positive attitude towards IT as a whole: it’s not seen as a cumbersome giant anymore.”

Whilst it’s widely agreed that the most competitive business is one that is fully connected with its own systems, cloud solutions, mobile workforce, supply chain, partners and customers, many companies remain largely disconnected. They are restrained by organisational silos and boundaries, by truncated processes and by legacy operations. Disparate information systems are unconnected, and the better external links which interconnectivity promises remain unrealised.

At VIRTUS, we believe that the promise of interconnected enterprises can no longer be ignored. Making connections is vital to accelerating business performance and create new opportunities. Organisations can either seize the opportunity, or risk being left behind by more innovative companies, committed to improving the connections they make.

The requirement for collaboration

The change required to become better connected is significant. Innovation has historically happened at a discreet product or operational level, interconnectivity, by its nature, has to take place across an entire business - and beyond. Companies need to understand how they can change their whole ecosystems - and so, the need for guidance and support from experts has never been greater.

Exploring what an interconnected future looks like is best achieved through learning from the successes and failures of others. Analysts, tech experts and commercial businesses need to open their doors to share experiences - and to move away from a closed environment where collaboration isn’t encouraged and innovation happens in silo. It’s only then that the interconnectivity model will mature, and whole industries will reap the rewards.

For the technology industry that serves these businesses, the message to work together is clear. There is a collective responsibility to foster greater collaboration in order to unlock the potential of technological change. When tech advances, whole industries do, and change can’t happen in silo. While the digital disruption which leads to an interconnected business represents a ‘do-or-die’ tipping point for business, the opportunity is a positive one - and our collective help is the crucial element in driving a culture of progress and innovation.

Finding the right partner

So how do businesses start moving along their journey towards making better connections? The first step to success is in looking for the right vendor to help. Technology is the enabler of the interconnected company – and the right technology partner is the backbone to any successful connected business.

Whether you choose colocation, fully managed connectivity within a third party data centre, or a cloud-based service, the best tech providers help you make connections at a rate which you can’t do alone.

Companies must expect measurable and predictable returns on technology investment, and as such a close relationship with their tech provider is crucial. We’d advise any company to be very clear on objectives and timelines, and because the nature of interconnectivity is unpredictable – to take control where they can. SLAs, guarantees about uptime and reliability promises are crucial.

At VIRTUS, our customers have the choice to design and create interconnections based on specific needs or can take advantage of the fact that VIRTUS’ data centres are already interconnected within many service providers own metro connected portfolios providing near instant, scalable high bandwidth. These pre-connected solutions also come with the benefit of fast provisioning times and large scale pricing advantages for Fibre, Wavelengths and Ethernet services.

Evolution not revolution

Of course, this isn’t an overnight revolution. While the shift to a connected ecosystem is a profound one, companies need to be aware that they don’t have to immediately make a revolutionary break from the past. But they must be prepared to make incremental and forward-looking changes necessary to capitalise on the interconnected future. They must learn lessons from others, and look for measurable ROI from any change they make.

Ultimately, though, these small steps can reap big rewards – as the boundaries within and among companies begin to evolve. Organisational and functional silos will give way to dynamic networks that span conventional boundaries. Streamlining processes will reduce costs, enhance quality and speed up operations. And it’s here that the productivity wars will be fought and won.

Fast forward to 2016 and those days are fortunately long gone, largely thanks to the emergence of the multi-fiber push-on (MPO) connector. The MPO format has dramatically reduced the amount of time, effort, and space required to install and deploy network technologies, particularly in parallel optic applications.

With continual improvements, the MPO format deserves to be an essential part of any data centre build-out.

Multiple Fibers Mean More Challenges

To understand how far the MPO connector has come, it’s worth reflecting on the technology’s introduction in the early 1990s. At the heart of the MPO connector lies mechanical transfer (MT) ferrule technology, first developed in the mid-1980s for use in consumer telephone services. This MT ferrule technology became the basis for the first MPO connector.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Networks were being tasked with transmitting more data, more quickly. As the need for bandwidth increased, the industry began moving toward networks and cabling with higher fiber densities – the multilane highway of data transmission. Because of the increase in “lanes” used with parallel optics, an efficient, high-density interconnect was needed. The MPO connector format succeeded in establishing a compact means to efficiently couple and decouple the high-density MT ferrule format via a bulkhead-mounted coupler.

While the MPO connector met many of the challenges of installing and deploying the latest network technologies, more fibers also meant more installation considerations. Before advancements to the MPO format, it typically took two installers a full day to terminate and test a standard 144 core fiber optical cable. Before long, installers had the ability to rapidly connect eight to 12 fibers at a time with the snap of a tool, or using a pre-terminated plug-and-play cable, trimming a daylong job to just a few hours.

The Next-Generation MPO Connector

Corning and US Conec have taken a leading role in developing an MPO connector that meets the installation challenges presented by ever-increasing quantities of fibers. In 1996, the MTP® connector brand was launched and has since undergone continual improvements to meet the evolving challenges of the industry. Key advancements have included refinements to ensure lower insertion loss, significant boosts to stability and a migration to polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) thermoplastic injection molding, which is much less susceptible to degradation caused by moisture absorption.

We’ve come a long way since that initial MT ferrule technology used in Japanese telecom networks. But the MTP^® format is just getting started. Today, the challenge faced by the industry is the emergence of hyperscale, big data, and cloud data centres: How do we provision, add, and support high-density, bandwidth-greedy applications that require massive space to accommodate a massive number of cables?  For Corning, these challenges have meant a focus on ever-improving insertion loss, fiber density, ease of installation and stability to ensure that the latest MPO connector technology is ready to meet those demands.

MPO evolution is not just focused on the mega-cloud, big data, and hyperscale computing. The latest technology has been designed to work not only with true fiber-to-fiber connections, but with a host of other technology and electronics across all vertical industries – financial, medical, educational, co-location, and more. So whether installers are working with duplex, 8-, or 16-fiber transmissions, the connector scales to whatever technology is being used – including new parallel applications such as 400Gb Ethernet capable of running across 32, 16, and eight fibers.

Beyond this, the current generation of the MTP^® connector brings novel features and functionality that simplify field configurability. Not having the right male or female end to hand is no longer a problem. The latest MTP^® connectors make it easy to change gender and polarity in the field, without requiring a specialized skill set or a connector engineer. Along with optimized field configurability, the connectors also feature environmentally friendly performance enhancements that improve the feel of plugging and unplugging.

With their 20-plus-year history of performance, ongoing improvements, and the next generation of advancements soon to come, MPO connectors still deliver exceptional value for a vast range of network technologies. Installers must stay in tune to with the latest innovations to this essential technology and take full advantage of the time savings, space efficiencies, and simplicity that they can bring. 

The extended attack surface

The proliferation of IoT has opened the door to an onslaught of attacks on the devices and the web-based management platforms that run them.  The security issue lies with the devices themselves.  For years, companies have been producing consumer-grade devices with a focus on areas such as productivity, customer experience and revenue streams — but very little on security.

Many of the sleek, lightweight IoT devices made in the past few years are inexpensive and powerful enough to perform a series of specific functions, but are vulnerable to web application attacks or simple password brute force attacks.  Often they run very simple operating systems, which lack even the most basic security tools, such as the ability to upgrade firmware if a security issue is discovered.

Like IoT, workforce mobility provides some of the biggest opportunities and challenges for enterprise networks.  The bottom-line benefits of employees being able to work anywhere are clear: greater productivity during business travel, more consistent communication, workday flexibility, reduced infrastructure costs, and much more. 

A world without data centers seems impossible today. Every area of our life and every industry depend on data-based IT infrastructures, which have to be stored in huge data centers. To keep both data and infrastructure protected and available, operators need to prevent corrosion damage by running their data centers under stable temperature and pressure conditions. What is often thought to be a problem confined to smog-polluted cities in Asia or humid regions in Latin America has also become a common challenge in European countries. However, there is a simple solution to providing pure air and avoiding corrosion – a new filtration solution in the shape of honeycombs.

The number of data centers has grown constantly in recent years – not only in Europe and Northern America, but also in many other regions around the globe. Thanks to digital transformation and intensified data use, the traffic and storage of data are set to increase even further. According to network supplier Cisco, total data center storage capacity will increase almost five-fold from 2015 to 2020[1]. Furthermore, an increasing number of today’s data centers are located in the heart or immediate proximity of cities such as Shanghai or Beijing, which have to cope with unexpected levels of corrosive noxious gases in the air.

Sulphur-bearing gases, such as sulphur dioxide (SO₂) and hydrogen sulphide (H₂S), are the most common gases causing corrosion of electronic equipment. Along with various nitrogen oxides, they are released during the combustion of fossil fuels, especially in areas with large volumes of road traffic or heating systems. This type of pollution directly affects data center operators as the infiltration of gaseous contaminants leads to electronic corrosion.

Corrosion in data centers: a new European challenge?

In the major conurbations of China and the U.S., experts are generally aware of dangerous corrosive gases in data centers. However, air pollution and consequently the risk of corrosion for electronic components is just as high in many European urban agglomerations. In London alone, 75 centers are operated in close proximity to the city.

So how can corrosive gases affect sensitive data? Due to cost issues, data centers are not usually hermetically sealed and air is drawn in, cooled if necessary and recirculated. Facilities are usually not operated under cleanroom conditions and operators are regularly entering via normal doors, so corrosive gases have easy access to the electronic components. To make things worse, these electronic parts have become even more sensitive over the last decade: with the introduction of the European RoHS guidelines in 2006, the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical devices has been restricted, which in turn has led to changes in the compounds used for electrical parts. Unfortunately, the new substances react far more readily with noxious gases, and consequently corrosion levels have increased.

Doubling the corrosion rate

The reduction in the size of circuit board features and the miniaturization of components necessary to improve hardware performance also make the hardware more prone to attacks by corrosive particles and gases in the environment. In addition, temperature has a significant influence on the level of corrosion. Today, data centers are frequently operated at higher room air temperatures to save energy costs – while in the past operating temperatures were between 20 and 24°C, the average temperature in many data centers is now as high as 27°C. Although this may not sound alarming, we must keep in mind that a temperature increase of 10°C doubles the corrosion rate. Consequently, data centers are now more likely to be affected by corrosion, which can cause faults or equipment disturbances, reduce productivity or increase downtime and eventually lead to data loss.

First step: testing the air quality

Running IT systems nonstop is crucial for most organizational operations. Hence, the main concern of data center hosts is business continuity. If a system becomes unavailable, company operations may be impaired or stopped completely. Therefore, it is essential to provide a reliable infrastructure for IT operations, which will minimize the chance of disruption. A first step to preventing hardware failures in data centers is to proactively measure the air quality. In order to find a suitable preventive solution, it is necessary to assess and monitor the temperature, humidity, dust and gaseous contamination.

A simple approach to monitoring air quality is to expose copper and silver foil discs to the air for a couple of weeks, and then analyse the thickness of the resulting corrosion layer. Based on the test results, it is possible to classify the environment into one of four corrosion severity levels: G1 – mild, G2 – moderate, G3 – harsh, GX – severe. Corrosion of the sensitive electronic parts already occurs in G1 environments. Their lifespan is considerably shortened in G2 environments, while in level G3 and GX it is highly probable that corrosion will lead to damages.

Gas-phase filtration for optimal air conditions

Experts recommend that data center equipment should be protected from corrosion by keeping the relative humidity below 60 percent, and by limiting the particulate and gaseous contamination concentration to levels at which the copper corrosion rate is less than 300 ångström per month and silver corrosion rate is less than 200 ångström per month. Gas-phase filtration air-cleaning systems are a valuable corrective step, removing corrosive gases through the process of chemisorption or adsorption.

A common solution to eliminate acidic pollutant gases from intake and recirculated air is to use air-filtrating pellets. However, using pellets in data centers has one major disadvantage: they produce dust that will cling to the surface of the electrical parts. An additional dust filter is needed – resulting in extra costs and higher energy consumption. Freudenberg Filtration Technologies supports customers around the globe with its Vildeon system solutions for industrial filtration. As an alternative to pellets, Freudenberg offers a revolutionary, honeycomb-shaped filter technology based on activated carbon. This new technology can remove contaminant and odorous gases as well as volatile organic compounds from the air supply stream more efficiently, and is capable of neutralizing even ultra-low concentrations of gaseous contaminants.

The future of air cleaning

The new Viledon Honeycomb modules are based on Freudenberg’s Versacomb technology, which works with parallel square channels through which the air passes. The channels are separated by walls made of activated carbon powder, which are less than a millimetre thick. They are held in shape by ceramic binders to prevent any dust production and to provide stability. The honeycomb structure reduces the maximum distance between the carbon and the bulk flow of the process air, allowing highly efficient interaction between carbon and air during operation at high flow velocities.

Existing systems can be easily upgraded or retrofitted with the new technology. If a data center is already equipped with an air-conditioning system, the Honeycomb modules can be installed before the air intake since they have a low air resistance. Pressure loss is only one-third that of pellet-based solutions, which means that the new solution is able to work with existing air-conditioning systems, while pellets would require a larger and more expensive air-conditioning solution due to pressure loss. Depending on the size of the data center, honeycomb modules can be flexibly combined according to the density and composition of the corrosive gases.

Easy monitoring of air quality

Once the modules are installed, no further maintenance is needed. Honeycomb filters will run for between four and five years before they have to be changed – depending on the contamination level. To monitor the corrosivity of the air in a room, an online system based on copper and silver sensors – as described before – can easily be set up. ChemWatch by Freudenberg collects the data on the corrosion status and visualises the information about the current G classification graphically. All data can be transferred to a computer, control station or smartphone, providing operators with a constant overview of the air quality. Thanks to the sensors’ corrosivity measurement, operators are able to foresee when the filter’s capacity is coming to an end and needs to be replaced.

Freudenberg also provides a comprehensive filter management package, comprising not only innovative filter solutions, but also service support and warranties. Viledon filterCair is based on specialist expertise for diverse industry sectors combined with top-quality filter solutions for any requirements. Companies like Pacific Insurance and Alibaba in Asia, already rely on Freudenberg’s Viledon Honeycomb filter solutions. Thanks to this highly efficient and reliable gas-phase filtration system, customers have been able to significantly improve the air quality in their data centers, helping ensure that their systems remain up and running without the fear of data loss due to corrosion. Based on this experience, several European data center hosts are also considering the implementation of the Honeycomb technology. Since the risk of pollution is expected to increase in European cities over the next years, a reliable filtration solution is paramount to protecting data and introducing purest air into data centers.

Given that the AWS outage was caused by human error, the first question I’d ask is whether blaming the public cloud for the outage is fair. The second question that I’d like to pose is: Could this incident have been prevented by using a data acceleration solution to deploy machine intelligence to reduce the potential calamities that can be caused by human error? In the case of the AWS S3 outage a simple typographical error reaped havoc to the extent that the company couldn’t – according to The Register – “get into its own dashboard to warn the world.”

With human error being at fault it’s doesn’t seem fair to blame the public cloud. What organisations like your own need - whether you are an AWS customer or not - is several business continuity, service continuity and disaster recovery options in place. They must be supported by an ability to back up and restore your data to any cloud in real-time. This means that your data and your resources should neither be concentrated in just one data centre, nor focused on one means of cloud storage. So when disaster strikes, your data is ready and your operations can switch to another data centre or to another disaster recovery site without damaging the ability of your business to operate.

Some experts believe that British Airways (BA) could have avoided its recent computer failure, which is expected to have cost £150m, if it had the right disaster recovery strategies in place. The worldwide outage on 27^th May 2017 left its passengers stranded at airports, and it has no doubt damaged the airline’s brand image with newspaper reports predicting the demise of the company.

A blogger for The Economist wrote on 29^th May 2017: “The whole experience was alarming. The BA staff clearly were as poorly informed as the passengers; no one in management had taken control. No one was prioritising those passengers who had waited longest. No one was checking that planes were on their way before changing flight times. BA has a dominant position, in terms of take-off slots, at Heathrow, Europe's busiest hub. On the basis of this weekend's performance, it does not deserve it.”

A couple of days later Tanya Powley and Nathalie Thomas asked in their article for The Financial Times: “BA’s computer meltdown: how did it happen? They point out that “Leading computer and electricity experts have expressed scepticism over British Airways blaming a power surge for the systems meltdown that led to travel chaos for 75,000 passengers worldwide over the weekend.” Although BA has denied that human error was at fault, most experts don’t agree with the company’s stance.

Powley and Thomas explains: “Willie Walsh, chief executive of IAG, BA’s parent company, attributed the problem to a back-up system known as an “uninterruptible power supply” — essentially a big battery connected to the mains power — that is supposed to ensure that IT systems and data centres can continue to function even if there is a power outage.” Experts said that UPS systems rarely fail, and even when they do they shouldn’t affect the ongoing mains supply to a data centre. BA claimed that the incident had also caused damage to their IT infrastructure.

It now transpires that the power outage was due to a contract maintenance worker inadvertently turning off the power. Some commentators suggest that this might not be true. After all BA will want to avoid the huge cost of any potential litigation, making convenient to pass the buck. Yet as well as human error from a technical perspective being blamed, news agency Reuters points out that the company had engaged in cost-cutting exercises to enable it to compete with low-cost airline rival Ryan Air and EasyJet. This lead to many commentators suggesting that BA has taken too many short cuts to achieve this aim – resulting in an inability to keep going in the face of a systems failure.

The question still unanswered is: Why didn’t the second synchronised data centre that BA has a kilometre away kick-in like it should have done? The whole point of running two data centres that close together is just for this situation. That’s the elephant in the room, and it’s a question no one seems to be asking.

Human stupidity

Speaking about the AWS incident, David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks comments: “Artificial intelligence (AI) is no match for human stupidity.  Why do people think that just because it is “in the cloud”, they can devolve all responsibility to protect their data and their business continuity to someone else? Cloud is a facility to run your applications on – it is still up to you to ensure that your data and applications are safe and that you have back-up plans in place.” Without them you’ll have to suffer the consequences.

So the weakness doesn’t necessarily lie in the public cloud. “Someone made a mistake – someone can make the same error on premise: The difference is that one storage method has a wider impact, but for the individual company the effect is the same”, he says before asking, “Where was their DR plan?” He also points out that: “Companies invest in dual data centres to maintain business continuity, so why do they think that only having one cloud provider gives the same level of protection?” It quite clearly doesn’t. With data driving most businesses today, uptime must be maintained and prioritised.

So fault whenever an outage occurs often lies with us humans – from configuring a network poorly to poor software development. In wide area network (WAN) terms it can lie in how the network and the interconnecting elements are managed. So to reduce human error there is a need to deploy machine learning. After all, machines don’t and can’t make typographical errors. Instead they can support us, enable us to focus on more strategic business and IT activities by automating – for example – the configuration of a network to reduce the impact of data latency and to reduce packet loss. In other words, machine learning and AI can make us more efficient.

Cloud popularity

As for public clouds, they have become more popular in spite of previous concerns about security. Trevor James’ article headline in Techtarget, for example, say ‘Healthcare’s public cloud adoption highlights [the] market’s maturity’. This is a market that often lags behind the adoption of newer IT, and its perception about cloud computing has allegedly been no different. Yet James says that the use of the public cloud in this sector has accelerated. One of those providers is AWS.

Over the last few years cloud providers have addressed their customers’ security concerns by adding a number of tools to permit the encryption of data when it’s at rest and in transit. In the US, for example, once these issues were addressed it became possible to talk about uptime, disaster recovery, security and to ask questions about whether there is a need to develop expertise to run first-class data centres. If the latter isn’t feasible, then it’s a good choice to outsource to a data centre that already has the skills and resources to help you to maintain both your organisation’s data security and uptime.

However, organisations still need to take a step back. Trossell warns: “Public cloud has seen a massive expansion lately, but companies are throwing out the rules, procedures and procedures that have stood the passage of time and saved many originations from ruin.” He says backing up is about recovery point objectives (RPOs) and about recovery time objectives (RTOs). RPOs refer to the amount of data that’s at risk. They consider the time between data protection event, and they refer to the amount of data that could be lost during a disaster recovery process. RTOs refer to how quickly data can be restored during disaster recovery, to ensure your business remains operational.

“It is no good having the data in the cloud if you can’t recover it quickly enough to meet your RTO and RPO requirements”, says Trossell before adding: “Too many organisations are turning a blind eye to this, and one copy in one place is not a level of protection that most auditors should agree with.” Using this situation as an example, he asks: “What would you do if AWS lost your data?”

Without having the ability to restore your data from several sources, your organisation would suffer downtime. This can in some cases lead to financial and reputational damage, which should be avoided at all costs. He therefore advises you to work with cloud providers that have service level agreements in place that guarantee that your data will always be recoverable whenever you need it.

Cloud superiority?

Furthermore, with regards to whether public cloud is superior to on-premise data centres, he says: “Clouds provide an invaluable service, but it is not the right answer for every circumstance. They are not efficient and cost effective for large long term use.”  The concerns over cloud security haven’t gone away too, and particularly because there is a shortage of people with cyber-security skills. Shadow IT is another issue that is pulling back cloud adoption – and even though some types of cloud are more secure than others. Organisations are also equate the cloud with a loss of control over their IT. These factors therefore need to be considered when you to decide what should or shouldn’t go into a public cloud, a private cloud or a hybrid cloud.

According to Sharon Gaudin’s article for Network Asia of 28^th April 2019, ‘IT leaders say it’s hard to keep the cloud safe’, cloud adoption is slowing down rather than accelerating because of it. In spite of this 62% of companies, reveals a recent survey by Intel of 2,000 IT professionals working in different countries, are storing sensitive customer in the public cloud. You could therefore argue that public cloud and cloud adoption overall creates a number of contradictions. On one hand recent trends have seen an uptake in the public cloud, but on the other hand the same issues still arise. These can have the effect of slowing down cloud adoption – and not just to the public cloud.

Data acceleration

Yet in the case of the S3 AWS outage, blame needs to lie with human error and not with the public cloud. Trossell therefore concludes that you should consider data acceleration solutions such as PORTrockIT – the DCS Award’s ‘Data Centre ICT Networking Product of the Year’ to remove the human risk associated with, for example, the manual configuration of WANs. They can also help your organisation to maintain uptime by enabling real-time back up at speed by mitigating the effects of latency and by reducing packet loss. They can permit you to send encrypted data across a WAN too, and your data centers needn’t be located next to each other within the same circles of disruption because they can be many miles apart from each other.

So, with them in mind, the public cloud certainly isn’t outed for disaster recovery. It can still play an invaluable disaster recovery role. With data acceleration supported by machine learning you will be able to securely back up and restore your data with improved RPOs and RTOs to any cloud. You also won’t have to suffer downtime caused by a simple typographical error. The network will be configured for you by machine learning to mitigate data latency, network latency and packet loss. 

The term personal data assumes extremely broad coverage in the GDPR—any data that relates to "an identifiable natural person" is classified as personal data. Organizations usually digitally process and store things like customer names, email addresses, photographs, work information, conversations, media files, and a lot of other information that could identify individuals

Personal data is all-pervasive, and is found in nearly every piece of IT. If your organization wants to comply with the GDPR, then you need to define and enforce strict access controls as well as meticulously track access to data.

Privileged access and threats to data security

Cyber attacks can originate both from within the perimeters of an enterprise, and from outside. Analyses of the recent high profile cyber attacks reveal that hackers—both external and internal—are exploiting privileged access to perpetrate attacks. Most attacks compromise personal data that is processed or stored by IT applications and devices. Security researchers point out that almost all types of cyber attacks nowadays involve privileged accounts.

Privileged accounts—the prime target of cybercriminals

In internal and external attacks alike, unauthorized access and misuse of privileged accounts—the "keys to the IT kingdom"—have emerged as the main techniques used by criminals. Administrative passwords, system default accounts, as well as hard-coded credentials in scripts and applications have all become the prime targets cyber criminals use to gain access.

Hackers typically launch a simple phishing or spear-phishing attack as a way of gaining a foothold in a user's machine. They then install malicious software and look for the all-powerful administrative passwords—which give unlimited access privileges—to move laterally across the network, infect all computers, and siphon off data. The moment the hacker gains access to an administrative password, the entire organization becomes vulnerable to attacks and data theft. Perimeter security devices cannot fully guard enterprises against these types of privilege attacks.

Third parties and malicious insiders

Organizations are required to work with third parties such as vendors, business partners, and contractors for a variety of purposes. Quite often, third-party partners are provided with remote privileged access to physical and virtual resources within the organization.

Even if your organization has robust security controls in place, you never know how third parties are handling your data. Hackers could easily exploit vulnerabilities in your supply chain or launch phishing attacks against those who have access and gain entry to your network. It is imperative that privileged access granted to third parties is controlled, managed, and monitored.

Additionally, malicious insiders—including disgruntled IT staff, greedy techies, sacked employees, and IT staff working with third parties—could plant logic bombs or steal data. Uncontrolled administrative access is a potential security threat, jeopardizing your business.

Begin your GDPR journey with privileged access management

Control, monitor, and manage your organization's privileged access

The GDPR requires that organizations ensure and demonstrate compliance with its personal data protection policies. Protecting personal data, in turn, requires complete control over privileged access—the foundational tenet of the GDPR. Controlling privileged access requires you to: 

●      Consolidate all your privileged accounts and put them in a secure, centralized vault.

●      Assign strong, unique passwords and enforce periodic password rotation.

●      Restrict access to accounts based on job roles and responsibilities.

●      Enforce additional controls for releasing the passwords of sensitive assets.

●      Audit all access to privileged accounts.

●      Completely eliminate hard-coded credentials in scripts and applications.

●      Wherever possible, grant remote access to IT systems without revealing the credentials in plaintext.

●      Enforce strict access controls for third parties and closely monitor their activities.

●      Establish dual controls to closely monitor privileged access sessions to highly sensitive IT assets.

●      Record privileged sessions for forensic audits.

As explained above, controlling, monitoring, and managing privileged access calls for automating the entire life cycle of privileged access. However, manual approaches to privileged access management are time-consuming, error prone, and may not be able to provide the desired level of security controls.

Market is abound with automated privileged access management solutions, which can empower you to achieve total control over privileged access in your organization, thereby laying a solid foundation for GDPR compliance.

Though fully complying with the GDPR requires a variety of solutions, processes, people, and technologies, automating privileged access management serves as the foundation for GDPR compliance. Together with other appropriate solutions, processes, and people, privileged access management helps reinforce IT security and prevent data breaches.

1.     Please can you provide some background on Universal Electric Corporation (UEC) – its formation, how the company has developed and the key personnel?

Universal Electric Corporation (UEC), the manufacturer of U-S Safety Trolley and Starline suites of products, is a global leader in power distribution equipment.  Founded in Pittsburgh, PA USA in 1922 as an electrical contracting firm, the company began manufacturing in the late 1950’s, developing mobile electrification products under the U-S Safety Trolley name.  The company’s focus on innovation continues to pave the way for safer, flexible and reliable power distribution systems.

The U-S Safety Trolley products have been providing safe, mobile power to cranes, assembly lines, amusement park rides and a whole host of other applications for years.  Developed initially as a safer and more reliable method to power cranes in steel mills and other manufacturing environments, the solid copper conductor bar designs from our various systems can deliver joint free power for lengths far superior than other products. 

For more than 25 years, Starline Track Busway has provided mission critical and data centre facilities with the most flexible, reliable and customisable power distribution systems on the market today.  Target markets were more industrially focused in the beginning, but expanded into the laboratory, data centre and mission critical applications in the early 1990’s.  Other newer Starline products include Plug-in Raceway, 390Vdc Solutions and the Critical Power Monitor (CPM).

2.      What does UEC, manufacturer of Starline, offer the data centre market?

The main product UEC offers the data centre space is Starline Track Busway.  The benefits of the Track Busway product include reduced facility construction costs, faster installation, adding flexibility for the future, and your ability to customise solutions to fit your needs.  Plug-in units can be disconnected and connected without de-energising the busway and the product requires no routine maintenance and is faster and less costly to expand or remodel.

3.     And how does UEC distinguish itself in what is quite a crowded marketplace?

UEC distinguishes itself on our outstanding reliability and willingness to perform customisations of our products.

4.     And how do you see this marketplace developing over time, in terms of the number of companies involved?

More and more competitors are entering the space.  There have been several new entrants within the past five years.  Since this market is continuing to grow. 

5.     Can you talk us through the Starline portfolio – the track busway and the critical power monitor being the main two products?

Yes, the Starline Suite of Products actually consists of four offerings.  Track Busway is the largest and most seasoned, having been in the market for almost 30 years.  We also offer Plug-in Raceway, which is a wall or perimeter mount product, with a similar feature set as the Track Busway.  With many new high-voltage dc applications being implemented around the world, we have also designed our 380Vdc Solutions products for these types of applications.  The newest product is the Starline Critical Power Monitor (CPM).  This revenue-grade metering platform offers an enhanced monitoring package that will allow you to monitor, integrate and display more data centre power information easily and reliably.

6.     And are there any plans to introduce any product upgrades and/or any new product lines over the next couple of years?

To further enhance the Starline metering offering, UEC has introduced corded and retrofit Critical Power Monitor (CPM) units. This allows non-metered legacy plug-in units to be upgraded, whether in the field or at a UEC manufacturing facility, to incorporate metering functionality into their power distribution systems. Furthermore, both corded and retrofit CPM units are capable of being installed with other manufacturers’ power distribution systems, not just Starline systems.

Also, UEC has taken the Starline Track Busway system to new heights (or amperages) with the addition of 1200 amp busway. This more robust system is an ideal solution for industries with higher density load requirements, yet is still compatible with Starline Plug-in Units that are used with other, lower amperage Starline Track Busway systems.

In order to keep up with the growing global demand for Starline products, UEC opened a manufacturing facility in Slough, England to better serve its European customer base. The company is also currently exploring options for how to better attend to the needs of the expanding markets in Southeast Asia.

7.     Moving on to some industry issues – how does UEC help its customers address the drive towards power efficiency in the data centre?

The Starline Critical Power Monitor (CPM) is definitely contributing to the present drive towards intelligence in the data centre.  Power consumption is a definite concern in the data centre market and activity represents a non-trivial portion of the power consumed in the world.  This makes the data centre in every organisation the epicentre for power management issues, from costs and consumption to energy efficiency.  The Starline CPM drills down to provide critical energy usage statistics so that data centre managers can analyse the information and then can act upon it.  Having this data available to benchmark existing usage and determine a plan to reduce and validate power consumption will be key moving forward.

8.     And does UEC have any play around the modular/prefab data centre trend?

Yes, our products are installed in several of the large global modular and prefab manufacturers.  The features and design of our Track Busway products are very impactful in these applications.  Since you can add plug-in units or even sections of busway as you grow and expand, there is a significant benefit to the customer when our products are included in the design.

9.     Do issues such as Cloud, Big Data and the drive towards digital have any impact on the make-up of the Starline product line – either now or in the future?

Yes, because of many of these factors, we are seeing higher and higher densities in data centre applications.  Our Track Busway line has versions available in ampacities of 225 to 800A.  So as the demand increases, our breadth of products is set to meet the increasing power needs of our clients for these types of installations.

10.  In terms of bringing product to market – do you have a mature Channel presence, or are you still looking to develop certain markets – both geographic and industry sectors?

In the US, we have a fairly mature channel presence.  We are continuing to expand our footprint around the globe, with direct sales and support staff in many of the emerging markets.  Data centres are only one of the areas in which we supply products today.  We have a significant installed base in retail, industrial and other industry sectors.

11.  After sales service and support are key differentiators – what does UEC offer around this?

We have application and sales support for our products globally.   Our goal is to make sure your installation goes smoothly and our products meet your needs.

12.  Any other comments?

We really try and implore a consultative approach to with customers.  We are not trying to only sell you products, but sell you solutions that will address issues you might be experiencing in your facility.  UEC is dedicated to a strong focus on customer experience and innovation. We are committed to sustaining our leading position within the industries we service and to enduring partnerships, both within our organisation and the external companies we supply.