I just returned from a trip to Shanghai and Nanjing to attend the annual VIP customer meeting for China Telecom. Many reputable carriers hold meetings of this nature to allow their senior executives to meet important customers. This allows a two-way discussion about service quality, future plans, what needs improvement, etc. This was an excellent opportunity for me to speak with customers to get their first-hand impressions about network quality and customer service. Attending were managers from companies such as Cisco, Ingersoll Rand, Associated Press and many others.
My presentation at the meeting focused on the benefits of using the best-of-breed carrier to connect to China. Using China Telecom allows customers to have a single network from the demark at their Chinese facilities all the way to the China Telecom POPs in the USA (5 POPs), UK, Hong Kong, Singapore. This results in savings of around 25% versus contracting with an AT&T or Verizon, while providing superior bi-lingual customer service. Customer response was extremely supportive of my position. China Telecom has hundreds of POPs in China, which allows tremendous redundancy and rerouting potential. They also own 33 international transmission resources, including five submarine cables.
In addition to attending the customer meeting, I had the opportunity to visit one of the many Network Operation Centers to learn first hand how their operations and protocols work. There is a great deal of redundancy among their network and their NOCs.
A visit to their Shanghai Internet Data Center was a something you have to see to believe. This facility has four large collocation buildings in what I believe is the largest collocation facility in the world. While two buildings are still under construction, these are world class hosting facilities with divergent power feeds and network connectivity. Each floor has multiple cooling systems with backup cooling, so the failure of any one, two, or three, for that matter, will have no effect on the equipment temperature. Large battery backups are located on one floor dedicated to this function, to provide power prior to generator power, if needed.
For security, the data centers have cameras at both ends of every aisle, with hand print recognition required for entry. The entire campus is surrounded by a high fence topped with razor wire, while the entry is gated with security guards.
While I have never written a post about collocation or hosting facilities, I think it is worthy of mention since if your company services the Asia-Pacific region, it can make financial sense to locate your web or application servers in China. The network facilities are outstanding and the collocation facilities worth exploring. For more information, contact me directly.
史蒂夫·嘉逊
