[London, ENGLAND] Pan-European network services provider
KPNQwest officially opened its Paris CyberCentre on Thursday,
its fourteenth hosting facility in Europe.
To underline the new facility’s importance in the company’s
overall European coverage, KPNQwest is calling it a
“mega-CyberCentre” — and says it sets new standards in
providing a secure hosting environment for
enterprise-critical applications and content.
Among its features are round-the-clock guards, CCTV,
ID cards, Palm Print biometric scanning, HVAC (Heating,
Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems, Argon-based
fire suppression equipment, fully redundant UPS
(Uninterruptable Power Supply) and back-up diesel
generators.
Eric Joulie, managing director of KPNQwest France,
said the new center would be “the ultimate answer” to
customer concerns about security, scalability and
connectivity.
“The opening of the Paris CyberCentre gives our customers
access to the latest in application hosting and infrastructure
provision,” said Joulie.
KPNQwest is currently deploying a 12,500-mile fiber-optic
network connecting 50 cities in Europe. It has already
opened CyberCentres — none of them “mega” — in Vienna,
Prague, Tallinn, Helsinki, Paris, Karlsruhe, Oslo, Lisbon,
Madrid, Bucharest, Zurich and London.
Besides the new one in Paris, the other very large installation
is in Munich, Germany. A third is being built in London
and is expected to be operational by mid-May.
From the new Paris center, KPNQwest will offer the full
range of its services, including complex managed hosting
and AIP (Applications Infrastructure Provider) solutions.
It says it will be able to deliver a “unique value proposition”
to enterprises and service providers alike.
Backing up the service at the various facilities is
what KPNQwest calls the “virtually unlimited bandwidth”
of its EuroRings network. This network now reaches
over 500 POPs in 13 countries and links seamlessly
with Qwest’s 25,500-mile IP network in the United States.
Increased demand for secure hosting services in
Europe is leading vendors to take some extreme safety
measures.
For example, U.K. provider C2 Internet recently located a
facility in the Hack Green Nuclear Bunker — formerly
part of NATO’s strategic defense against nuclear attack.
Its 2-meter thick reinforced concrete walls and steel
blast doors are probably more resilient than even the
defensive measures taken by KPNQwest. But maybe some
providers are just a bit too pessimistic about the
future.
