Quality, Flexibility and Service

Five years ago, VIRTUS Data Centres in London, set out to shake up the data centre industry with an innovative breed of hybrid colocation. Combining the best attributes of ‘old-style’ wholesale and retail colocation for a new type of customer, with different requirements driven by the new and fast changing world of increasingly digital/mobile business and cloud computing. This model was matched with fresh, new approaches to working collaboratively with customers, listening to their needs for more flexible terms and solutions, and bringing new levels of responsive customer service to the industry. We set out to lead the market in Quality, Flexibility and Service.

Five years on, thanks to our wonderful customers and team, VIRTUS has become one of Europe’s most successful colocation providers, with a portfolio of over 50MW across multiple metro data centers. They say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, and many of the models and approaches that VIRTUS has pioneered have now been taken up by others in the industry and are becoming standard.

Whilst much of our approach was new to the data centre industry, the core elements of focusing on delivering world leading Quality, Flexibility and Service are and were second nature to other service industries.

Many of our team come from other leading data centre providers and we are fortunate to have a wealth of experience in designing, building and operating world class data centres. Importantly however, many of our team also came from a more general ICT services and cloud background. So firstly they understand real customer service management based on principles like ISO27001 and 9001, ITSM and ITIL standards and the levels of responsiveness and partnership needed in dealing with large global enterprise clients. Secondly, having worked for large cloud providers they know the needs of this burgeoning market from the inside and could foresee the huge growth of the major public players and have a clear understanding of their business challenges. Thirdly, they know connectivity as well as colocation, and understand just how important it is to have the right type and amount of connectivity in and around your facilities.

VIRTUS quickly gained a reputation as one of the most innovative providers around, both technically - e.g. being the first provider to deploy indirect evaporative fresh air cooling in a metro area, the first to deploy DCIM as a service and provide it for free to all customers - and commercially, being the first to launch a ‘Colo-on-Demand’ service for customers. Here the minimum term of a contract was just one day, setting our stall out as the most flexible colocation provider around.

We’ve added to that reputation for agility and efficiency with award-winning high performance solutions that allow customers “3D Flexibility” on time, space and power. Quality has always been at the heart of what we do. We became one of the still very few providers in London to actually be Tier III certified, rather than just saying we are, and have since won many awards for the quality of our colocation, connectivity and customer services. In fact I’m pleased to say that this year VIRTUS has once again been shortlisted for the ’Excellence in Data Centre Service’ award at the Datacloud Conference in Monaco.

Finally, and perhaps most pleasingly, VIRTUS has gained a reputation for providing the best service in the industry. We work very hard at this. Being a trusted long term partner for our customers, listening to their needs in terms of design, performance and commercial terms and then customising to those needs as much as we can. Being responsive and also being proactive, being ready with fitted out space when they need it. The business world has changed dramatically in the last five years, let alone the last 10 or 20 years and predicting 10 years into the future is challenging for any business to say the least. Some customers struggle to predict six months out in this volatile, uncertain and changing new digital business and IT environment. Providing customers the “ability for agility” in this changing world, to enable them to move quickly, and grow unrestrictedly has become a key factor.

Customers are king, and it’s great to hear them describe how the responsiveness, reliability and helpfulness of the service we provide, is second to none and really makes a difference to their business. These three attributes are so important to us that they make up the core of our company Values. We will continue to innovate as the IT world and our customers’ world keeps changing, but moreover in the next five years we will continue to focus on the approach we pioneered five years ago, to continue to be known as the best in our industry for Quality, Flexibility and Service.

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