While the majority of multi-tenant data center (MTDC) revenue comes from selling space and power, the most profitable revenue is the monthly recurring charge for the cross connect (XC) service. In discussions with MTDC operators, many have been honest and admitted that their knowledge of their cross connect inventory is not 100% accurate. Stories include how after an acquisition of a data center, employees spent months tracing all connections in the building to create the current inventory to other people saying the inventory might be missing up to 20% of connections with certain large customers.
Mistakes in the cross connect inventory means that there are both cross connects that the customers may be paying for that are no longer active, but more importantly there are active connections that are not being billed by the MTDC to the customer. Of course, customers have a reason to find any connections they are paying for that are inactive and periodic audits by the customer will find these, so this number will diminish over time. However, active circuits that are not being billed will continue to exist unless the MTDC operator has a way to improve the cross connect inventory accuracy.
To address the question in the title of this blog post, let’s run some numbers for a data center with a portion of unbilled cross connects. Assuming a monthly price for the cross connect of $250 with an inventory error of 5% yields a significant amount of lost revenue - $2,250,000 for a data center with 15,000 cross connects. Of course, this revenue would be pure profit and falls directly to the bottom line. And unless the inventory accuracy is improved, this revenue is lost year after year after year.
Telescent has introduced the G4 Network Topology Manager (NTM), a dynamic fiber cross connect that solves the issue of inventory accuracy, along with providing many other benefits. The Telescent NTM offers complete cross connect lifecycle management. The system monitors, maps and controls the network during installation, reconfiguration and churn of cross connects to enable a Lights-Out Data Center with machine accurate inventory while preserving the value of the installed fiber plant. The NTM consists of 1,008 input and 1,008 output ports, each connected by a short, uninterrupted internal fiber connection. When a reconfiguration is requested, a robot-driven gripper removes an internal fiber from the original port and moves it to the desired new port. The patented algorithm identifies the unique path to route the fiber around the 1,007 other internal fibers in the system to establish a non-blocking, any-to-any connection. The Telescent NTM is strictly non-blocking and completely automated – essentially unlimited configuration and reconfiguration is possible with the Telescent system without any on-site, manual labor and with the original external fiber connections. The NTM can be configured in a leaf-spine network to allow scaling to >10,000 connections while still preserving the ability for any-to-any connectivity. Since the reconfigurations are controlled by software, all connections are recorded in a database and the state of any connection can be verified at any time. No more unbilled cross connects.
So if incorrect cross connect inventory could be causing lost revenue for you, contact Telescent to learn how to implement the Network Topology Manager in your Data Center.