Streetmap has embraced colocation in order to become more efficient

Milton Keynes-based Streetmap is a leading UK online mapping provider, offering high quality mapping and business site location services across the UK since 1996. Its business services are used by many household names and substantial multi-national corporations including Toshiba and Mercedes-Benz.
 
Challenge
Less than a year ago, Streetmap was housing its primary data servers at a facility in central London. Having been delivering map content over the internet for the last 13 years, Streetmap has used a number of data centre providers and the team has a wide experience of the facilities on the market. The data centre in King’s Cross was providing an adequate service, but the technical team was aware that the location presented some potential risks to the business.

Penny Bamborough, operations director, Streetmap, explains: “For a wholly web-based service like ours, it is absolutely vital to maintain 100 per cent uptime and continuity. In an increasingly competitive market any interruptions to our service from power or data outages need to be dealt with swiftly and effectively, but we realised the positioning of the London data centre facility was going to make this difficult to achieve.”

As a Milton Keynes-based business, responding to a call out at the data centre – or even travelling to perform routine maintenance – would typically take the technical staff two hours to reach central London.

“A review of our expenditure, as well as operational efficiency, soon made it very clear that the King’s Cross site wasn’t offering us the best value for money,” Bamborough continues. “This coincided with the natural end of our contract, so it was time to evaluate the other options on the market.”
 
Solution
Bamborough realised that many of the problems with Streetmap’s London data centre were caused by its distance away from the head office, so she ensured the search for a new supplier included the local Milton Keynes area. BlueSquare Data had just opened its N+N redundant facility in Milton Keynes and was offering a very competitive price for IP transmit and co-location. With free, secure parking in a very accessible location, the BlueSquare Data MK site was a natural choice.

The move was handled in a number of careful stages to ensure that Streetmap experienced minimal interruption to its service. Streetmap was connected to a fibre route going back through London, so the first step was to install some test equipment in BlueSquare Data MK and run ‘ping’ tests to check the latency. With the increased distance travelled – MK to London to MK – Bamborough was expecting to have to make a compromise on the benefits of the MK location with an IP transit lag.

“In reality, the connectivity proved excellent,” explains Bamborough. “The results of our ‘ping’ test showed about 2 milliseconds difference between the latency at MK and our previous King’s Cross provider. This really wasn’t enough to be noticeable or pose a problem.”

Through a controlled server migration, with duplicates running at both sites to ensure backup in case of failure, StreetMap moved its servers to the MK site.

“Moving into BlueSquare Data MK was a very smooth process,” Bamborough reports. ”The only problem we encountered on moving in was the need for an additional server rack – it appeared we had more equipment than we had accounted for once we arrived on the data floor. We put the request in to BlueSquare Data and within 24 hours they provided the shelves we needed, so we had no complaints.”
 
Benefits
Since moving in to BlueSquare Data MK less than a year ago, Streetmap has made a 40 per cent saving on its co-location costs. This has been possible through BlueSquare Data’s competitive pricing model, in addition to the greater efficiencies made through the closer proximity of the Milton Keynes site to the Streetmap head office. A higher level of responsiveness from the BlueSquare Data support staff has also reduced the need for the Streetmap team to commit its own time and attention to dealing with minor problems within the data centre.

Bamborough concludes: “I have worked with a large number of hosting providers in the past who have promised the earth but simply don’t deliver on expectations. Working with BlueSquare Data has been a breath of fresh air in comparison. To borrow a phrase, BlueSquare Data does ‘exactly what it says on the tin’, which suits our way of working perfectly.”