Dutch Hosters Relocate to Redbus

Hollands top Web hosting companies are shifting the bulk of their networking and hosting infrastructures to a new Amsterdam collocation site in a massive migration project involving 4,000 servers.

Collocation specialist Redbus Interhouse plc announced yesterday that it had won the business from rivals TeleCity plc (London: TCY), and InterXion (see Dutch Web Hosts Pick Redbus ). Two of the Web hosting firms, TrueServer BV and IS Interned Services, confirmed today that they are moving from TeleCity to Redbus as their primary collocation vendor.

Internet Online, the third Web hoster cited as a Redbus win, was unavailable for comment.

What motivated the moves?

There has been some speculation that price was a major factor in their decision. “Certain customer segments are more sensitive to price than service,” a spokesman for InterXion stated.Neither TrueServer nor IS would reveal the value of its deal with Redbus, but both cited reasons other than cost. “We’re growing pretty steadily at the moment, and it is very convenient for us to be able to upsize in a flexible way,” sings Corina Kroon, marketing director at IS.

“We’re going to Redbus because it’s flexible and a lot more scaleable,” says Vincent Houwert, chief technical officer at TrueServer.

The collocation market is often a merry-go-round, with firms using the services of different, competing vendors at any one time. Both TrueServer and IS say they’ll still be working with TeleCity, albeit not using it as their primary provider.

TeleCity seizes on this to put some gloss on the loss. “The customers mentioned in the Redbus announcement are extending their existing footprint and have chosen to use a second supplier, which is quite normal,” says a company spokesman. “Many of our larger customers use more than one data center provider in which to house their IT infrastructure.”

Whatever inspired the move, it’s clear that the migration is no small matter. Redbus says that nearly 4,000 servers, accounting for 30,000 of the three firms’ customers are due to be moved. TrueServer alone finds itself in the unenviable position of having to shift some 60 racks of equipment, a migraine-inducing scenario for any IT manager.TrueServer’s Houwert admits the project is a “headache.” However, he adds, the move, due to take place between May and November, is being planned with military precision. “We started planning this whole situation four months ago, and it will take another month before we present our plans to our customers.”

“We’re experienced in migration projects,” says Kroon from IS. "Last year we became one of the first major Web hosting providers to move all our servers to Windows Server 2003." The whole IS kit will need to be moved about 10 miles to its new site.

Both firms are confident that the migration can be achieved with the minimum of disruption to customers. Houwert adds: “We already have a network at Redbus and we will move rack by rack and customer by customer.”

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum