Atlantic.Net Expands Data Center Footprint In U.S., Europe and Asia

Former VAR turned data center operator Atlantic.Net will continue building out its cloud platform by adding three more data centers, the company's CEO told CRN on Friday.

The cloud provider, based in Orlando, Fla., will inaugurate a facility in New York in May, followed by its first data centers outside of North America -- one in London and another in Singapore -- by July, said CEO Marty Puranik.

Those top-tier data centers will offer co-location and cloud services, joining the three Atlantic.Net opened last year in Toronto, Dallas and San Francisco, and its first facility in its home state.

[Related: Atlantic.Net Opens First West Coast Data Center, And Donates Its First Month's Revenue]

The company's growth is largely because of changing dynamics in the channel, Puranik told CRN.

With the advent of the cloud, solution providers are becoming more specialized and focused on specific verticals. That makes them more likely to find customers -- or for customers to find them -- who are more geographically distant.

"In the traditional VAR or integrator space, customers were all local," Puranik told CRN. "Now you're seeing a shift where they've developed a specific skill set in a technology -- they are experts, and they are seeing clients come to them from overseas."

That changing business model explains why Atlantic.Net, which has only a North American presence today, sees 60 percent of its business coming from overseas.

"We have North American VARs that have customers that are overseas. That's why we have to put our servers into these markets," Puranik said of Europe and Asia.

Because of latency issues, and concerns raised by the NSA government eavesdropping scandal, the customers of Atlantic.Net's customers want local hosting, he said.

As Atlantic.Net prepares to expand its footprint, it is also upgrading its offerings. The company will roll out its first 32- and 64-gigabyte images for memory-intensive applications sometime in late May after launching the New York facility. Later in the year, Atlantic.Net plans to offer 128- and 256-gigabyte images as well, Puranik said.

PUBLISHED MARCH 27, 2015