A new way for Cambridge businesses and research institutions to connect to key sites and communities across Europe is now available thanks to Light Blue Fibre, bandwidth infrastructure provider euNetworks, and the UK Innovation Corridor’s most advanced data centre, Kao Data.

Light Blue Fibre, which was launched as a joint venture by University of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire County Council in 2019 is now being enabled by euNetworks, which specialises in data-centre-to-data-centre connectivity across the UK and Europe.

Light Blue Fibre delivers over 100km of ducting and wholesale dark fibre in the Cambridge metropolitan area. This network is in place to facilitate high performance computing (HPC) within the education, research, and life sciences communities.

euNetworks will be responsible for delivering the operational and maintenance support necessary to provide both dark fibre and multi-Terabit high speed managed optical services across the Light Blue Fibre asset. These services will be available to all Light Blue Fibre -connected Cambridge campuses, organisations, wholesale internet service providers (ISPs) and partners from early 2021.

euNetworks additionally offers direct fibre connection to Kao Data’s campus in Harlow and unique fibre-based routes onward to London, around the UK and across Europe.

These new services enable direct, fast and latest generation connectivity to Cambridge’s science and research parks and pave the way for greater high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) collaboration across Europe. The state-of-the-art Kao Data campus has been built specifically for compute-intensive HPC and AI collaboration.

Professor Ian Leslie, Chair of Light Blue Fibre, says: “This is a very exciting development. Light Blue Fibre is connected into many of the key campus locations in and around Cambridge, offering the ability for campus 5G with Edge computing to gain a new and diverse network for the city. Collaboration with euNetworks and Kao Data will further serve the local community of University sites and campus locations, providing even more opportunities for wider connectivity.”

euNetworks’ CEO Brady Rafuse, says: “Data centre connectivity is critically important to businesses today, and our network development and new fibre system delivers vital infrastructure to support the many businesses and communities in Cambridge whose connectivity and collaboration requirements continue to grow.

“Our pan-European network directly connects over 440 key data centres in our operating markets - that is, all the major data centres in Europe, as well as key research sites. Our diverse and unique network routes to these locations, together with the solutions offered by Light Blue Fibre and Kao Data, offer a compelling connectivity response for those in the Cambridge community undertaking mission-critical computing.”

Kao Data’s CEO, Lee Myall says: “Science and research, especially within the life science and bioinformatics sectors, requires localised HPC hardware, low latency and high bandwidths to work with and move enormous datasets and batch files. Having a specialist HPC and AI industrial scale data centre in close proximity to Cambridge, which is connected by Light Blue Fibre and dark fibre directly to their processing points and the wider research network, is a gamechanger.”

Light Blue Fibre, euNetworks and Kao Data will be holding a virtual event on February 24^th 10.30am-12pm to talk through these services, answer any questions and delve deeper into the technical demands the Cambridge community will need in the coming months and years. To reserve your place please register at:  https://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/events/new-full-fibre-network/

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About Light Blue Fibre

Light Blue Fibre Ltd is a joint venture between the University of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire County Council, to make commercially available both organisations’ existing extensive duct and fibre networks. Offering access to over 100km of ducting and dark fibre on a wholesale basis, both the University of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire County Council have plans to further expand their duct and fibre assets. This private company, wholly owned but the University of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire County Council, is one of the first of its kind in the UK.

www.lightbluefibre.co.uk

About euNetworks

euNetworks is a bandwidth infrastructure company, owning and operating 17 fibre based metropolitan networks connected with a high capacity intercity backbone covering 51 cities in 15 countries. The company leads the market in data centre connectivity, directly connecting over 440 today. euNetworks is also a leading cloud connectivity provider, directly connecting to all key cloud platforms with access to additional platforms. The company offers a targeted portfolio of metropolitan and long-haul services including Dark Fibre, Wavelengths and Ethernet. Wholesale, finance, content, media, data centre and enterprise customers benefit from euNetworks’ unique inventory of fibre and duct-based assets that are tailored to fulfil their high bandwidth needs.

www.eunetworks.com

About Kao Data

Founded in 2014, Kao Data develops and operates advanced data centres for high performance colocation. From our hyperscale inspired campus in the heart of the UK Innovation Corridor between London and Cambridge, we provide cloud, HPC, AI and enterprise customers with a world-class home for their compute.

Our Harlow campus - built on the site of Sir Charles Kao’s pioneering discovery of fibre optic cable in 1966 - is a development of four state-of the-art, OCP-Ready®, carrier neutral data centres. When fully completed the 15 acre, +£230m campus will support an ITE load of over 40MW, across 150,000sq ft of technical space – all powered by 100% renewable energy.

Backed by Legal & General Capital and Goldacre - Noé Group, Kao Data is one of the largest campus developments in the UK and represents the future in sustainable, efficient and scalable computing - providing an industry blueprint to develop further best-in-class data centres.

www.kaodata.com