Architecting the Future of Hybrid Cloud

Trusted Partnership and State-of-the-Art Data Center Services Help Deliver Critical Services with Confidence

With an expanding, global cloud platform, leading global ICT solutions provider T-Systems required a data center solution that provides exceptional performance and offers future-proofed, sustainable outcomes on behalf of current and future customers.

Opportunity

Empowering an Expanding, Sophisticated Cloud Ecosystem

T-Systems, part of Deutsche Telekom Group (DT), delivers leading Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) solutions to major corporations and public-sector organizations across the globe. With around 28,000 employees worldwide and annual revenue of EUR 4.0 billion (2021), T-Systems is one of the leading digital and cloud services providers, offering world-class service while supporting local and global customers by extending its global portfolio, expertise, and operational capabilities. Led by its dedication to providing transformative ICT solutions, the company today has nearly 100 managed data centers, 56,800 open system servers, and more than three million managed SAP users.

T-Systems is an organization that embraces disruption and strives for next-generation results driven by innovative solutions. Its multi-cloud ecosystem is a foundation for its tailored digitalization offerings for a host of verticals, including automotive, manufacturing, logistics, transportation, healthcare, and oil & gas. It achieves this disruptive success on behalf of its customers by specializing in vertical clouds that complement the organization’s industry insights, meeting rapidly increasing demands for specific platform forks.

At this company’s core is a client-centric, trustworthy approach to customer service, retaining customer intimacy even as its cloud platform expands and grows more complex to meet emerging needs. Partnering with leading platforms is part of maintaining this central pillar of trust.

This is an organization that knows data centers. That’s why, when the company was looking to expand its sophisticated cloud service portfolio, they knew exactly what they were looking for — and exactly what they would need when selecting the right partner for their digital transformation and platform expansion goals.

With these infrastructure foundations and a history of dedicated service in place, T-Systems is always looking to further expand this strategic platform and ensure more organizations can migrate to a multi-cloud-enabled platform. In turn, this will help a growing number of businesses gain the hybrid and multi-cloud benefits of agility, resilience, flexibility, scalability, security and more. As the need to expand became more apparent, T-Systems understood that its hybrid cloud platform offering is based on an architecture that demands significantly more power than cloud offerings of the past — which meant selecting a highly capable, robust data center was paramount.

 

Evaluation

Choosing a Partner to Meet Future-Proof Requirements with Exceptional Solutions

T-Systems’ RFP process for a new data center selection began in March 2019 with a full review of all eligible providers in the Houston market. This investigation took a range of mission-critical factors into account, including the providers’ available technology and offerings across security, redundancy, location, cost and beyond.

Stream Data Centers’ Houston campus (located in the Woodlands) emerged as the leader among the group due to a number of advantages, including the campus’s advantageous location in relation to T-Systems’ primary data center. The location is also placed outside of the 500-year floodplain and has 185 mph wind ratings with an uplift-rated building and equipment yard, so it’s protected against unforeseen weather events and able to keep the IT equipment housed inside safe from outages. As the proximity of railways, highways, airport flight paths, and natural gas lines were diligently assessed, the resilience, security, and superior geographic location of Stream’s site became clear.

Adding to its reliability was the fact that Stream’s Houston data center is connected to a separate power grid from T-Systems’ core facility, which allowed for added redundancy in the event that the primary location experienced any unexpected events. As a secondary site, Stream’s campus offered unrivaled protection and assurance against downtime. In fact, this facility is backed by 8 consecutive years of 100% power and cooling uptime, which stood strong even against 1,000-year storms like Hurricane Harvey and Winter Storm Uri.

Sustainability, Connectivity, and Robust Capability

Beyond geographic location and the diversity it added to protect T-Systems’ service deliverability, Stream’s data center offerings were also able to meet each and every unique project requirement:

• Future-proofed connections: Through Stream, T-Systems is able to enrich its public cloud offering by leveraging multi-cloud connectivity providers like Megaport. This is crucial for enabling the delivery of a robust hybrid cloud platform. With T-Systems’ addition, cloud offerings available within Stream’s ecosystem are similarly strengthened with new high-value services.
• High power density requirements: Highly specific cooling and power-per-rack demands were in place, for which Stream could provide large rooms with 3-foot raised floors and tall ceilings, making it easier to control ambient temperatures to ensure the success of high-density deployments.
• Environmental mandates: T-Systems has clear, multi-stage goals for sustainability across its operations with an ultimate goal of fully eliminating its carbon footprint, which means every deployment must be able to help them achieve those ends. Stream’s expertise in energy procurement and efficient operations support customers’ environmental goals by creating ease of access to renewable energy options in the market, as well as offering consultative partnerships to help craft the best-fit strategy to match all requirements. Combined with the Houston facility’s LEED certification and the state’s renewable energy options and incentives, sustainability goals like T-Systems’ can be easily met, preparing tenants for the environmental and energy-centric needs of IT’s next generation.

Ultimately, T-Systems selected Stream Data Centers as its partner of choice to deliver holistic, powerful and energy-efficient IT solutions across space, power, cooling, security and audit support. With this partnership in place, Stream’s Houston campus is now a trusted part of T-Systems’ fabric of data centers, all of which support global and local operations with cloud operations services.

Stream’s Houston campus in the Woodlands checks every box on the IT checklist, enabling tenants to benefit from a secure location, highly resilient infrastructure and ample connectivity options. Historically, this locale wasn’t the Houston market’s go-to location for data center operators. The Woodlands represents ‘higher ground’ for most of the Houston area, which is important to customers seeking to reduce the growing risk of a wind and flood related disaster.  Operating in a highly protected facility in a location that survived thousand-year events has made the area highly attractive for customers like T-Systems.

Here’s just a few reasons why T-Systems entrusted their cloud platform to this facility:

• 8-year track record of uninterrupted operations
• Uptime Tier III Design Certified with Miami-Dade (185 MPH) wind certification
• Dual underground utility power feeds from two substations
• LEED Gold with sustainable power solutions in place
• Support for high density deployments over 30 kW per cabinet including chilled water to the rack
• Network-rich environment with a strong mix of local, long haul and dark fiber providers
• K-4 rated entry and front fence
• A diverse, inclusive culture that is dedicated to transparent win/win customer and employee relationships

It’s advantages like these that made T-Systems sure that Stream Data Centers was the partner that could help them confidently deliver game-changing cloud platforms to their global user base.

“Our mission is to provide the best solutions to our customers, with the right partners, using state-of-the-art technology. It was in the spirit of that mission that we decided to partner with Stream, and we are very excited about the value and possibilities that Stream brings to the table. Another key element of our decision was sustainability, and I am confident that our decision to partner with Stream will contribute to our sustainability strategy by helping us be more energy efficient.”  – Mauro Guzelotto, Head of Cloud Services, T-Systems

“We’re proud to welcome T-Systems to our Houston campus — their reputation as a trusted provider of mission-critical IT services to a global base of innovators and organizations precedes them, and we couldn’t be happier to bring that value and service excellence to our entire ecosystem at Houston I. It was clear from the beginning of our partnership that we align completely on the dedication to a customer-first, hands-on, collaborative approach to service that unerringly puts the needs of the user first. This made us confident that Stream could deliver exactly what T-Systems and its customers need, both today and in the future. T-Systems is one of the very best at what they do, and we believe our services match their platforms to create unbeatable results. Stream is thrilled to be a foundational element of this mission-critical architecture.” – Chad Rodriguez, Vice President of Network and Cloud at Stream Data Centers

Fulfillment

Achieving Alignment and Seamless Integration for Exceptional Results

Today, T-Systems’ new hybrid cloud platform has been successfully installed at the Stream facility, and it is ready for customer migration. Pre-deployed power distribution is featured in the rack deployments, which enables local staff to perform power delivery adds, changes and removals easily — without the need for additional electricians or customer disruption. This element of the deployment improves speed and flexibility for power to the racks, helping T-Systems remain as agile and dynamic as possible on behalf of its users. The alignment and collaboration between Stream and T-Systems enables this project and its deployment to remain highly tailored and individualized, in turn meeting aggressive, future-proofed growth requirements with efficient, secure IT outcomes.

As a result of this symbiotic deployment, customers in the Houston market can access T-Systems’ leading suite of IT service offerings and leverage their innovative platforms to further their own digital transformation initiatives. Being selected by a global leader like T-Systems is a great testament to Stream’s Woodlands facility and team members.

T-Systems and Stream Data Centers have established a trusted, cooperative partnership that empowers the evolution of the cloud and serves as a foundation for the ongoing enrichment of all T-Systems customers’ digital platforms. When it comes to meeting challenging goals like a net-zero carbon footprint and aligning with the future of eco-conscious technology, Stream and T-Systems are set to achieve these initiatives by collaborating with the right insight, expertise and operational fulfillment. Plus, a clear alignment on certification and audit requirements ensures that T-Systems will always remain ahead of evolving industry and customer infrastructure needs. Now, this hybrid cloud platform is wholly supported and ready to grow as swiftly as the digital world demands it.

“The partnership between T-Systems North America and Stream Data Centers allows our joint existing and future customers to travel their cloud journeys with the certainty that availability, relatability, sustainability and security are managed by two of the most relevant IT and DC experts in the market.”  – Cesar Martinez, Managing Director for T-Systems in North America.