The Isle of Man is home to five datacentres, each with resilient cooling, power, and security systems. Typical services include colocation, cloud, IP transit and managed hosting. The Island benefits from several fibre links connecting the Isle of Man to the UK and Ireland for onward connectivity.
Datacentre List
- Continent8 – Isle of Man DC
- Domicilium – Ronaldsway
- Manx-Telecom – Douglas North
- Manx-Telecom – Greenhill
- Netcetera – The Dataport
* For this blog post, I would define a datacentre as a facility with more than 50 racks capacity. It must also have the typical infrastructure components (fire suppression, UPS, generators, security, etc.). Many Isle of Man ISPs and network operators have Points of Presence, but they are out of scope for this article.
You can view each provider’s specifications and service offerings on their respective websites.
There is one underlying feature across all the datacentres; they all benefit from the Isle of Man’s reliable power and communications infrastructure.
The Isle of Man Government prides itself on its “can-do” approach to business and providing the right environment for digital businesses to flourish. It is no coincidence the Isle of Man is home to some of the world’s leading blockchain, digital, e-gaming and financial services organisations.
A wealth of choice
The fact the Island has four datacentre operators (and five datacentres) provides the customer with a wealth of choice. It gives them the power to evaluate each operator’s technical and commercial proposition, while Cloud technology presents the opportunity to spread their solution across multiple datacentres, delivering unparalleled resilience.
Each datacentre (and operator) has its particular strengths, USPs, service portfolio and commercial model.
Typical services include:
- Colocation (IaaS)
- Dedicated Servers
- Cloud and Virtualisation
- Platform services (PaaS)
- Online backup and DR
- Managed services
- Network connectivity, WAN services, and IP Transit
Navigate the Isle of Man Datacentre market
We have over a decade of experience working with clients who have opted to locate their infrastructure in the Island’s datacentres. Our customers include established Isle of Man businesses, alongside the UK, European and international businesses.
Whether you have a new hosting requirement or are contemplating a change in your existing hosting arrangements, MTG can help.
We can provide the following services:
- Understanding your business, regulatory and technical requirements.
- Evaluating each vendor and hosting facility.
- Formulating a tender or RFP relating to your project.
- Approaching each vendor, arranging tours and commercial proposals.
- Isle of Man IT Support and Managed Security.
- Evaluating bids and proposed solutions.
- Contract and solution management.
- Remote hands
- Hardware procurement, technical build and ongoing service management.
Our expertise in hosting, networking, telecoms and the Isle of Man market all ensure you will benefit from our vast experience in this field. Our technical experience covers a broad range of scenarios, including e-commerce platforms, Isle of Man IT support, managed security, VDI, private cloud, DR/BCP, replication and high-density computing.
Communications
None of Europe’s Tier-1 Transit providers has a POP on the Isle of Man. However, the Island is well served by several ISPs and network operators. Each provider operates its own ASN and transit networks.
- Continent 8 – AS14537
- Bluewave – AS201898
- Domicilium – AS15766
- Manx Telecom – AS13122
- Netcetera – AS24851
- Sure – AS8680
- Wi-Manx – AS42455
E-llan Communications also offers an extensive on-Island optical transport network available to operators. The E-llan portfolio also includes WDM/Ethernet services to the UK.
Isle of Man Internet service providers (ISPs)
Several other ISPs offer various niche services, depending on your requirements. A full list of licence holders is available on the Communications and Utilities Regulatory Authority website.
Broadband services
A full range of broadband services is available, including DSL, VDSL, FTTP, Fibre, Microwave, Starlink, and WiFi technologies.
Internet Exchange
Despite several datacentres and a mature internet environment, the Isle of Man was slow to adopt the concept of an Internet Exchange. The not-for-profit Manx Internet Exchange was formed in 2016, but despite interest from some operators, an IXP was never built.
In 2020, ManxIX was formed to enable providers and businesses to exchange internet traffic. As of 2022, ManxIX has no active peers on its peering network.
Latency
Latency from the Isle of Man to Manchester is ~2ms and ~8ms to London. Inter-ASN latency between IOM operators can be 1-30ms, depending on network path/service/etc.
Service Options
All the providers offer IP transit, WAN and network services.
Pricing
Bandwidth pricing
Bandwidth pricing can vary greatly between providers, subject to the usual parameters such as CDR, burst, DDOS protection, and diversity. We would not expect you to get IP transit or MPLS rates that you would receive in Manchester or London; however, some providers are known to be competitive.
Power
The power infrastructure on the Isle of Man is deemed very reliable. While there is no mass availability of green power, the Isle of Man Government recognises renewables must feature going forward.
The standard rates of power from the utility company are available on their website.
The price you pay in a datacentre would be higher when you factor in the overhead of UPS, generators, diversity, etc.
Are you developing an Isle of Man Datacentre Presence?
We regularly work in all five Isle of Man datacentres on behalf of our client base.
If you have a requirement to host in the Isle of Man, whether for esports, blockchain, e-Gaming, or a Digital Business application – then get in touch to see how we can assist. We can supply hardware, rack and configure, provide remote-hands or network consultancy.
Isle of Man Colocation and Cloud
MTG also provides colocation and cloud services in the Isle of Man, within our colocation space in the Isle of Man DCs.
Connections to Azure/AWS
Multiple operators provide L2 and MPLS services to London and Dublin, which facilitates services such as Azure Expressroute and AWS Direct Connect.
Speak to the Isle of Man datacentre experts
Contact MTG today to see how your business can benefit from our experience in the Isle of Man hosting market. Whether you want to review your existing arrangements for budgetary reasons or evaluate your existing technical environment – we can help.
Call us on +44 1624 777837 or e-mail sales@mtg.im
