14 Years of developing DE-CIX

Time flies.

I remember like it was yesterday when I first met our CEO Harald Summa in 2004 or 2005. That happened to be in the immigration line at Miami Airport - we both just arrived from Germany and were on our way to a Peering Forum hosted by LINX & Terremark - the predecessor of what would become the GPF (or "Peering Cruise").

Back then I was employed as a Peering Manager at AS3320 - Deutsche Telekom ICSS. I had just moved back to Germany from the US.

Ever since I started to be involved in Peering back in the late 1990's I was always following the development of DE-CIX closely. But it wasn't until some conference or event in Germany when I met Harald again and we started chatting about the future development of DE-CIX. I asked him to "give me a call whenever DE-CIX is ready to take the next step".

That call I received in fall 2005 while I was waiting at a Tram station in Bonn where I just finished my work day at DT. My interview took place at the "Headquarter" of the eco associaton. Not exactly a real office but a 3 bedroom appartment. In March 2006 I started my new job at DE-CIX; basically being responsible for Sales, Marketing, Events and many other things my colleagues weren't interested in.

It was such a small organization back then. In the Frankfurt office it was basically Wolfgang Tremmel and myself with Arnold Nipper (DE-CIX' Co-Founder & CTO) and Harald occasionally swing by. We served around 170 customers and the peak traffic was about 60GBps.

We have come a long way.

Using the marketing claim "Your Gateway to Eastern Europe" I started to travel all over Europe, talking at conferences and evangelized Peering. Soon I was joined by Ivo Ivanov (who is fluent in Bulgarian & Russian) who worked as a Lawyer for eco back in the days. He is now serving as the CEO of DE-CIX International. A truly amazing career - well deserved.

We traveled all over Eastern Europe. It didn't matter if it was winter time and -25 degrees centigrade in Moscow or Summer time and +40 degrees in the Ukraine. I was amazed how successful we were in convincing the Eastern European providers to extend their networks to Frankfurt and get direct peering sessions with the major Content Providers of the world. And I'm still amazed how much alcohol intake a human body can manage. Literally every event we went to a significant drinking and partying component was involved ;-) I remember we were co-hosting the St. Petersburg (Russia) Peering Forum when everyone was drinking lots of coffee in the afternoon. Later in the day I figured out they were drinking Coffee with Brandy.

We must have done something right. Not just the drinking.

Following a meeting with some regulatory folks at the first ever MENOG meeting in Doha/Qatar we were approached by the TRA, the regulatory authority in the UAE which asked us for support. We ended up with a significant consulting project in the UAE. Our Team established a field office (not tot far away from Jumeirah Beach and over the period of 1.5 years we developed a framework for Interconnection & peering for the UAE. This ultimately led to the creation of the UAE-IX, powered by DE-CIX. That was our proof of concept that we could pull off IXP's in other countries.

Another 10+ Years went by and DE-CIX launched a good number of additional initiatives. We launched a number of additional IXP's incl. the one in NYC. I had a great time putting all the bits and pieces together. Unlike one of our competitors we made a lot of good decisions. And by far the smartest decision we made was to hire Ed d'Agostino to take the lead of our North American initiative. Today we are the No. 1 exchange in the NY/NJ metro market :-)

Our latest ventures are the new JVCos in Malaysia and Singapore. While the arrival of COVID19 did slow down our rollout plan we are still committed to make this a big success, too. And while I generally stopped wearing dark suits many years ago ... if required and I need to meet up with the government (the picture shows me with the Laysian Minister of Telecommunications in Kuala Lumpur) I will at least find a dark jacket everywhere; even in a shop in Malaysia where the average size tends to be XS ;-)

I could continue this for hours. But I guess I shouldn't miss my upcoming conference call.

While DE-CIX was initiated 25 Years ago I personally had the pleasure to be part of it (with a few exceptions) for the last 14 Years. It has been truly an amazing time with great colleagues and supportive customers. I'm glad and thankful I have been part of DE-CIX for many years (and I still am). Special Thanks go out to our CEO Harald Summa.

We are constantly launching new activities and products and our marketing machinery seems a little to loud and colorful at times - please rest assured - interconnection and Peering is in our DNA and will be the core of everything we do.

When I started to write this text I only wanted to invite my Linked In contacts to our upcoming Virtual 25 Years DE-CIX Anniversary show only - obviously the plan must have changed while writing ;-)

https://withoutyou.de-cix.net/virtual-25years-anniversary-show/

Everyone - stay safe and Healthy. I wish you all the be during this challenging time.