The Evolution of the IX Customer Landscape – New Partnerships for New Demands

Yesterday, at the start of the annual #EuropeanPeeringForum (EPF) in Rome, Italy, co-hosted with London Internet Exchange (LINX) , AMS-IX and Netnod , we welcomed the peering community from all over the world. It is such an amazing event featuring the latest industry topics and inspirational speakers such as Fredrik Korsb?ck from AWS, Raul Gutierrez Tuya from Nokia, and Maurizio Goretti from NaMeX. Almost 400 people from more than 50 different countries joined us on the first day and took the opportunity to meet and discuss the most pressing issues of modern business connectivity. Events like the #EPF are so important because it’s a place to discuss new solutions being developed by IXs around the globe and to exchange many new ideas.

For example, in Europe we have seen Internet Exchanges (IX) working together to develop more efficient ways of enabling customers to book and scale their interconnection services, making use of such tools as the IX-API. This kind of initiative has been well received by IX customers. But new challenges arise each day in our connected world, and customers are demanding greater flexibility as well as greater geographical scope. So, what more can we do as an IX community? How can we address customer demands and create more efficient and attractive solutions to solve the challenges they are facing?

Leveraging the strengths of the IX community

One of my talking points at the EPF was working together even more closely as a community through IX partnering. Along with data centres and carriers, we believe that partnerships with IX operators are also essential to meet growing demands on interconnection. This can extend the geographical reach of an IX to other peering ecosystems, allowing for consistent quality and performance with streamlined service delivery and lower costs – all with a one-stop-shop solution: One contract, one bill, one point of contact, and greater geographical scope that each IX is able to offer their customers.

A one-stop shop – where the customer of one IX can book further locations through such a partnership model on the basis of their existing business relations – simplifies interconnection enormously. It needs to be seamless to join and to use. Just think of an airline code-share alliance, like the Star Alliance or One World, where you can use your chosen company’s portal to book flights to destinations that are covered by your airline’s partners, rather than by the individual carrier itself. And of course, each IX operator represents an equal partner in this approach. And why is this necessary? To meet the needs of the big new market for interconnection: enterprises. As the customer landscape for IXs evolves, we need collaboration instead of competition – leveraging existing infrastructure and creating common standards. The more seamless it should be, more important the one-stop shop becomes.

Such a scenario will increase the attractiveness of the offers of all IXs involved towards their respective target customers. As a Europe-wide undertaking, this approach would offer all partners the combined power of an integrated European IX ecosystem, enabling potentially unlimited connectivity within Europe and beyond. The objective of my presentation was to explore and discuss the potential of IX partnerships to create streamlined solutions, cost efficiency, greater performance, and wider geographical scope for all involved – such a solution may be of interest to IX operators and their customers alike. Because why build walls when instead we could serve evolving needs together?

Expanding partnerships

That’s why we at #DECIX believe in maintaining meaningful, fair and respectful collaborations – like our recently announced #partnerships with BIX.BG, NIX.CZ , Atman , and InterLAN Internet Exchange , IX operators in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania respectively. The agreements enable each IX operator to offer their connected customers a cost-efficient and easy solution to interconnect their networks and digital resources across multiple locations within Europe. For our partner IXs, this move increases the attractiveness of what they can offer their respective customers, given that it enables them access to the world’s largest neutral interconnection ecosystem, including DE-CIX Frankfurt, one of the largest Internet Exchanges in the world.

Enterprises are in search of simplified complete solutions that solve their network platform needs, looking for value, performance, security, and geographical distribution. In Europe and beyond, neutrality is key to achieving broad coverage of #interconnection services, as is integration, enabling a one-stop-shop approach with global relevance. Enterprises and networks of all kinds are beginning to understand that taking control of their interconnection needs by connecting to an IX offers them increased quality and resilience, as well as cost efficiency. Well-integrated IX partnerships are an excellent approach to achieve greater geographical reach and densification to serve changing connectivity needs.

Outlook

These interconnection partnerships lead to flexible, efficient, and better solutions for customers. The importance of this was again made clear to me while engaging with other people at the EPF: End users are placing greater demands on network performance, with access to latency-sensitive services becoming the norm. And now more than ever, governments are scrutinizing all aspects of data security, including transmission (including territorial scope) and its storage. Early adopters have embraced these trends from the beginning. However, events in recent years have propelled broader enterprise verticals to implement strategies considering where their workforce, customers and partners are positioned and leveraging their connectivity platform as a competitive advantage. They are in search of “simplified” interconnection solutions that solve their network platform needs, looking for value, performance, security, and geographical distribution.

Are you at EPF? What are your experiences with interconnectivity, partnerships, and the growing demands for #interconnection services? Talk to the DE-CIX Team – Dr. Thomas King , Andreas Sturm , Maxim Pozdnyakov , Omar Vega & Darwin Costa !