Viewpoint
An interview with Mike Hollands, Director of Market Development & Strategy at Interxion.
Ahead of Submarine Networks EMEA 2020, Total Telecom caught up with Mike Hollands, Director of Market Development & Strategy at Interxion, who shared his insights from a data centre perspective on current trends and disruptors in the submarine networks industry. Find out what he thinks.
What has caused the biggest upheaval in the submarine networks industry in recent years?
I believe its the move to Open Systems. This has changed the dynamics of how partners collaborate on new subsea systems, and enabled partners with very different objectives once the cable comes ashore to nevertheless collaborate on the same subsea project.
Joint Build Agreements, where individual fibre pairs are allocated between specific co-builders, are becoming more popular. What impact does this have on the data centres where these cables land?
It is now common for each co-builder to contract individually for the housing of their specific SLTEs in separate cages. So for a co-build with three partners, we see a requirement for three different cages , despite it being just one subsea cable that comes into the data centre. As a result, interconnection between the co-builders and the community of interest in the data centre needs more careful planning.
Interxion recently completed its second data centre in Marseille? When will the third data centre be ready?
Interxion MRS2 was fully completed in November 2019, and already has a large number of carriers, CDNs and content platforms present inside. The first phase of Interxion MRS3 will be ready for customers in Q2 this year.
What trends do you expect to see in the subsea space in the coming decade?
There will be increasing focus on systems with innovative routes that have compelling value propositions, such as diversity to existing systems, and/or much improved latency between key hubs.
With the emergence of new players in the subsea sphere, how do you approach networking at events like Submarine Networks EMEA?
My approach doesn’t change – my objective is to meet and learn from as many fellow delegates as possible, whether they are a new players or industry veterans.
ABOUT INTERXION
Interxion (NYSE: INXN) is a leading provider of carrier and cloud-neutral colocation data centre services in Europe, serving a wide range of customers through 50+ data centres in 11 European countries. Interxion’s uniformly designed, energy efficient data centres offer customers extensive security and uptime for their mission-critical applications. With over 700 connectivity providers, 21 European Internet exchanges, and most leading cloud and digital media platforms across its footprint, Interxion has created connectivity, cloud, content and finance hubs that foster growing customer communities of interest. For more information, please visit www.interxion.com
SUBMARINE NETWORKS EMEA 2020
We are proud to welcome Interxion as our Silver Sponsor again at Submarine Networks EMEA 2020, 18-19 February 2020 in London where Mike Hollands will be giving a project update on Interxion’s Marseille Campus. The event will be taking place at the Business Design Centre in London on 18th and 19th February. Head over to the event website to keep up to date with the conference.
