Dutch datacentre giant Interxion expands UK footprint
Colo firm opens third London datacentre
Amsterdam-based cloud infrastructure firm Interxion is due to launch its third UK datacentre later this month - LON3 - located on its existing central London Brick Lane campus.
Its UK MD Andrew Fray told CRN's sister publication Channelnomics Europe that its £30m investment is the latest step in its strategy to enable channel firms to connect more rapidly.
"It's important to say that we're not a managed service provider. We provide space, power, physical security, and a high level of connectivity. Our customers then use that canvas to enable their channel firms to scale their business in the most efficient way," Fray said.
"The key connectivity question for these firms is how do they toggle resources between what they've got [on-premise] and what they're prepared to push out into the cloud?
"It's about the ability to move resources in a flexible, agile way, which has always been the dream of cloud. And increasingly, customers do want multi-cloud now."
Interxion describes its network of 50 European datacentres across 11 countries as cloud-neutral hubs.
"We provide super highways to allow our customers to connect to and from the likes of AWS or Azure," Fray explained.
"We're probably the only pan-European datacentre business. We compete with Equinix, which is global, but we're in thirteen cities in eleven countries… So we go from Stockholm down to Madrid and across to Vienna."
Despite Interxion being more commonly known as a datacentre player, Fray was nonetheless keen to correct what he feels are misconceptions about the company.
"Everyone thinks we're about data storage, we're absolutely not. We're about connectivity. Nearly all of our datacentres are placed where the internet exchanges run.
"So our story is that we enable the internet."
The Amsterdam-headquartered firm claims it has logged 46 consecutive quarters of revenue and EBITDA growth. The 800-employee-strong company has already applied for planning permission for LON4 at the same campus.
When asked to what extent the ongoing political uncertainty over Brexit has been a factor in Interxion's decision to invest in the UK, Fray was sanguine.
"Yes, some customers have been making contingency plans; some making hard Brexit plans. That means the possibility of dual country colocation. For example London and Dublin or London and Paris.
"However, we will continue to invest in London because there is significant demand for what we do. The UK is in the top four locations for datacentres."
Fray added that as of yet, no Interexion customers have made the decision to choose such a "duality model", but he is aware of "burgeoning conversations" within firms on whether they should "hedge their bets".
Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris are alongside London as Interxion's most profitable regions.
Yet, beyond the top four, Fray identified the Iberian market, the south of France, and Austria as its fastest growth markets.
"The Iberian peninsula and Spain in particular is growing significantly, which perhaps is not expected, and Marseille has been an incredible success story for us. And what's driving that is connectivity to Africa, the Middle East and the Far East via Marseille and the undersea cables.
He added: "And then there's Vienna, which is our gateway to Eastern Europe."