Q&A: Mary Stanhope, VP of marketing, Global Capacity

Q&A: Mary Stanhope, VP of marketing, Global Capacity

Mary Stanhope, VP of global marketing for Global Capacity, talks to Capacity about the company's targets for 2016, and the importance of bringing fibre to businesses in the US metro market.

 

Mary-Stanhope
What have been Global Capacity’s three key highlights for 2015?

In 2015 the migration from legacy private-line services to Ethernet transport was forecast by the market to accelerate. Global Capacity saw this acceleration first hand with its Ethernet Service growing 54.8% in 2015. There was growth across all Ethernet options from Global Capacity’s fibre-based Carrier Ethernet connecting business into leading cloud providers at 10Gbps, Ethernet-over-copper (EoC) giving businesses without fibre stronger high-speed options up to 100Mbps, Ethernet over TDM filling in gaps for ubiquitous coverage and asymmetrical Ethernet offering businesses the benefit or Ethernet at lower broadband prices. 

Global Capacity saw success in delivering on customer demand for access to cloud. Global Capacity established secure, direct connectivity to multiple cloud service providers including Google Cloud Platform and Equinix Cloud in 2015. As medium and large companies move servers to data centres, they become more comfortable – from a security and reliability standpoint – with these remote environments. Global Capacity is a part of those discussions and decisions, and has delivered on corresponding increases in VPN and Ethernet transport demand.

Finally, in 2015, Global Capacity successfully completed its goal of integrating the network, applications and data systems of the MegaPath network business acquisition into its award winning One Marketplace. Simultaneously the company invested to expand the national network with increased EoC coverage and bandwidth to 350,000 commercial locations in 58 markets across 28 states and lighting new metro fibre rings in seven metros – Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Washington DC, Atlanta, San Francisco and Chicago -  interconnecting carrier hotels, enterprise data centres, central offices and cloud computing destinations.

 

What are your main goals for 2016?

Movement to the cloud will continue at a measured pace, spurring additional connectivity needs. Global Capacity and its Application, OTT, and cloud service providers partners are working together to define new and better ways for business customers to connect to their services. Cloud connectivity made simple will continue to be the focus for Global Capacity in its road-map for the One Marketplace network, applications and delivery. With this we expect to see the growth of higher bandwidth Ethernet and wavelength services, perhaps even application and cloud providers bundling network with their products. 

The world has become one large connected market. Whether connecting to or from America, Global Capacity expects to see growth in the US - international network service solutions. One Marketplace eliminates the complexity and inefficiency of the US network market, allowing international service providers to easily connect to over 9.6 million business addresses in the US. Northern American enterprises turn to Global Capacity’s One Marketplace to leverage a single agreement, SLA, and billing of services across the globe. Global Capacity not only knows what international service options are available from which providers, they have competitive pricing.  

Our brand promise of ‘Connectivity Made Simple’ will be seen by both customers and suppliers in the transformation of The One Marketplace application. Customers will gain access to a new service lifecycle dashboard, an updated network builder and easy to use mobile features. Suppliers will see a new portal not only to update pricing, service, and coverage, but manage orders and open service tickets. It will be a busy year continuing to transform how businesses buy network services. 

 

How do you expect the US metro market to develop in 2016?

Building fibre to businesses is becoming a more attractive investment for carriers. The high demand for bandwidth from businesses in today’s digital era makes network connectivity a must have for commercial real estate properties – not simply to the building basement but to the business premise. The benefits of a connected building include access to an ecosystem of data centres and business applications. As data flows in and out of commercial properties network virtual services and virtual private lines will change the enterprise network architecture supporting centralised network services and multi cloud and destination routing.  

 

What challenges do you expect from this market and how will you overcome these?

Transparency is a key challenge in the metro market – who has what where? And how do you get from a business suite to the port on a computing server. Often this is more than the “circuit” connect building to building. As the cloud buying experience raises the bar on how businesses expect to buy technology services, networks need to adjust how they collaborate with building owners, other providers, data centre meet me rooms, and computing providers to deliver and ensure premise to destination services. Not only will this experience require a blurring of the traditional D-marc it will also require service providers to leverage a multitude of access technologies connecting into a fibre core to achieve ubiquitous metro coverage. 

 

What does Global Capacity hope to gain from Metro Connect 2016?

Global Capacity’s One Marketplace connects buyers and sellers in a real-time marketplace environment. As with any marketplace the balance of supply and demand is critical to maintain a healthy marketplace. Metro Connect is the show where Global Capacity can connect with executives and decision makers. This year at Metro Connect we expect to close deals and move the needle on interconnections to key destinations such as datacenters. 

 

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