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Q. Enter recently
announced a partnership with Megaport. What are the key drivers
behind this partnership, and how will it benefit your/their
customers?
Our partnership with Megaport extends accessibility to Enter
Cloud Suite, the first European, OpenStack-based cloud
Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution. It also enables
customers a secure and direct connection to our cloud platform
via any Megaport-enabled facility within its global
footprint.
Megaport is the first step in providing Enter customers with
streamlined, flexible Layer 2 connectivity to our cloud
platform, enabling more security, ease of use and our delivery
of public, private and hybrid cloud solutions. This
collaboration is another key way that Enter is addressing
increasing customer demand for network and cloud services
across Europe and beyond.
Q. Enter Cloud Suite was one of the first
of its kind based on OpenStack – what was the thinking
behind this, and what are the strengths of using open source in
the wholesale and data centre business?
When Enter initially embarked on our journey to becoming a
public cloud provider in 2010, our first choice — like
many others in the space — was to collaborate with a
well-known cloud vendor to deliver the solution. However, we
soon found that the vendor’s pricing policy and
product limitations offered little to no flexibility, and posed
a potential hindrance to our pursuit of accommodating the
growing need for openness and API-ness. So, we made the move to
what was then still a fledgling but very promising cloud
operating system called OpenStack.
As early adopters of OpenStack, we firmly believed in the
project that many around us still regarded as a tool reserved
for and supported by a society of "tech geeks" and "hobbyists".
Our belief was warranted, however. Built upon open source
technology, Enter Cloud Suite is now one of the official cloud
platforms of 52 European institutions and agencies, and
compliant with European data protection and privacy
legislation.
The benefits of the collaborative, open source community
came in the form of feedback and priceless tips, and proved to
be far more fruitful for Enter in the long run. The
motto: You get and you give back; everything is no
one’s, so it is everyone’s.
Furthermore, OpenStack allows us the agility and control to
easily modify and adapt our cloud platform to the needs and
requirements of our customers.
Q. Your international network spans Europe,
the U.S. and Asia. Do you have any plans to expand or grow this
footprint? What does your roadmap look like?
Enter is poised for international expansion. In the
near future, we will be expanding in more cities and countries
in Europe to offer wider reach in a number of additional
markets. Most recently, we were the first Italian ISP to
launch a new Point of Presence in Sparkle’s Sicily
Hub.
Further expansion of our network is planned for later this
year with several new PoPs in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific.
Enter’s global reach, boutique-style
customer service and focus on the European market make us a
strong partner for American and Asian providers, as well as any
providers from around the world that want to increase their
presence and expand business in the region. Our size and
strategic business approach allow us more flexibility and
accessibility than our big box counterparts. We can
support customer projects of any size, large or small.
Q. Virtualisation is a growing theme in the
carrier business – what are the strengths of hosted
infrastructure? How do you utilise it?
Virtualisation runs in two different but, in my opinion,
convergent directions. Traditionally, servers and storage in
data centres have been virtualised to enhance functionality and
enable more advanced features. Today, we are also seeing more
virtualisation in the network, especially in Layer 2.
Virtualisation enables Enter to implement an open platform
not only for its cloud, but also for its network. In
addition to eliminating vendor lock-in, this allows us to
deploy services faster, provide customers with greater
transparency and visibility into the network, and deliver
better network control, reliability and performance.
Q. How important is it to have PoPs in
diverse locations? How to you choose where to deploy a new PoP?
What are your key considerations when choosing partners in this
area?
Our PoP locations are chosen strategically, and our
investment in a specific region is driven by customer
requirements and demand. We can go anywhere our customers need
us to go. We also regularly collaborate with our customers by
finding the right partners to help them expand their networks
in new locations.
Q. What’s next for Enter? What
are you looking to get out of ITW?
We’re excited to catch up with existing
partners and customers as well as forge new business
relationships; ITW provides a perfect platform that enable us
to do so on a global scale. As for the near future, Enter
is working on introducing an open source network platform as
well as conducting testing of an SDN solution we plan to
deliver within the year.