Originally posted to Capacity Media
Ivo A. Ivanov is Chief Operating Officer of the DE-CIX Group AG and also – as Chief Executive Officer of DE-CIX International – responsible for the global business activities of the Internet Exchange Operator.
Q. This year, DE-CIX is celebrating its 25th anniversary. How did the journey for DE-CIX start in the UAE?
Around 2008, there was no local interconnection taking place in the Middle East. The request for content went back and forth from the Gulf region to Europe and back. This became challenging from a latency and network performance standpoint. DE-CIX was asked by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of UAE to participate in a project to create a digital hub in the Middle East. After thorough analysis of interconnection ecosystems in Europe and US, we came up with a recommendation and created a new interconnection platform in the Middle East. This was the beginning of UAE-IX powered by DE-CIX in Dubai. DE-CIX has been operating UAE-IX since 2012. The UAE-IX was our first project outside Germany, and it proved to be a big success. We have a thriving IX in Dubai that ‘keeps the local traffic local’. This experience gave us the ingredients to be successful in creating interconnection ecosystems outside of Germany. Besides extending our business to other markets in opening IXs that are completely run by us, DE-CIX has taken its “Apollon-as-a-Service (AaaS)” program to the next level. The DE-CIX AaaS program includes a range of services, such as the provision and installation of the technology, maintenance, and support for marketing and sales. Further examples of the DE-CIX AaaS program – besides the UAE-IX – is the SEECIX powered by DE-CIX in Athens and the Ruhr-CIX powered by DE-CIX, which was recently announced.
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