Strategic growth and collaboration with Interxion

Interxion offers companies – from large to small – space in its data centres. In addition, the co-location provider ensures a good environment: from cooling to power. Minkels solutions are a solid addition to the services of Interxion, according to Franklin Hendriks, Senior Customer Implementation Manager (Solution Design & Implementation) at Interxion.

FOOTPRINT IN EUROPE

Interxion is a Dutch-based colocation provider with a large footprint in Europe. Hendriks: “We have twenty years of experience and we operate about fifty state-of-the-art data centres in Europe. From Copenhagen to Paris. Thanks to our consistent designs, our customers can scale up easily within Europe. That focus on one continent – and not on the whole world – is very consciously chosen. That way, we can create extra flexibility and work faster than with a global approach.”

INTERCONNECTION AND COLOCATION SERVICES

Interxion mainly supplies its customers with interconnection and colocation services. “We offer space to more than 700 connectivity providers. In addition, we offer our customers a wide range of space options – from a few racks to a complete data centre – to meet their needs in terms of scale and security. This approach is paying off; we are seeing increasing demand – even from the US and Asia. These often large cloud providers choose us specifically because of our strategic locations and our connectivity options.”

MOST IMPORTANT LOCATION

Frankfurt is currently the most important location for Interxion. “This is the fastest growing region for all data centres because it has the highest density of connectivity. We ourselves have 14 date centres in Frankfurt. Marseille is also an important location; all sea cables enter Marseille. Our data centres are gateways to emerging markets and landing sites for important continental submarine cables. We can easily extend the reach of our customers to new domestic, regional and international markets.”

STRATEGIC COLLABORATION

Interxion focuses on strategic growth and collaboration with its customers. “If a customer, for example, has space in both the Netherlands and in Germany, we set up the same solution in both countries creating a comparable look & feel. Standardisation helps us tremendously with our growth, just like a more efficient way of dealing with our quantity of suppliers. We now have three preferred suppliers, including Minkels. Minkels products are very solid and customers also see that. We often receive requests from customers themselves to work with Minkels racks. We are also very pleased with the aisle containment from Minkels. This is a good quality product with good support. For us, aisle containment is of vital importance. The aisle has to function properly, otherwise this will affect our service levels, with which, for example, we guarantee a certain temperature or humidity.”

STANDARDISATION

Thanks to intensive collaboration, Interxion and Minkels can deliver consistent, unambiguous and easily implemented solutions throughout Europe. “Whenever possible, we strive for standardisation. This provides clarity for our customers, but also facilitates our internal communication. Thanks to a customer-specific catalogue, everyone knows exactly which Minkels products we can use. We have opted for standardisation according to the 80-20 rule; 80% standard and 20% flexibility.”

DIFFERENT DATA CENTRES

Interxion also needs this flexibility because their data centres are set up in very different locations. “If we need extra space in Amsterdam, for example, we might build a completely new data centre. But we also create data centres in existing buildings with historical value. For example, in Marseille we operate from a submarine dock from the Second World War – cultural heritage. We have maintained the shell and managed to set up a high-tech data centre inside. In Stockholm, we are in a similar situation; operating from an old building of a newspaper printing company. The company is still there, but printing presses are regularly removed. When that’s the case, we buy or lease such a hall and add extra capacity to our data centre. These kinds of projects require a special approach – amazing projects in a challenging environment”, Hendriks concludes.

INTERXION FACTS

50 data centres

13 cities

11 countries

2000+ customers

24/7 support

99,999% uptime

Minkels Magazine 2018-2