PTC 2011: CENX, Telx expand Ethernet exchange market presence

Ethernet exchanges may be still a relatively nascent market opportunity with a host of upstart pure play providers and colocation providers emerging, but it's clear that recent moves by both CENX and Telx that 2011 will be a year of ongoing service and market expansion.   

Both CENX and Telx leveraged this week's annual PTC show in Hawaii to separately show off their Ethernet exchange expansion efforts.

First up was CENX. While CENX has been able to expand its Ethernet exchange presence organically, the reality is it can't get everywhere so it has garnered a new relationship with CoreSite Realty Corporation (NYSE: COR), a national data center provider.

By partnering with CoreSite, CENX instantly is able to expand its Ethernet exchange presence in 11 data centers across eight markets, including the Bay Area, Boston, Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. in addition to data centers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.

Under the terms of the agreement, CENX will own and operate its Carrier Ethernet Exchange services with CoreSite's data centers serving as national access points. When the services are fully deployed, CENX's Ethernet exchange services will be made available to all of CoreSite's 600+ data center customers.

The agreement benefits both CoreSite and CENX.

For CENX, the benefit is that it can expand its presence quickly into new markets without having to incur the cost of building a number of new centers.

"The coverage gives our customers the ability to connect into us very quickly and cost effectively, depending on where they are present throughout the United States," said Nan Chen, President of CENX. "It will also enable them to interconnect with other carriers to build the membership of the CENX community."

Chen added that the partnership will enable a new set of applications in partnership with CoreSite "to offer the existing cloud computing providers to access our 15 million Ethernet Service Locations we have."  

Similarly, Chuck Price, SVP, Information Technology, CoreSite Price said the agreement with CENX will help expand the reach and services of its current Any2 IP peering exchange service to extend to its large base of cloud-based customers.

"This agreement with CENX really takes us to the next generation of exchange to for offering that to our customers," he said. "With all of the benefits of carrier Ethernet exchange including faster provisioning time and broader reach at higher bandwidth with SLA-based services."

Price added that "the relationship with CENX brings together an offering for carrier and enterprise customers and allow them to reach these 15 million ESLs that CENX has with higher bandwidth, faster provisioning time and lower cost and higher quality of service."

Not to be outdone TELX, while a bit later to the Ethernet exchange game than CENX, also continues to make progress in expanding its Ethernet exchange presence.

The colocation and interconnection provider, which currently works with Ethernet exchange provider partner Neutral Tandem, is bringing its Telx Ethernet exchange service to its data centers in Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles.

Already available New York, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco, the addition of Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles data centers, which has access to over 260 service providers, will give its customers to an even larger pool of international networks, service providers and content providers.

"This expansion is pretty significant because it brings pretty robust presence into the Los Angeles, Dallas and Miami markets, which broadens the coverage of the 15 market areas that Telx serves," said Glenn Calafati, who recently became the VP and General Manager of Interconnection Services at Telx after a long tenure at Cablevision's Optimum Lightpath business unit. "This is expanding the Ethernet exchange portfolio deeper into the market areas we cover with our data center interconnection products."

For more:
- see the CENX release
- and the Telx release

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CENX reaches 15 million ESLs, appoints Russ Shriver as SVP of marketing
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Telx jumps into the Ethernet exchange fray