As VoIP provider 8X8 continues to expand its presence into larger business market segment, the VoIP-centric provider has signed an agreement to connect into Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) DC6 campus located in Ashburn, Va.
Already well connected in New York City and Silicon Valley, the addition of the Ashburn campus means 8x8 now has a total of five U.S.-based data centers.
Through the Equinix IBX data center, 8x8 immediately gains direct access to over 190 networks, which will give it more options to exchange business data with its carrier partners.
A key requirement in picking Equinix's Virginia-based facility over other area data center providers was high power density.
"As the servers become more power hungry, we need to be able to get more performance out of each server it will be essential for us to use this space that's been provided to us," said Mehdi Salour, VP of Network Operations for 8x8. "A lot of data centers out there aren't able to provide high power density meaning a lot of racks would stay empty, which is not the case with the Equinix facility."
By establishing a presence in the Virginia facility, 8x8 will be able to get to its customer base-one that includes a growing set larger business and government customers. Being closer to its customers, Salour explains, enables it to more efficiently respond to network issues.
"We would prefer to be closer to our customers because when there are issues over the Internet--particularly ISPs expressing problems on a particular hop--these Internet issues would have less impact on the end users as they will be closer to us with multiple carriers and peers," he said.
In addition to being able to respond quicker, the new data center will enhance 8x8's network redundancy from the Ashburn, Va. data center.
If a major catastrophic event affects its data center location in Silicon Valley, 8x8 will continue to provide its services without any interruption.
"We're going with a mirrored model where every service is replicated at this data center so we're going to be able to provide full services to our customers in case of any event like an earthquake," Salour said.
Given the location of the Equinix location in Ashburn, the obvious benefit of the agreement is that it will enable it to respond to federal customers with the Silicon Valley site as a backup.
But the more obvious benefit of this move will enable 8x8 to respond to larger business customers' who are increasingly requiring network redundancy at specific locations. "We've built the redundancy already between the data centers in Silicon Valley, but with the D.C. facility we gained geographic redundancy functionality."
For more:
- see the release here
Related articles:
8x8 adds Virtual Office Mobile to iPhone users' arsenal
8x8 picks up Central Host
8x8 launches HD voice for its Virtual Office product
8x8: Service outage caused by unaffiliated ISP interference
8x8 sees Q2 profits increase with new customers and sales team