Integra has connected its fiber network into 62 data centers, a milestone that shows that its growing fiber network can serve various purposes that are complementary to its business service focus.
Through this expansion, Integra's customers will be able to get high-bandwidth transport via their growing metro and long-haul fiber between their business locations.
"We're in a number of telecom colocation facilities, but we are not ourselves directly in the advance data center business but yet we want make sure our customers have access to those solutions," said Joe Harding, Chief Marketing Officer for Integra, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "Our focus is making sure our network is optimized to enable our customers to leverage the ecosystems and services coming out of those data centers."
Likewise, data center customers that reside in these centers will be able to gain access to the service provider's suite of Layer 2 E-Line point-to-point and point-to-multipoint Ethernet services. In addition, these tenants will be able to take advantage of Integra's managed networking services and business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR), such as Wavelength Services and Cloud Firewall Service.
This milestone is only one part of a broader data center deployment strategy. By the end of the year, the CLEC plans to provide connectivity into another 13 data centers.
Today, Integra's on-net data centers include various locations in 10 states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
California's Bay Area and Phoenix, Ariz. are big data center expansion targets. Integra will add four new data center connections in the Bay Area, bringing it to a total of 10, while adding seven new locations including four in Phoenix.
Connecting more data centers to its fiber network is significant to the CLEC as it continues to establish itself as a player serving larger businesses in the health care and professional services segments.
Harding said that while it's focus today is to provide network connectivity to data centers, the CLEC would consider "either establishing strategic partnerships where we are leveraging capabilities to provide services directly to our customers or partner on a Greenfield basis with a partner to build out a new space and build out our own set of cloud services."
For more:
- see the release
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Updated article on Sept. 27 with quotes from Joe Harding, CMO for Integra.