Telx is the latest colocation and interconnection provider to take a stab at the still emerging Ethernet Exchange market segment with the debut of its Telx Ethernet Exchange.
Acting as a broker between Ethernet buyers/sellers, the new offering again is one of those tools service providers will use to expand their Ethernet footprint without the pain of establishing one-off interconnection arrangements. Leveraging its existing assets, the Telx Ethernet Exchange will be available in seven interconnection data centers over the next nine months with initial customers being part of a charter program in Q3 2010.
Brad Hokamp, Chief Marketing Officer for Telx says that with the majority of its 28,000 cross connects being Ethernet, launching an Ethernet Exchange platform is not that much a stretch for the company.
"This is a real natural evolution for us as a business, which is really being driven by our customers," he said. "The Ethernet market is the fastest growing data com service out there worldwide, so this is a natural extension for what we offer as far as interconnection family of services."
To light up the new Ethernet Exchange, Telx has deployed Cisco's ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers and its Active Network Abstraction network management software.
Rose Klimovich, Vice President of Product Development and Product Management for Telx, said that the combination of the Cisco ASR and its ANA software is the best fit for the Ethernet Exchange service.
"The ASR is specifically for Ethernet, and I think that's important when you start putting a lot of circuits in a single box," she said, adding that that Cisco's ANA software "is an efficient way to do service activation, provisioning and operations" to enable portals and customer self service.
Although all service providers offering Ethernet have struggled with since Ethernet interconnection issues, the Ethernet Exchange concept as posed by Telx and other players (CENX, Equinix and Neutral Tandem) is arguably nascent with no clear winners yet.
For more:
- see the release here
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