A POP in Marseilles will serve customers in Africa

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Interxion's commitment to Internet exchange services

Fabrice Coquio, president of Interxion, spoke recently about the management and commercial potential of the Marseilles data centre, and Interxion's position within France-IX. Interxion operates 39 data centres in 11 countries. It has more than 500 connectivity providers and 20 Internet exchanges. Its business model is based around city centres, in low latency locations. Latency is a key point addressed by Interxion. Gaming companies, for example, need low latency connections to provide profitable services to gaming communities. Similarly, the growth of mobile banking services in Africa means that African financial institutions need minimal latency, but highly secure arrangements, of the kind provided by France-IX and Interxion. Interxion can provide, from Marseilles, 17 milliseconds connection to Alexandria, for example - and there is the possibility now of connection from Marseilles to cities such as Mombasa in less than 25 milliseconds. Given that, by 2050, Africa will be populated by more than two billion people the commercial opportunities stemming from this kind of performance is huge.

Interxion is a neutral partner. The company was established in 1999 and has been managed for the past 16 years by Coquio. Its data centre in Marseilles is geared towards emerging markets forconnectivity - and, logically, Africa is a key component of its future profiling. The Marseilles site, MRS1, has a concurrently maintainable architecture, offering 99,999 per cent availability. The facility is monitored 24/7, 365, in real-time, and is equipped with high-specification cooling towers, chillers, CRAC units, fire-fighting equipment, generators and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units.

As Simon presented a view of the growth based around emerging market connectivity, so Coquio spoke of the prospects for MRS1 in relation the prospective growth in African online services. He said, "Marseilles does not need to be a transit city anymore; it can now be considered a content city, and it is now a gateway to Africa."

Key to this growth is the presence of multiple lading points for telecommunications submarine cables. Marseilles's geographic location makes it a strategically logical option as a city of information and transit to serve Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Coquio said, "Just on the other side of the Mediterranean, we have more than 20mn people waiting to use smart infrastructure."

MRS1 is indeed rapidly growing. There are now more than 70 connectivity providers present in MRS1, all available to be connected via the Meet Me Rooms managed by Interxion. And the number is increasing. Capacity providers installed in Marseilles include not only Seacom but also Bharti Airtel, BICS, Maroc Telecom, Seacom, Tata Communications, Telecom Egypt, Telecom Italia Sparkle, Tunisie Telecom and WIOCC. Submarine cable systems working through MRS1 include I-ME-WE (India-Middle East-Western Europe), Med Cable Limited, SeaMeWe (South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe) 4 as well as Seacom. Local fibre routes present at MRS1 include Telecom Egypt.

With such growth in prospect, Interxion intends to build a new facility in Marseilles later this decade, with initial plans in place expansion in the city from 2016.

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