To continue to keep up with changing customer demands, LINX values the partnership it has with Telehouse to support its continued growth and evolution.
LINX
Building a strong 25-year partnership, LINX and Telehouse have worked together to enhance its existing agreement and form a strategic sales and marketing-focused partnership.
960+
Global member ASNs
80+
Countries around the world
16
Locations across London
Client
The London Internet Exchange (LINX) is a not-for-profit organisation that was set up 25 years ago to create an opportunity for people to exchange traffic without having to buy costly connections.
It is one of the largest Internet exchanges in the world, connecting approximately 960 member ASNs from over 80 countries around the globe. It specialises primarily in peering and interconnection, allowing networks to meet and exchange Internet traffic more cost effectively and with increased resilience.
Telehouse has been a key partner of LINX from the very beginning with LINX placing its first node in Telehouse’s data centre in 1994. LINX continues to expand its London presence with 16 locations across the capital along with UK regional exchanges in Wales, Manchester and Scotland.
Background
The technological landscape is ever-changing, and never more so than in recent years. The introduction of cloud technology changed the entire dynamic of the market; and to keep pace with consumer needs, LINX continues to future-proof its technical services.
With greater pressure on data centres to facilitate large-scale digital transformation, automation and completely new ways of working, LINX recognised early on the benefits of working closely with Telehouse in order to evolve and continue to be able to offer its members the best possible services.
From the very beginning, LINX partnered with Telehouse due to the unparalleled levels of connectivity that its data centres provided. As global connectivity is central to the entire LINX operation, there were clear grounds to initiate a partnership; and this relationship has only grown and strengthened over the last two decades, culminating in a re-engagement agreement in 2019.
In tandem with this, LINX and Telehouse identified the opportunity to create a strategic, mutually beneficial sales and marketing partnership, working in a collaboration to strengthen both businesses.
“The relationship is very strategic for us in the long run, because it’s where we began, and we’ve experienced a lot of growth as a result.”
– Kurtis Lindqvist, CEO at LINX
The Partnership
Since LINX originally engaged Telehouse the two organisations have been focussed on continuing to deliver 100% uptime, deploying new and improved infrastructure and improving connectivity by creating a network that runs between all four Telehouse buildings – making it easier for people to connect into LINX’s fabric.
There has been extensive collaboration between operational, commercial, and technical teams in the two organisations, supporting LINX to expand and evolve to meet its customers’ changing requirements.
The Telehouse engineering team worked very closely with the LINX engineering team to design a new network solution and offering continual support to deliver 100% uptime. Once this was completed, a joint plan was agreed on how implementation of the new network would avoid any disruption to service.
Telehouse has deployed the new setup within its data centre, achieving complete continuity of service despite on-site difficulties caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. This has built a new level of mutual trust between the two organisations’ engineering teams, enabling even closer collaboration.
In addition, LINX and Telehouse have also formed a strategic sales and marketing partnership, collaborating on vertical campaigns, and leveraging each company’s strengths to create one strong, united front.
The Future
Since its origin in 1994 the LINX and Telehouse relationship has developed from a professional collaboration into a mutually beneficial long-term strategic partnership. LINX’s membership has now expanded from 100 in the year 2000, to approximately 960 member ASNs (autonomous system numbers), and CEO, Kurtis Lindqvist says LINX and Telehouse have aided one another’s growth.
“We have both benefited and enjoyed working together to create this unique environment. Obviously, a lot of our data centres are our strategic partners, but Telehouse is exceptional in terms of how much infrastructure we’ve got there. The relationship is very strategic for us in the long run, because it’s where we began, and we’ve experienced a lot of growth as a result. So, we need to make sure that we do carry on working very closely with Telehouse, because that is where so much of our infrastructure lies,” comments Lindqvist.
To maintain momentum, Telehouse has continued working collaboratively with LINX on new colocation initiatives, where LINX is able to leverage and resell Telehouse’s colocation facilities; providing cross connects and a cabling infrastructure to equip customers with a wide range of operational abilities.
3
Regional Internet exchanges around the UK
1
Internet exchange in the US
1
Internet exchange in the Middle East