Cologix Bolsters Data Centers with Megaport SDN Nodes
The use of software-defined networking (SDN) is increasingly common in business today, and businesses are starting to see the value that comes from improving the network via abstraction and making the network a bit more flexible. Recently, Cologix took advantage of that flexibility itself in its Toronto and Dallas data centers by bringing in Megaport's line of SDN nodes.
Though the rollout is a bit limited, hitting only four data centers in those two cities, it's likely going to be enough to illustrate the impact that SDN can have on a larger network. With the SDN in place, users in Toronto and Dallas well get access to a set of new network services, reports note, as well as access to an array of cloud providers through the Megaport platform. Since Megaport is not only a Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute partners, but also an Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform Carrier Interconnect partner, there's quite a bit of room to offer necessary services.
Denver Maddux, who serves as Megaport's chief executive officer (CEO), noted that the Dallas and Toronto data centers were an excellent fit for this testing, as it represented an opportunity to offer more services to the customer base in those areas. Since there were a substantial number of customers in those areas, offering larger numbers of services not only meant a better testing platform but also a welcome boost in those areas.
This was assented by Cologix's CEO, Grant van Rooyen, who commented “Over the past five years, enterprises in emerging markets have found
new options to outsource data center operations in their home markets and are now demanding dedicated, but flexible connectivity to the leading public cloud providers. We are pleased to introduce Megaport's solution to our customers in these markets as an option within Cologix's Cloud Connect Platform.”
It's often useful to start with a low-scale test to see what needs to be done in the future before expanding outward, but there's nothing here so far that suggests Cologix won't be bringing Megaport material to all its data centers once this initial run gets going. Unless, of course, something goes wrong, and that may change the picture. For right now it looks to be a win-win all around; not only do Cologix customers get access to more services, which improves Cologix's stance against its user base and improves the likelihood that those customers will stay, but Megaport gets to offer up its services to Cologix and gain useful new talking points to bring in future customers. “See how well it worked for X” is a great motivator.
The new connection between Cologix and Megaport should be a valuable one in the end, providing value on all sides and showing us all how the use of SDN can improve a business' fortunes.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
