AMS-IX case study: Golden opportunity for growth

Customer Success Stories

AMS-IX needed a proactive partner that could accommodate their massive peering interconnection growth.

February 21, 20208 mins
Data Centers AMS-IX case study

Industry:

Connectivity

Challenge:

Proactive partner for massive peering interconnection growth

Solution:

Iron Mountain Data Centers

Value:

  • Top-Tier reliability and infrastructure quality with the highest security standards
  • Deep and diverse customer ecosystem with a leading market position
  • Strategic locations in close proximity to additional ecosystems

Golden opportunity for growth

AMS-IX has been operating at the core of the Internet successfully for over 25 years. It is a non-profit, member-based association and now runs six interconnection platforms around the world: in Amsterdam, the Bay Area, the Caribbean, Chicago, Hong Kong and Mumbai. AMS-IX also helps partners to set up internet exchanges of their own, like in Manama, Bahrein.

The goal of AMS-IX is to interconnect an ecosystem which allows internet end-users to enjoy fast, stable, cost-effective online experiences.With their innovative platforms, cutting-edge technology and dedicated engineers, they deliver high quality interconnection services to a wide range of businesses worldwide. These include internet service providers,mobile operators, content providers, hosting and cloud providers, TV broadcasters, gaming companies and financial enterprises.

Operating across multiple data centers enhances in-built redundancy and makes for a highly reliable, low risk interconnection model which also relies partly on the size of the interconnected ecosystem. In Amsterdam, for instance, AMS-IX connects close to 900 parties and has a peak traffic of over 7 Terabits per second (Tbps), around 1 Tbps of which flows through Iron Mountain AMS-1.

AMS-IX first colocated with Iron Mountain in 2010 in Amsterdam. Security, uptime, extensive customer ecosystems and strategic location near to larger ecosystems were the key driving factors. But the relationship soon went deeper than this.

In a few short years Iron Mountain and AMS-IX have achieved great things together, not only in terms of interconnection growth, which has been impressive, but in building a deep and innovative relationship where the levels of trust are high enough for us to try out new technologies and solutions together.
Peter van Burgel, AMS-IX CEO

A persuasive proposition

We have an exceptionally strong relationship with Iron Mountain,” says Peter van Burgel, CEO of AMS-IX. “Iron Mountain AMS-1 has been an AMS-IX Gold Partner for 6 years in a row [i.e. they introduce more than 20 new members or 100GE (GigabitEthernet) of new port capacity each year]. Gold Partners are critical to our way of doing business – in essence we can’t do it alone. And a successful partnership is a two-way street – we have run events together addressing the market and built a great joint proposition.”

As both AMS-IX and Iron Mountain expand their portfolio and their global data center footprint, even more opportunities are arising. To achieve digital transformation, enterprises need to diversify their connectivity, and in many cases, this means operating their own network (ASN) and connecting directly. For instance, if a business needs to process payments efficiently and securely it needs look no further than AMS-IX, which has pretty much every payment service provider in the world on its platform.

AMS-IX now offers IX-as-a-Service (IXaaS) and Remote Peering (aka Easy Access), as well as a Service Hub, a partner marketplace which can overlay services Ike security or anti-DDOS solutions.The AMS-IX API now allows customers to automatically provision both AMS-IX services and data center colocation.

“Iron Mountain and AMS-IX have a huge shared opportunity to look forward to, and trust is at its heart,” says van Burgel. “Like Iron Mountain, we pride ourselves on being trustworthy and our technical platform is all about trust and reliability. It’s a very strong proposition in a fast-changing world,and we look forward to building on our winning partnership to gain traction with Iron Mountain round the world.”