The Challenge
In coming to Interxion, nexellent has a formula that’s adapted as it has grown and is as good a match today as it was at the outset. In the beginning, nexellent faced the challenge of meeting its customers’ needs for very high-speed, low-latency connectivity and coverage without having to invest substantially in hardware and infrastructure.
With a relatively small customer base to start with, nexellent began with a single rack in Interxion’s Zurich data centre. The management team knew that as the business grew they could take on more space in response to customer demand – a flexible solution backed by a low-risk financial model.
Interxion doesn’t just offer a secure, high-performance environment for flexible computing requirements; it offers a world of opportunity.
Stefan Peter
Managing Partner, Nexellent
The Solution
Today, nexellent occupies 120 racks, serving 350 customers comprising 80% Swiss-based customers with the remainder from the USA, UK, Dubai and South Africa. The Interxion model continues to minimise nexellent’s risk, enabling the company to take its own ‘pay-as-you-grow’ solutions to market. Interxion’s Zurich data centre is the largest of its type in Switzerland, offering more than 4,500m² of equipped space. nexellent has taken full advantage of flexible capacity as it has grown, and today occupies nearly 10% of this space – a reflection of its wide customer base and consistent success. Mutual commitment As customers continue to demand new models of IT consumption, the nexellent proposition has expanded accordingly.
Today, the company offers a range of services – including infrastructure, software and platform ‘as a service’ solutions – giving customers instant access to computing resource with usage based pricing, high-speed connectivity and guaranteed security. As a provider of private clouds, nexellent delivers services that enable its customers to scale up as markets grow, or demand fluctuates. These services are delivered using vBlock infrastructure within the Interxion data centre to provide the flexibility that underpins the company’s rapid growth, running consistently at around 30-35% per year. With each new customer acquisition or expansion in its services, nexellent has turned to Interxion for space and support. The two companies have worked in harmony for eight years.
“We’re committed to Interxion”, says Enrico Goldhahn, product manager at nexellent. “Installing our high-density equipment into their environment is a manifestation of this confidence. Interxion has always been our first layer, our base, providing exactly the sort of infrastructure our services depend on and that our clients depend on. Interxion also provides the scalable business model that is so essential to our growth. It enables us to seize opportunities as they arise, without lengthy planning and provisioning. Interxion is our business model. It’s the place to be.” Close contact builds business “Many of our customers are also in the Zurich data centre”, says Stefan Peter, managing partner and co-founder of nexellent. “Indeed, some of them have become customers specifically because of this proximity. Low latency is one thing, but being in contact with a customer’s operation, first-hand, and meeting interested parties where there’s a lot of cross-over in commercial interests, adds another benefit entirely.” Due to its expertise in the financial sector, nexellent focussed on Zurich, a recognised hub for the world’s financial community.
The Interxion data centre is carrier and cloud-neutral, facilitating direct access to over 30 carriers and ISPs as well as SwissIX, the Swiss Internet Exchange, and SIX Swiss, the largest Swiss stock exchange. Such access not only offers a wide choice of connectivity services and tariffs but is also the foundation for a vibrant, closely connected community. By hosting trading systems in Zurich, Interxion enables nexellent to benefit from low-latency Swiss trading. This is provided via a link to the high-speed interface of SIX Swiss through high-performance fibre optic cables. Data security Interxion’s Zurich data centre also complies with FINMA standards, as well as the independent standards of ISO 27001 for Information Security and Business Continuity. This independently validated reassurance of best practice at the data centre enables nexellent to conform to its clients’ high standards for data security. “Interxion doesn’t just offer a secure, high-performance environment for flexible computing requirements; it offers a world of opportunity,” says Stefan Peter, Managing Partner, Nexellent.