EXA Infrastructure – April 2023

ENABLING EXPANDING DATA CENTRE INTERCONNECTIVITY

EXA INFRASTRUCTURE OUTLINES THE VALUE OF DATA CENTRE INTERCONNECTIVITY AND HOW ITS SERVICES ARE DRIVING SCALABLE, SUSTAINABLE GROWTH ACROSS GLOBAL MARKETS

EXA Infrastructure (EXA) owns and operates the most extensive dedicated infrastructure footprint connecting Europe and North America. Since launch in September 2021, EXA has worked tirelessly to expand its global presence in pursuit of its clear aimto become the undisputed pan-European and transatlantic data centre to data centre connectivity provider.

The digital infrastructure provider focusses on data centre to data centre interconnectivity, enabling core to edge data distribution and core to core connectivity across all major European data centre markets. Not only has EXA established a critical position in the key FLAP market, but it is also relied upon by data centres players throughout Europe’s emerging Tier II & Tier III markets, including the Iberian Peninsula, the Nordics, and Central, Southern and Eastern Europe.

So, to find out more about the role EXA plays in data centre interconnectivity, and its predictions for the future of these critical markets, we spoke to two experts in the team driving the company’s inter data centre initiatives: Pravdomir Dobrev, Senior Product Manager, and Georgi Lesov, Network Investment Manager.

A leading pan-European, transatlantic connectivity provider One of EXA’s key market differentiators is the sheer size of its established and growing network.

“Our network is an impressive panEuropean digital platform with over 500 Points-of-Presence (PoPs) globally. We own and operate three transatlantic cables, including the fastest and lowest latency link between London and New York. EXA has considerable presence on the east coast of the United States and in Canada too.” Lesov explains.

“Customers can rely on us to continue to expand into new hubs and geographies as they emerge. We always strive to be our customers’ growth enabler”

GEORGI LESOV, NETWORK INVESTMENT MANAGER, EXA INFRASTRUCTURE

The focus of Lesov’s team is on strategic network investments, with Lesov looking after the CEE and Nordic regions. Lesov is also responsible for overseeing data centre interconnectivity with a global lens.

Dobrev’s role is the management of the colocation product line and supporting EXA’s growth strategy in the colocation market space. Since launch, EXA has connected – or is in the process of connecting –tens of new strategic data centres across Europe and North America, with the former spanning considerably beyond the region’s traditional markets.

GEORGI LESOV

TITLE: NETWORK INVESTMENT MANAGER

COMPANY: EXA INFRASTRUCTURE

Georgi Lesov is currently a Network Investment Manager within EXA Infrastructure, and is focused on CEE as a region, but also DC-to-DC connectivity globally.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Georgi has been with the company long before it became EXA. He joined, back in 2016, what was then Interoute. Over the past 7 years, he has spent time in Operations, Access, Product and most recently, Strategic Investments – the latter he describes as the most exciting position yet. Prior to that, he was a Project Manager for a local software company and before that was backpacking his way through South-East Asia. Interesting fact – Georgi also graduated from South Bank University in London with a BA in International Politics. He did his MA in European Public Policy at King’s College London.

“The dedicated data centre interconnectivity programme – which we launched a few months after the launch of EXA and is still ongoing today – enables us to take a more proactive approach to capital deployment, building into key strategic data centres ahead of customer orders, rather a game of “pin the cost on an anchor customer,” Lesov explains.

“We look at each data centre individually, by focusing on size (in terms of MW and floor space), power density, PUE, age of the facility, future scalability, and many other

factors, which are all part of our due diligence process. Then, once a candidate site has made it to the shortlist, we execute within a few months, and bring the site online.”

EXA also proactively surveys its customers, to understand where they need their sites to be – not only today, but in one, three- and five-years’ time. EXA aims to be amongst the first movers in these locations. Operating in such a strategic way not only enables EXA to grow with its customers but it means EXA is also driving industry developments.

“It’s a positive mutualism,” Lesov says.

EXA also offers a set of professional services for customers and partners needing help, for instance with designing and building Cable Landing Stations (CLSs) and other key network nodes. EXA has experience in building, operating, maintaining, and the service assurance for those sites, with years of expertise. Those services and sites, as Lesov describes, are the glue that joins the pieces of the puzzle together, thus allowing EXA to be a onestop-shop for its customers and align its operations to their growth plans.

PRAVDOMIR DOBREV

TITLE: SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER

COMPANY: EXA INFRASTRUCTURE

500+ Points of Presence

Pravdomir (Prav) Dobrev has joined EXA Infrastructure as a Senior Colocation Product Manager and has over 8 years of experience in the data centre industry. His former role includes Senior Global Product Manager, Colocation at Digital Realty where he oversaw the core product lifecycle and in the last few years, their product integration with Interxion. Prior to this, he worked as a Senior Engineer at Romonet where he consulted hyper-scale and large enterprise DC operators on energy management and sustainability. He holds an MSc in Data Science from Birkbeck College London, and BEng

3 Transatlantic cables

(Hons) in Building Services Engineering from London South Bank University. He is a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET).

34 Countries

13 Tier 3 equivalent datacentres

A partner ecosystem, driving data centre interconnectivity

As can be seen from the recent flurry of AI chatbot launches, advancing interconnectivity between data centres is a rapidly growing need, which is proving critical to fostering the successful growth of the industry at large.

“This year in particular, one of the top trends that we’re seeing is enterprises looking into more distributed types of workloads” Dobrev explains.

“Essentially, it’s no longer the case that all enterprise applications are only positioned in the cloud. So, to be able to serve increasing distributed workloads, core colocation sites and edge sites, connectivity providers need a reliable and low latency network infrastructure. That’s why EXA and its services are playing a key role”.

build directly, or in geographies that we don’t see it as commercially viable, and our partners do the same with us. This means we help each other but also challenge each other and push each other to do better.”

The role of data centre interconnectivity in the next evolution of key industry markets

300+ Cities Connected

As discussed, the growth of data centre interconnect services is linked to the increasing demand for higher bandwidth associated with technologies’ advances, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning etc. This has triggered the need for linking data centres in a reliable and cost-effective way.

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“We are a B2B-focused business, so we work very closely with all the major telecom operators and carriers as well as small, medium and large tech companies needing to connect to them. We leverage existing partner networks where we can’t

If we take Europe as an example, the European data centre market set to grow by 6.7% from 20182028, and a projected 2.86% CAGR predicted for the FLAP market from 2021-2027. And this trend shows no sign of slowing down.

Being able to respond quickly to this demand is what EXA strives to achieve by investing where its existing or future customers need PoPs.

“In the traditional markets, particularly FLAP, there is still a large amount of growth (these cities dominate in terms of population and GDP) but this is also, obviously, where there is the greatest amount of legacy investment to capitalise, and hence competition”. Lesov states.

“This is a growing trend, and we expect to see more capacity coming online throughout 2023. However, it’s important to note that other European markets are also growing considerably, with plenty of edge nodes to improve end-user experience as well as new interconnection points coming online – between continents. This will be a game

“This year in particular, one of the top trends that we’re seeing is enterprises looking into more distributed types of workloads”

PRAVDOMIR DOBREV, SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER, EXA INFRASTRUCTURE

New York to London

changer for the industry over the next few years, in colocation and in connectivity” Dobrev explains.

EXA’s works hard to make sure that that growth at the edge comes with the resilience the industry needs – something it does through it’s drive for constant route diversification.

“There are parts of Europe that are data centre and networkdense and where supply often exceeds the demand, challenging returns. The solution for us at EXA Infrastructure lies in creating extra diversity when it comes to routes, introducing the latest network technologies, and building greater resilience overall” Lesov states.

In the case of more emerging markets – such as Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean – though, the situation is dramatically different. “It’s more about who takes the risk and aspires to be the first mover, taking ownership in building routing diversity. It sounds like a cliché, but at EXA, we don’t just think about the future – we invest and work to create it” Lesov adds.

Dobrev provides another example of the diversification taking place in the industry: “let’s think about the success story of Marseille that over the years has become the world’s ninth largest internet hub, with links to 15 international subsea cables.”

“Enterprises across the continent continue to leverage Marseille as a low latency gateway to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. But recently they started looking to diversify away from Marseille and invest in places like Barcelona, Athens and other location points along the coast of the Mediterranean, such as Southern Italy. Diversification increases security and creates more competition in attracting the future big projects.”

“Simply put, if data centres exist on their own – if they’re not connected to the rest of the world – then they don’t have much value.” Dobrev says. “That’s why they need backbone architecture enablers, like EXA, to connect them to other customers and hubs. The greater the number of locations that we establish a presence in, the higher EXA’s value is as a partner to our customers and the industry as a whole.”

Quite a few of these projects and diversified routes are still in the planning or building stage, but when they will be ready for service, they will attract considerably more sub-sea cables and require solid and redundant connectivity solutions. This is what makes EXA’s growth and investment in its network so important and forward looking.

EXA is uniquely positioned to capture emerging connectivity demand waves due to its network presence in both the mature, growing and early-stage markets. This is a key strategic strength in the data centre interconnectivity play.

EXA is proud to be the industry challenger, a flexible and solid organisation willing to meet its customers’ bespoke connectivity requirements.

Lesov adds: “Customers can rely on us to continue to expand into new hubs and geographies as they emerge.”

“We always strive to be our customers’ growth enabler. It can be either technically or commercially, but we help our customers win in the market.”

114,000 Route kilometres fibre network

270+ Edge and network colocation sites

EXA Infrastructure

40 Strand, 5th Floor, London WC2N 5RW

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