Cologix Expands Interconnection Product to New Markets

Network neutral interconnection and colocation company Cologix announced the platform-wide launch of its Standard Connections product, a productized interconnection offering now available in additional markets. It previously had been available in Toronto and is now being expanded into Cologix’s carrier hotel data centers in Dallas, Minneapolis, Montreal and Vancouver.

Introducing the Standard Connections product beyond Toronto provides additional entry points to the interconnection ecosystem for a low monthly price and low capital cost to build connections in a given market through Cologix’s interconnection community.

“Introducing Standard Connections to Dallas, Minneapolis, Montreal and Vancouver is a natural step which builds on the success that we have already seen in Toronto,” said Graham Williams, SVP of Product and Strategy at Cologix.  “We already have over 100 customers taking advantage of the product’s unique benefits which has driven a more robust interconnection community and is directly responsive to what our customers are asking for in other markets.”

It’s now available out of the following locations:

Deploying a presence through Standard Connections provides access to the network providers in Cologix’s Meet-Me-Rooms as well as the network customers on the colocation floors. The product includes individual rack units for network switches or routers, redundant UPS power and a cross connect to bring the leased access from one of the network providers in Cologix’s Meet-Me-Room to the point of presence.

The company provided a few customer use cases from Hurricane Electric, Sohonet and Epik Networks, each touting a different benefit. The benefits include broadening network reach through additional peering relationships, expanding a network’s geographic reach, and lowering switching costs through access to a broad choice of networks.

"Over the last two years Hurricane Electric’s presence at Standard Connections has enabled us to broaden our network reach through the opportunity for additional peering relationships, while continuing our strategic global expansion," said Reid Fishler, Director at Hurricane Electric, which uses the service in Toronto .

Sohonet became a Standard Connections customer in 2012. “We needed a way to quickly and cost effectively onramp traffic from customers in Toronto and Vancouver back to our global network,” explained Dave Scammell, CEO of Sohonet, a services company for the media and entertainment industry.  “We became a Standard Connections customer in 2012 to create points of presence without significant capital so we could leverage the power of our existing network.”

Regan Kerry, Chief Technology Officer of Epik Networks highlights the benefits of a broad choice of networks, “We largely maintain our own data center facilities, but learned early on that without broad choice of networks our switching costs were too high," said Kerry. "We deployed switches within the Standard Connections environment in both 151 Front Street in Toronto and 555 West Hastings in Vancouver, so that our procurement team could gain access to all of the network providers without having to replicate or migrate our existing infrastructure.  The service has paid for itself many times over.”