News
DATA4 and MIX announce strategic partnership for the development of the Italian telecommunications market
April 2016 by Marc Jacob
As part of its project to consolidate a fully-fledged digital hub and create a diverse virtual eco-system within its data center campuses, DATA4 Group – the European organisation specialising in ultra-secure, hyper-connected hosting solutions – and MIX (Milan Internet eXchange) – the biggest Internet Exchange in Italy and one of the biggest in Europe in terms of internet traffic – have signed an agreement with the objective of supporting the continuing evolution of the Italian telecommunications market in line with the European standards.
There has been an important development regarding the way in which internet exchanges and neutral data centers designed to support telecommunications operators collaborate in Italy. It comes in the form of the agreement signed between MIX (Milan Internet eXchange) and DATA4. The ecosystem created by the partnership between these two industry players is strategic when it comes to the development of the Italian telecommunications market because it promises to support its growth as it looks to catch up with the European standards and models that have sparked success stories like the global HUBS of Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt.
The active collaboration between these two key industry players reinforces DATA4’s leading, highly-connected status in the domestic and international market, while for MIX it represents a significant acceleration in its development and expansion strategy for the Milanese exchange point.
The new Internet Exchange point at DATA4 campus will be interconnected – via multiple redundant fibers – to the original MIX exchange point in Via Caldera (San Siro area) and will allow for the transparent exchange of Internet traffic between all interconnected operators. It will be brought into operation by the second quarter of 2016 with a dual Point of Presence (POP) directly accessible from the DATA4 Digital Campus in Cornaredo.
MIX is the leading Internet Exchange point in Italy with over 175 Internet backbones. It hosts the network termination points of 40 national and international carriers and currently registers peak daily Internet traffic of over 370 gigabits per second.
The DATA4 group currently manages 13 data centers over three sites (France | Italy | Luxembourg), with a total of 22,800m2 in IT suites and power of 30MW. This could reach up to 74,000m2, thanks to the availability of vast areas (120 hectares), and power of 190MW.
