Megaport hooks into major European internet exchange

Australian network virtualisation provider Megaport has pushed forward with its aggressive international expansion plans, inking a major deal with one of the largest internet exchanges in the world, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX).

Based on software-defined networking, Megaport’s network interconnection model allows customers to lease network connections between major data centres on a pay-per-use basis.

The company was launched in 2013 with serial telco entrepreneur Bevan Slattery as its executive chairman.

Under the latest deal, Megaport will become AMS-IX’s exclusive partner globally for elastic cloud inter-connections, meaning its services will be available to AMS-IX customers overseas. Likewise, existing Megaport users will be able to use the company’s services to access AMS-IX.

“Connecting the AMS-IX and Megaport fabrics creates greater opportunity for internet peers to reach desired content, cloud services and end-user networks,” Megaport chief executive Denver Maddux said in a statement.

The deal comes six months after Megaport revealed plans invest $10 million into an aggressive expansion to the United States and Europe. It had previously only offered its services in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Megaport and AMS-IX will initially offer their services to each other’s customers in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as Hong Kong.

Megaport listed on the ASX in December last year, alongside another of Slattery’s ventures, data centre company NextDC.

The IPO was the fifth for Slattery, who alongside NextDC has overseen the public listings of former Megaport subsidiary Superloop, Pipe Networks (now a subsidiary of TPG), and the Asia Pacific Data Centre Group.

AMS-IX has a total of 769 connected networks, including many of Europe’s largest telcos, and has had an average throughput over the past year of 2244 Gbps.