Tag: DE-CIX Ivo Ivanov

OTT & VoD data traffic in India grew 1,317% during Covid, gaming rose 1,007%: Ivo Ivanov

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What has been DE-CIX’s experience handling data traffic in India?

There were huge changes in data traffic. In India, the four DE-CIX locations noted a strong rise in traffic from internet usage – up to 192% since the pandemic hit the country. The demand is enormous, and DE-CIX has further increased its geographical presence lately in order to offer new connectivity options closer to the users in different geographies around the globe, as well as doubling our backbone capacity in India for seamless and secure interconnection.

 

Could you share some statistics on data consumption?

There was a significant growth in traffic. For instance, between February to December 2020, OTT & Video on Demand grew a whopping 1,317%, while gaming grew at 1,007%. Similarly, ISP traffic grew at 397%, whereas traffic from content delivery networks rose 328%. Data traffic at social & online media grew by 210% during the same period.

 

What were the data consumption trends for rural India?

Rural data consumption has increased in comparison to urban India, but this figure is only for mobile data usage.

 

With respect to India’s data consumption story, have you witnessed any trends and how do you plan to evolve with it?

What is clear from last twelve months is that all areas of business and private life rely more heavily today than ever before on digital applications. But beyond the virtual desktop and video streaming, where we certainly saw enormous jumps in usage during 2020, we have also seen specific sectors taking leaps ahead with digital applications and services, ranging from e-health to logistics and mobility applications, and on to the finance sector – but also education, administrative services, and even agriculture. This transformation has not been caused by Covid, but accelerated by it.

So last year, we developed and announced DE-CIX Enterprise Interconnection Federation services that allows enterprises to create their own interconnection ecosystem (closed user groups or virtual private ecosystems) based on their security, performance and compliance requirements. For instance, a bank can create its own closed user group in the DE-CIX ecosystem and invite all its stakeholders like data analytic companies, transaction providers, cloud connectivity providers and corporate and residential internet access providers to interconnect with the bank’s network directly. This increases the performance, efficiency, and security of the data exchange.

 

DE-CIX recently increased points of presence (PoPs) in India. What is the rationale behind it?

We embarked on this expansion for connected network operators. We are able to bring a lot of internet content closer to the users across India. By announcing these four very important locations, we will have our key markets fortified for interconnectivity solutions. In last 12 months at DE-CIX India, we have unambiguously demonstrated to the industry how we have significantly impacted and redefined the market, such that we have become the market leader with a customer base of 310+.

The lowest latency of internet traffic is more crucial than ever. DE-CIX India will continue to enable more platforms across the country, as close as possible to the users. This is key to cover the future demand for the best possible performance on all digital applications, including live sports streaming, gaming, virtual desktops and cloud connectivity in general, real time adoptive robotics in the manufacturing section, etc.

DE-CIX is also in discussion with LEO satellite operators to support their expansion plans to deliver great internet experience in remote areas. LEO satellites have a strong business case. They cost lower compared to common satellite technology. Second, maintenance is easier. Third that they are low cruising allows a much better performance on the latency side. They perform lower than 25 milliseconds, which is today absolutely okay for online gaming, and bandwidth is much higher, in range of tens of gigabits, and is sufficient enough to serve house calls and offices. So my expectation is that on account of much less capex and open on the operator side, the products will be affordable.

 

What is your view on India’s digital journey going ahead?

In 2021 everything related to digitisation of entertainment, gaming, live sports, education, healthcare, digitised cars etc will gain prominence. In the B2B world, digitisation of processes, usage of cloud services and use of a distributed data exchange, which is not on premise with the enterprises and needs to be placed in hyper scale data centres and needs to be distributed across the country.

 

 

For How Long Will The Internet Hold Firm?

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The digital divide must be eliminated so that all communities can in future unlock access to information, digital communication tools, and digital content in general.

Crisis and disaster can barge in anytime, bringing catastrophe and disruptions to our lives. India is high on the disaster ranking list. According to India’s National Policy on Disaster Management, almost 59 per cent of India’s landmass is prone to earthquakes; over 12 per cent of the land to floods; about 76 per cent of the coastline to cyclones and tsunamis; with droughts, landslides and avalanches close behind.

Statistically, according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, between 2009 and 2019, the country experienced 321 incidences of natural disasters, leaving 108 crore people affected. 2020, the year of the coronavirus, changed the way people carried out business, ran errands, socially connected, and at the most basic level, lived everyday life – after which, 2021 began with the Uttarakhand calamity.

Emergency reaction and relief team activities require assimilation of information that is synced and can be distributed to the public accurately and immediately. But the destruction to a country’s vital infrastructure – such as roads, power lines, radio towers, transportation etc. – brought about by natural calamities retards crucial communication, in turn obstructing rescue efforts. One crucial saving grace in these hostile conditions is the global digital infrastructure consisting of terrestrial and mobile networks, data centers, Internet Exchanges, undersea cables and satellites that deliver the global Internet to all of us.

Crises don’t just change our lives, they also offer a chance to re-evaluate, see things differently and make meaningful investment decisions for the future – turning these challenges into new opportunities to make life better. Digital services have become indispensable to overcoming the challenges and making a crisis manageable. Smart digital applications and solutions, physical elements of AI and IoT, the transmission of data through networks, access to cloud computing and actually access to information of any type have the potential to mitigate the impact of a crisis and are just as vital as other critical services in a crisis, sometimes even essential for survival. These require robust and high-performance digital infrastructure, everywhere.

Never before in modern times have we seen an outbreak with such a global impact as the Covid-19 pandemic. Cities, countries, and entire regions of our world were put on hold, locked in isolation. But even during global lockdowns, the Internet kept private and business life running. This enabled people to stay in contact with loved ones they couldn’t meet with; many were also able to work from home. It allowed children and students to continue with their education. It helped doctors to provide consultations and therapy via telemedicine.

Even medical researchers, who we all pinned our hopes on, used digital applications to remain in touch and share data in their efforts to understand the virus, and find a vaccine. It kept the business world alive: e.g. global supply chains for different industries remained manageable and became even more efficient, and crucial financial services were delivered globally thanks to digital solutions. Therefore, one answer to some of the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic – and the modern world in general – is sophisticated digital infrastructure.

In a globalised world, economic growth and the development of societies in most regions is now based on digital communication and digital services, which depend on the underlying digital infrastructure. The use of smart digital applications and solutions will make people’s lives better.

The quality of crisis management in regions with solid, reliable digital infrastructure provides a stark contrast to those regions of the globe that remain underserved. People and companies from the latter regions have disadvantages that can last for decades. Thus, the digital divide must be eliminated so that all communities can in future unlock access to information, digital communication tools, and digital content in general.

Different stakeholders, including governments, investment policy makers, and the Internet industry itself must take as a high-priority mandate the goal of creating a minimum level of robust digital infrastructure everywhere. This century is presenting us with global challenges, but these can be transformed into opportunities by people and businesses. Digitalisation – relying on robust digital infrastructure – everywhere will allow us to minimise the impact on people and business as much as possible in any crises ahead of us. It will not only enhance the way we manage upcoming crises, but will also enable us to live better lives in the future. This is why, in times of lockdown and the immobility that comes with crises, the world needs a full digital unlocking!

– Ivo Ivanov, CEO, DE-CIX Global

The five star hotel experience will start at the datacentre

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Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX global speaks about what technology can do for the hospitality industry in the near future.

It has taken the pandemic for the hospitality industry to realise the true potential of technology and the virtual world when it comes to business. ETHospitalityWorld spoke with Ivo Ivanov, the Germany-based CEO of DE-CIX (pronounced dee-kicks) Global— the largest internet exchange in the world.

“DE-CIX operates platforms, for interconnection of different types of networks, cloud networks, content networks like TV streaming networks, video on demand networks, collaborative work applications, networks, of course, gaming networks, as well as all of the excess networks, like 5g networks, small ISP, and fiber. We have started to see a new type of participants on the different platforms, mainly enterprises,” Ivanov said, explaining what his company does.

Ivanov firmly believed that the hospitality industry would benefit from digitization in the future extremely well, for which they would need to do the right homework to be able to create the right balance. Benefiting from digitalisation would also require getting involved into infrastructure. And this is where his company would be of use.

“We offer different services on the platform which have something in common—the direct interconnection between the application and the hospitality organisation network. Without intermediate without any hubs. This reduces the latency dramatically. If we talk about applications, like live streaming, virtual or augmented reality applications, they’re so sensitive on the performance side, they don’t like huge latency, they want to be extremely performable is the physical interaction on the traffic flow is very solid and stable in this requires the shortest path, and we deliver the fabric solution for this path.

“It’s also about security. The more direct the interconnection is between the application between the cloud computing instance, between the traffic delivery source and the hospitality network at the other end, the lower the risk for attacks, the lower the risk for men in the middle, IP hijacking and so on,” he explained.

The potential for what the hospitality industry could do using virtual tools was immense, he said, “The hospitality business is a very physical one. To be honest, you cannot enjoy a digital swimming pool. People want to swim—but the hospitality company can digitally influence this decision of the guests. Virtualizing the selection of different hotels in advance, giving the potential guest, a chance to experience the features of a hotel resort as well as use it to stay in touch with them are advantageous,” he said adding that both virtual as well as augmented reality platforms require solid infrastructure, which is something that needs to be invested in.

“I love to say that in the future, the experience of the five-star hotel will start in the datacenter—will start in our fabric using the solid infrastructure. Because as the hospitality companies want to impress the guests, they will want to start this in advance in the digital world,” he concluded.

‘India needs to scale up investments to improve Internet access in rural areas’ – Ivo Ivanov, the CEO of DE-CIX International

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Ivo Ivanov, the CEO of DE-CIX International, one of the largest Internet Exchanges in the world, talks about the infrastructure India needs to ensure that everyone in the country has access to the Internet.

Internet has become the backbone of everyday life in India. Be it access to ration or getting vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus, online has become the new normal. Yet, the country still has a long way to go before the technology reaches to all. Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX International, one of the largest Internet Exchanges in the world, talks about the infrastructure India needs to ensure everyone has access to the Internet.

 

Does India have the required infrastructure necessary for handling the internet traffic that the present situation asks for? What kind of investment do you feel is necessary to make India’s internet seamless?

India’s Internet infrastructure has significantly improved, and the pandemic has been a prime factor for this transformation. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that the geographical density of Internet infrastructure must be increased. While there are already hundreds of millions of Indians using the Internet, not even 30% of rural India has access. This needs to change. More investment is required in the whole array of digital infrastructure and connectivity options — there is a need for more fibre and mobile connectivity, connecting the rural regions, as well as developing edge connectivity.

The adoption of technologies like 5G and Wifi-6 is very important for economic development as it enables businesses to fully exploit the advantages of the digital economy. Added to this, there is a need for greater investment in the construction of data centres so that digital content, applications, and cloud services can be housed as close to the users as possible. Besides these, the establishment of connectivity to LEO satellites can bring the Internet to places that fibre and mobile networks can’t get to.

India can expand its role in the global market by scaling up investments in physical infrastructure and investing in the collaboration of local and global entrepreneurs, like digital information technology services, including big data, Internet of Things, and analytics. All of the digital infrastructures also need to be interconnected via high-performance Internet Exchanges to share data at the local level and allow data to flow, reducing the distance data needs to travel and therefore improving the performance of the applications and content.

At the start of the pandemic, we saw companies scrambling to increase the data plan. Is there a supply-demand mismatch in India at this moment?

The rising demand in Internet traffic we saw last year due to the pandemic, while remarkable in its scale, could be absorbed easily and smoothly and without concerns at the DE-CIX IXs.

We saw peak traffic records broken at our IXs in India during 2020. At DE-CIX India, from February 2020 to February 2021, we saw significant growth in different segments of data traffic, reflecting the needs of people during a lockdown —keeping in touch with others, entertainment, and access the cloud and virtual offices. OTT and VOD traffic also grew very strongly, followed by gaming and ISP. Then CDN and Social and Online Media traffic grew by almost the same scale, whereas hosting traffic, bringing up the rear, nonetheless showed a strong rise.

There is a gap in customer expectations, especially from work-from-home perspective. Many organizations struggle to keep up with the demand of their staff. As such, the sudden increase in network usage was not expected and the existing company infrastructure was not built accordingly. But, the Internet infrastructure itself was and is capable of absorbing the increase in data traffic experienced in India throughout the pandemic.

 

As you mentioned that the cyclone has affected the exchanges. With extreme weather conditions becoming common is India, is it possible of shielding the network from vagaries of nature?

Too often, when there isn’t enough infrastructure in place, be it railroads, bridges, or digital infrastructure, a region becomes vulnerable to single points of failure which can have an impact also further afield.

Therefore, there is great value in having distributed infrastructure — meaning that if multiple networks cover a region, then they can interconnect with each other locally to create more resilient paths for data to travel from point A to point B. It is important to have several ways to route around an area that is affected, for example, by storm damage, to make sure that other areas are not also impacted.

This is why we have our interconnection infrastructure in India distributed across 15 data centres providing both greater geographical density and locational redundancy. Having a range of infrastructure providers — network operators, Internet service providers, data centre operators, etc. — interconnected via an IX increases the resilience of the Internet.

By connecting to DE-CIX, these infrastructure providers and their customers benefit from the largest carrier and data centre neutral ecosystem in India. As a result, India is becoming increasingly capable of withstanding challenging conditions, but certainly, there is still work to be done. The pandemic has made organizations very well aware of the importance of state-of-the-art infrastructure and the need to be well equipped for extreme weather conditions.

Internet is the backbone of everything in India. But we still get to hear of dark areas where the network fails. As a service provider, what’s your analysis of this?

As a provider of interconnection services, we do not operate backbone or data centre, but partner with operators of all kinds of digital infrastructure. We are, in fact, always looking for and developing new techniques to expand the digital ecosystem both at global and local levels. I think one of the most exciting developments for India currently is the potential of LEO (Low-Earth Orbit) satellite Internet provision, which can bring remote communities online to join the global Internet.

These communities are struggling to run online businesses and gain proper access to the Internet as a result of their current connectivity solutions. These often involve copper cable networks and at most geostationary satellite connectivity, resulting in Internet speeds down to less than one megabit per second and latency (response time) as high as 400 milliseconds end-to-end.

Through its “Space-IX” Program, DE-CIX is ready to support the infrastructure needs of the whole range of space-network operators, in particular LEO satellite operators, with terrestrial interconnection, providing them with an interconnection solution that enables access to terrestrial content, cloud, and application networks. This can have a substantial impact on reducing the dark areas on the Indian map and of course, further adds to the diversity and resilience of the Indian Internet as a whole.

Tell us about your operations in India. Any investment plans or business figures you want to share

Regarding our operations, DE-CIX runs four Indian IXs in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Delhi, interconnecting 375-plus networks in 15 PoPs, and plays home to the largest carrier and data centre-neutral ecosystem in India. The largest of these, DE-CIX Mumbai, gained the ranking late last year of the second-largest IX, based on connected networks, in the Asia Pacific region.

DE-CIX India also offers a single access port for multi-services, meaning that a single port can be used by any connected network for both interconnection services, peering, and the DirectCloud Service. DE-CIX has recently received a patent for ‘Blackholing Advanced’ in Germany as a DDoS prevention mechanism, and this will soon be available in India as well.

Overall, what we see developing at the moment is that society and businesses in India and around the globe are entering a new era of digitalization in which digital applications and services will be needed everywhere, for everyone. To ensure best performance of digital applications and services, latency needs to be minimized; meaning that digital applications need to get closer to the users because latency is the new currency.

To achieve this, the digital infrastructure that houses and transports data needs to be at the edge of the network — as close as possible to the point where the user connects to the network or where the data is being generated. DE-CIX also plans to continue expanding to new locations, together with partners, to increase the geographical density of interconnection services, and therefore bring content and applications closer to the user.

We also make it possible to order interconnection infrastructure as a managed service, a highly scalable turn-key solution that enables data centre operators and other stakeholders in India to create their own interconnection ecosystem.

Beyond this, we are constantly innovating the service portfolio, bringing tailor-made interconnection services to an ever-wider range of customers. While Internet Exchanges have traditionally been seen as locations where carriers, ISPs, content networks, and content delivery networks interconnect to exchange data, we are now seeing an increasing number of participants joining from other industry segments, like healthcare, finance, retail, logistics, entertainment (such as gaming) and of course, automotive.

This is a development that DE-CIX aims to support in order to ensure a smooth transition to a digital society and economy. Having established a Cloud Exchange in India in 2020, we have now taken our service offering to the enterprise segment further – enabling an enterprise to build a closed and secure private ecosystem, a Closed User Group (CUG), within existing DE-CIX ecosystems. In this way, the Indian enterprises can further minimize the geographical distance to the other networks – and thus optimize the latency – as well as improving security and resilience.

The Digital Triangle for Edge Interconnection

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Digital is reshaping how business is done. We are at the cusp of a completely new age in global economics, with enterprises, regardless of size and heritage, redefining their activities and their sectors based on digitalization. Organizations are leveraging their digital strength to reshape their own business models and how business is done within and across entire sectors, including automotive/mobility, healthcare, finance, and media.

As they become digital, organizations are needing a new interconnection service regime customized for their needs. New and transformative technologies, like IoT, artificial intelligence, and 5G, are accelerating the pace of change in markets around the globe. These disruptive elements will serve as a “digital interconnection triangle” of future innovation, in turn creating still further interconnection needs at the edge.

The heart, hand, and brain of future innovation

Interconnection at the edge requires a new way of handling data streams, and a new way of interconnecting players within an ecosystem. The key factors that influence edge interconnection (if you will, the heart, the hand, and the brain of future innovation) are:

5G (the heart):

5G enables the management of a lot of different frequencies, and also enables the transmission of multiple data streams. Designed primarily for maintaining data from a huge number of sensors, 5G represents the foundation for the future evolution of the Internet of Things.

IoT (the hand):

IoT represents function in the digital interconnection triangle. In a 5G-enabled environment, it will be possible to connect an enormous number of devices within a physically limited space. This will open the way to digitalizing more and more currently purely mechanical processes. But managing the enormous number of sensors and data streams that will result in the Internet of Things in the future will not be possible without the support of artificial intelligence.

AI (the brain):

AI is essential in this mix in order to create the logic management and maintenance of data streams for innovative use cases and the respective ecosystem involved in the specific environment. This is the only way that the interconnection of millions of sensors in the Internet of Things can be managed efficiently. The solution is intelligently managed software-defined edge interconnection.

Each of these factors is dependent on the other two, and it is only when they are interconnected that they can drive digital evolution. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Unlocking new use cases with edge interconnection

Use cases that reflect this digital interconnection triangle will be many and various, but current scenarios include connected cars and autonomous vehicles on the one hand, and Agriculture 4.0 on the other. In both of these use cases, there is the need for widescale deployment of 5G masts, including edge computing capabilities (edge data centers), and the associated fiber connectivity to local data centers and regional cloud solutions. For these use cases, IoT devices and sensors are needed both within the landscape (in the road and in the soil to measure physical conditions) and on the mobile objects (throughout cars – the car itself can be considered as a mobile edge data center – and on autonomous farm machinery or watering/fertilization systems, for example).

From this point, the masses of data that are generated by the given use case need to be intelligently sorted into, among other things: data that needs to be processed locally with extremely low latency to enable rapid response times; data that can be sent to the cloud for processing if the response times are less critical; data that needs to be accessed by specific actors (but not others) in the value chain: and data that will be stored long-term versus data that will be discarded. The list goes on…

The complexity of this demands intelligent management of the data streams

Edge interconnection – the next generation interconnection

DE-CIX is working on developing a solution based on consideration of this triangle. Software-defined Internet Exchanges may well be one of the solutions not only to serve these needs efficiently and fast, but also to enable fast and cost-efficient expansion of the interconnection industry with less dependency on hardware. SD will also both bring more dynamism and encourage greater productivity.

IoT is the edge, AI is in the edge, and 5G serves the edge: The software-defined exchange provides the solution to the forthcoming digitalization challenge – namely, the ability to operate and manage the data streams of the future.

– by Ivo A. Ivanov, CEO, DE-CIX International