AtlasEdge, a leading pan-European Edge data centre provider, and London Internet Exchange (LINX), one of Europe’s largest internet exchanges, have announced that interconnection services are now officially live at the AtlasEdge data centre in Manchester.
This accelerates the transformation of AtlasEdge’s Salford site into an interconnectivity hub, with customers now benefitting from connection to LINX’s members and services in Manchester.
LINX Manchester is the regional hub of the London Internet Exchange and is accessible from a selection of data centres in the wider Manchester area. Networks that connect into the LINX Manchester community will benefit from meeting a community of networks and keeping their online traffic local, lowering latency and costs, and increasing overall data control.
Today’s news is a key next step in the strategic partnership the two companies announced earlier this year focused on meeting surging customer-led demand for regional interconnection services.
“We are delighted to see the start of our collaboration with LINX, one of the world’s leading internet exchange points, in Manchester,”
Comments Daniel Thomas, SVP Sales, AtlasEdge;
“These new interconnection services are a great addition to our growing presence in Manchester, bolstering our service offering and scaling our customers’ peering relationships in a prime digital infrastructure location.”
The technical solution LINX has implemented at the AtlasEdge site mirrors that of its disaggregated network deployment in London, where, for increased resilience, the hardware and software are sourced from alternative vendors.
Networks connecting from AtlasEdge into the LINX Manchester community will now also benefit from access to the exclusive Microsoft Azure Peering Service (MAPS), a new solution recently added to the IX.
Mike Hellers, Product Development Manager for LINX, said;
“Introducing a new data centre presence for our Manchester network reflects the growth and demand for LINX services in the North. Not only will our traditional peering service enable networks to keep their network traffic local, but the recent introduction of MAPS is a unique solution for the enterprise and public sector networks in particular. The new site uses our proven Edgecore Networks platform and offers access to all of our services through 10GE or 100GE ports.”
In recent years, Manchester has emerged as a dynamic hub that converges the realms of media and online retail in unprecedented ways. MediaCityUK in Salford is already working on intentions to become an internationally recognised digital city with the launch of its own digital strategy. Meanwhile the current digital strategy from Manchester City Council recognises and highlights the City’s strength as a location to operate digital businesses. The city’s digital economy is worth over £5 billion, employs over 88,000 people, and is home to over 10,000 businesses. There are also five unicorns in Manchester, all of which are in e-commerce sector.
LINX Manchester celebrated a new maximum traffic peak earlier this year as it tipped the 500Gbps. Networks connected at LINX Manchester can also now access the exclusive Microsoft Azure Peering Service (MAPS) – a direct connection to any public Microsoft cloud service, including Teams, Microsoft Azure services, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or any other Microsoft service accessible via the public internet.