Michel Robert, CEO of Epsilon
“Some of the features include advanced multi-cloud functionality, enterprise-class networking and security and network abstraction.”
What are some key milestones from Epsilon in 2020?
We’ve made some great progress throughout 2020 despite the challenges experienced by many businesses. Some of our recent milestones include the acquisition of 7D Digital, which is the company that supported the development of our Network as a Service (NaaS) platform, Infiny. We saw an opportunity to bring the whole 7D team into Epsilon to focus even more resources into the platform, and the best way to do this was through acquiring the company. The team at 7D have fully integrated into the team at Epsilon, and we’re really excited to have them onboard and to continue our development for Infiny.
More recently, we announced a partnership with a company called Aviatrix to help deliver our new multi-cloud networking solution. It’s an end-to-end multi-cloud service with the automation, operational visibility and control that enterprises need to simplify cloud networking.
Bundled with our network and existing direct cloud connect capabilities, our cloud networking service offering addresses the real challenges in enterprise networking to, within and across the clouds. This is a first-of-its-kind partnership where we combine our expertise in global connectivity with Aviatrix’s cloud network platform. We can now deliver private, secure and high-speed cloud-to-cloud connectivity via our private network. What makes this unique is that it is an end-to-end service that connects branch offices and data centres all the way to the VPC/VNET.
As a whole, we’re really focusing our energy into enhancing our capabilities, services and products. We already have a strong ecosystem with cloud providers, networks and internet exchanges across 260+ points of presence (PoPs) in 41 cities globally, with major footprint across the Asia-Pacific including mainland China. Our differentiator lies in our NaaS platform, Infiny, and our partner strategy.
There are not many companies out there that can offer their customers the best-in-class solutions like we do, with the same level of responsiveness and flexibility. A huge part of that comes from partnering with top companies across different tech sectors, which can provide us with the tools we need to serve even more of our customers’ needs. Our goal is to enable businesses to connect to the global cloud infrastructure they need in a simple and powerful way.
Why did you choose to partner with Aviatrix, rather than build a solution yourself?
By partnering, we can deliver best-of-breed solutions to our customers more quickly and with greater scale than if we had built the solution ourselves. We appreciate that we can’t be experts in everything – there are companies out there that are specialists in certain fields. Rather than competing against that, we believe in partnering with some of these companies to offer the best possible solutions to our customers.
We reviewed multiple partners and chose Aviatrix as a technical partner for our multi-cloud service as their offering is complementary to our business model and products. Our joint solution is the first of its kind, using Epsilon’s private network as the underlay and Aviatrix’s cloud network platform as the overlay.
What does the joint Epsilon-Aviatrix offering looking like? What are its features?
Epsilon Cloud Networking is an end-to-end multi-cloud service with automation, visibility and control, delivered in a simple way for enterprises to unlock the full potential of multi-cloud in their businesses.
Some of the features include advanced multi-cloud functionality, enterprise-class networking and security and network abstraction. Unlike traditional cloud networking, the multi-cloud service directly controls native cloud networking constructs to provide cloud simplicity and automation. We give enterprises the ability to move data between cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud.
To get into the details, the solution uses Epsilon’s private network as the underlay and the Aviatrix cloud network platform to create an enterprise-class network inside and between public clouds. It also allows customers to consume security services, such as FQDN filtering and service insertion of next-generation firewalls, to meet their security and compliance requirements.
It leverages a multi-cloud network architecture with a common network data and operational control plane, with point and click workflows and infrastructure as code automation. This allows customers to have control within and across clouds – beyond the cloud gateways all the way to the VPC/VNET level, which is a real differentiator for us.
What enterprise challenges does it solve? Why do enterprises need a multi-cloud solution like this?
Business transformation is on the rise, and more enterprise IT organisations are starting to use public cloud for their applications and data. The pandemic has really increased the pace of this transformation, which has caused challenges for enterprises including limited visibility, lack of network control and skill gaps.
A lot of enterprises don’t achieve expected return on investment (ROI) in cloud because of operational and network complexity. While many enterprises have started application migrations to the cloud, cost management remains an issue. On top of this, many cloud providers don’t provide detailed operational visibility or security. Our goal with our multi-cloud solution is to enable businesses to tackle these challenges more effectively.
Our solution makes cloud networking simple for enterprises. The service provides everything an enterprise needs to transform their cloud networking through a single relationship.
How is multi-cloud different from the cloud connectivity solutions that you already offered to customers?
Our Cloud Connect solution provides the global infrastructure and network orchestration needed to easily connect to one or multiple cloud providers using our dedicated, carrier-grade ethernet services. Our multi-cloud solution offers connectivity within and across the clouds, all the way to the VPC/VNET level. It enables enterprises to directly control their cloud networking between multiple clouds using a multi-cloud platform, whereas Cloud Connect simply provides the connectivity to the cloud service providers via on-ramps.
How does Epsilon choose partners? What kinds of partners are you looking for?
We choose our partners by looking at aspects of our services that can be enhanced with partner solutions. We’re looking for any partners with interesting solutions that can help us take our current offering to the next level.
Our NaaS platform Infiny currently offers three powerful networking solutions – Interconnection between the leading data centres, direct cloud connections to cloud hyperscalers and access to the world’s largest internet exchanges. We also have an Access solution for connecting branch offices, on-prem data centres and partner locations around the world to the Epsilon network and its cloud networking and interconnection services.
There’s always room for more solutions for our customers and we’re excited to announce more upcoming partnerships that we’ve got in the pipeline for the near future.
What do you think will define the networking market in 2021? What do you expect in the new year?
I think that in 2021, we’ll continue to see strong enterprise demand due to increased cloud adoption, remote working and continuous digital transformation. That’s why we believe that our multi-cloud service comes at the right time for us to enable business growth in the cloud. With more enterprises embracing a multi-cloud strategy, they’ll need a simple solution for connecting their clouds and unleashing their full potential, which we can now deliver to them.
On top of this, I think we’ll see drive towards platform-centric connectivity. There are many variations – NaaS, software-defined networking (SDN), software-defined interconnect (SDI) – but they all mean the same thing. These platforms deliver global connectivity using a self-service model, allowing the customers to buy and manage their network services on-demand.
Our NaaS platform Infiny makes it much simpler for businesses of all kinds to meet their connectivity needs in one place. It’s all about removing the need to manage multiple vendor relationships. As the networking ecosystem gets more and more complex, I think businesses will be looking out for the simplest and fastest way to connect globally, which we’re able to do.
What will Epsilon’s priorities be in 2021? What will success look like?
In 2021 we’ll continue to build and enhance every aspect of our business, across data, voice and colocation. However, our main priority will be in growing the data networking portion of our business. There are also several markets that we’re looking to grow in such as Asia Pacific and mainland China. Of course, working with our existing partners and establishing new partnerships are priorities. On the services and operations side of things, we have started major work on enhancing our network and platform and will continue to do so in 2021. At the end of the day, we want to deliver better connectivity solutions to our customers by simplifying how they connect and ensuring that they enjoy the best possible end-to-end service experience.
