Dutch IaaS Provider Is Primed for Cloud-Scale Growth

Founded by brothers Rob and Jeroen Stevens in 1995, Interconnect serves digital businesses in the Netherlands with highly reliable private cloud, data center, and connectivity services. Customers range from local businesses to multinationals.

Overview


Company Interconnect
Industry SaaS Services
Products used MX204QFX5100EX4300
Region EMEA
Interconnect Image
Customer Success At-a-glance

Accelerated

Service delivery while simplifying network operations

Configurated

Changes in minutes, not hours

Connected

Customer resources across multiple data centers using EVPN/VXLAN

Challenge

 

Interconnect was founded by brothers Rob and Jeroen Stevens, who still serve as the CEO and CTO today. As a regional provider, Interconnect is known for its attentive customer service and deep technical expertise. Customers range from local ad agencies and hospitals to O’Neill, the U.S. surfboard brand, and Vodafone, a multinational telecommunications company.

Interconnect continuously invests in infrastructure to meet the ever-growing needs of businesses. This means scaling its infrastructure services performance and capabilities while delivering the highest levels of availability to meet its 99.9 percent uptime guarantee to customers. It offers a full suite of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and private cloud services. The company operates data centers in Den Bosch and Eindhoven, connected by a fiber ring, and works with other service providers to provide customers with their choice of connectivity.

Interconnect recently upgraded its core network to deliver cloud-scale capacity and scale by adding Juniper solutions. “We implemented an IP fabric to increase scale and gain flexibility in our customer solutions,” says Dave Thoonsen, network engineer at Interconnect.

Interconnect Challenge
Solution

 

Interconnect recently upgraded its core network to deliver cloud-scale capacity and scale by adding Juniper solutions. “We implemented an IP fabric to increase scale and gain flexibility in our customer solutions,” says Dave Thoonsen, network engineer at Interconnect.

Interconnect’s IP fabric uses the Ethernet VPN/Virtual Extensible LAN (EVPN/ VXLAN) framework within its data centers, as well as across its MPLS WAN to interconnect its data centers.

“Customers can easily connect to our private cloud,” says Thoonsen. “The Juniper IP fabric is a flexible way to stretch a connection anywhere a customer wants.” The Juniper Networks MX204 Universal Routing Platform serves as the data center core.

In Interconnect’s data centers, the IP fabric is implemented with Juniper’s QFX5100 line of Ethernet Switches as the spine layer, and the EX4300 Ethernet Switch as the leaf layer. Leaf-layer switches directly connect to baremetal servers, virtual servers, or other network devices. Each leaf switch is connected at high speed to the spine, and traffic can be load-balanced over the IP links.

Telemetry, built into the Juniper infrastructure, is also key to Interconnect’s high availability strategy. With Junos Telemetry Interface (JTI), sensors can collect and export data for continuous performance monitoring and to troubleshoot issues such as network congestion in real time.

Juniper Networks Junos operating system is an essential element in the company’s automation strategy. Junos OS integrates easily with DevOps environments and offers programmability, scripting support, open APIs, and support for automation frameworks. Interconnect uses Juniper modules and Ansible playbooks for automation.

Interconnect Solution
Outcome

 

With standard data center building blocks, Interconnect can leverage automation more easily to streamline configuration management. Network automation has led to a significant drop in OpEx and reduced the time-to-market for new services and to onboard new customers.

The time savings is dramatic. “We might spend 100 minutes configuring switches or routers in the traditional, manual way,” he says. “Now, our goal is to automate the standard configurations which are the building blocks of the services that we offer, decreasing our time to provision a customer to just a couple of minutes.”

Automation also improves service availability. “When operators work traditionally, jumping from switch to switch to make configuration changes by hand, there’s a lot of room for error which can impact network availability,” he says.

Ultimately, automation results in higher customer satisfaction. “We’re developing a customer portal where a customer will be able to request services, set up the network connection, and be running in a couple of minutes,” says Thoonsen.

“We are proud to be a Juniper customer,” says Thoonsen. “Juniper is very good in terms of functionality, stability, and performance, as well as excellent support.”

Interconnect Outcome
"Customers can easily connect to our private cloud. The Juniper IP fabric is a flexible way to stretch a connection anywhere a customer wants."
Dave Thoonsen Network Engineer, Interconnect

Published February 2020