PacketFabric has built a greenfield software-defined network in the United States. And today, the company said it has expanded that network to an Equinix business exchange in London.
The Equinix LD6 IBX is the first data center outside of the United States to be added to the PacketFabric network, beginning the company’s expansion into Europe.
PacketFabric’s parent company NantWorks uses the network to conduct medical research, including a project to cure cancer. But PacketFabric has also been racking up a list of enterprise customers.
“NantWorks is not our primary customer, but they are still our sole investor,” said Jezzibell Gilmore, SVP of business development and co-founder of PacketFabric. “We have ramped up to well over 100 customers today. We are very focused on providing services to all types of businesses.”
With the company’s PacketDirect point-to-point connectivity service, customers can instantly provision network connectivity between any two points on PacketFabric’s private network.
And in January, the company rolled out its cloud on-ramp service, PacketCor, that enables direct network connectivity to public cloud from any point on its Layer 2 footprint.
In the U.S., the company’s footprint includes more than 150 points of presence in 17 metro markets. With today’s announcement, the company said its customers will be able to access the London Equinix data center from any location on the PacketFabric network.
Gilmore said the point-to-point transport service is comparable to an MPLS service or a wave service, but “we’re able to provision it in three minutes.” She added, “We actually just started providing last mile to some large customers. It involves a third-party last mile circuit.”
The company competes with other long-haul service providers such as Zayo, CenturyLink, Verizon, and AT&T. And it also competes with companies that provide cloud service on-ramps such as Megaport.
“Certain SD-WAN service providers are competing with us,” said Gilmore. “We compete on a different level. Most of our customers are looking for scalable capacity. SD-WAN usually has limitations of what internet service providers can provide.”
Asked if PacketFabric’s network was similar to Aryaka’s network, Gilmore said, “Aryaka is a SD-WAN service provider with their own network. Most of their customers are looking for much lower network capacity than we are able to provide. PacketFabric would be an underlying service provider for Aryaka.”
She said there is no relationship between PacketFabric and Aryaka at the moment, but the two companies are starting discussions.
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