What are your strategic priorities in the CEE region for 2015?
CEE has been a strategically relevant region historically and continues to be so for Sparkle. We have been investing to achieve extensive presence in various counties in the region such as Austria, Czech and Slovak Republics, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania; all of them connected to our POPs in Athens and Istanbul which are the landing points of our Mediterranean submarine network. We have also increased capacity on relevant routes to achieve full redundancy between Athens and Istanbul towards Frankfurt through our CEE POPs.
All our international connections are also MEF CE2.0 certified, providing best standards to our corporate customers. These investments respond to local growth of demand for international TLC services, especially IP Transit, as we serve through our global IP Backbone Seabone. CEE/Balkans are an alternative route to connect West Europe to the Middle East and Asia.
Currently, we plan to extend our reach to other relevant markets of the region such as Hungary and Russia. In addition we have extensive local operations in Greece and Turkey with multiple next-generation data centres to serve the local demand of sophisticated cloud and data center solutions as well as international connectivity and IP transit services along the Balkans/CEE route. Together with data centres in Sicily, we have created a very strong data centre and cloud solutions ecosystem in the Mediterranean.
Last but not least, we have developed global broadcasting solutions that address the broadcaster’s ecosystem, offering video service transport and value-added services for national and international TV players, with connection to most relevant media hubs globally.
What do you hope to achieve by attending Capacity CEE 2015?
CEE is a relevant event in the region and as such gathers established and new players in the area. It's an opportunity to meet current and potential customers as well as see what local players have been doing in new services and network reach etc. We can also understand where the market wants to go so we can better address our investments in the region and maintain our commitment in the area efficiently and profitably.
What major trends do you see occurring in the CEE and wider European region this year?
The convergence cloud/connectivity wave is already evident in Western Europe as well as in the Mediterranean with new cloud ecosystems development in large tele-houses and neutral data centres expected to expand progressively in CEE. This is one of the drivers for the expansion our infrastructure and partnership ecosystems in the area.
What are some of the challenges of operating in the CEE market?
We have witnessed competitive dynamics in western Europe which have occurred in a very short period of time in CEE. That scale remains an important target to maintain profitability.
