In this new role, Pannella will build upon the success of NJFX's existing ecosystem of 25 carriers and four subsea cable systems to develop relationships with enterprise businesses.
"Gabe brings a wealth of experience and will further our goal of servicing the enterprise market. NJFX creates a level of transparency by educating the enterprise market on carrier network architecture and illustrates why it's crucial to have reliable, resilient, and redundant routes for their business," said Gil Santaliz, founder and CEO of NJFX.
"NJFX enables dark fibre network access on subsea cables. Customers can create and maintain their own private optical networks bypassing carrier hotels and eliminating unnecessary points of failure."
With 25 years of experience Pannella's career includes a leadership role during his tenure at Metromedia Fiber Networks in the late '90s. Following this he joined Abovenet and spent more than a decade bringing his expertise and knowledge about network architecture to executives at dozens of the country's top 100 financial institutions.
Other companies he's worked for includes Lightower, Zayo, Zenfi Networks, and data centre industry expertise with companies such as Digital Realty, Cyxtera, and CoreSite.
"I am looking forward to bringing the story of this vibrant and trusted NJFX ecosystem to prospective enterprise customers," said Pannella.
"As more and more businesses realize the importance of well-architected networks, they will require access to multiple routes to serve their customers."
Leveraging his vast interconnection and data centre colocation experience, during Hurricane Sandy, Pannella played an essential role with his mission-critical customers to maintain available connectivity options in the New York metro area.
In related news, March saw NJFX become an official member of the UN's ITU Development (ITU-D) Sector, helping to bring connectivity to underserved areas.
ITU-D Sector is one of the three sectors of the ITU, and takes responsibility for creating policies, regulation and providing training programs and financial strategies in developing countries.
