DE-CIX operates 32 locations worldwide in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia and connects over 2400 carriers, internet service providers (ISPs), content providers and corporate networks in over 100 countries.
The company says its crisis preparation rests on three pillars: employee health and emergency plans, automation and virtualisation and advanced planning for capacity.
On health and emergency plans, company CTO Thomas King said: “Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have therefore further developed existing emergency plans and security measures for the DE-CIX workforce and implemented these changes.
“This includes a home office obligation and separation of teams, but also early vaccination and booster offers for all employees. In addition, for example, should fewer personnel be available for a period of time, expansion plans within the DE-CIX infrastructure can be scaled back as necessary without impacting ongoing DE-CIX operations.”
On automation and virtualisation, King adds, “We've relied on automation for years, so much of our interconnection ecosystem can be maintained and monitored remotely. This means that only in rare cases is manual physical intervention required in the data centres.”
DE-XIC offers an open customer interface to its platform and a self-service portal through which customers can independently adjust bandwidth requirements.
The company says it took the initiative to plan early as questions were raised as to the capacity limits of the internet and the resilience of the DE-CIX infrastructure.
In response, King said: “Capacity in our own network is expanded on a regular basis and for the long term. We always plan around 12 months in advance.
“As soon as we reach approx. 60% of existing capacities, we expand our capacities further. The remaining 40% of free capacity is needed, firstly, for redundancies and, secondly, so that we always have enough free capacity for increases in data traffic.”
