CFN Grows Japan, Brazil Sites, Adds India

Network provider CFN Services has expanded the reach of its global network with connectivity to new datacenters in India, Japan and Brazil, new feeds in North America, and reduced latency on existing network routes in Europe.

The vendor has established connectivity to the Bombay Stock Exchange’s datacenter in Mumbai, and to Equinix’s TY3 datacenter in Tokyo, where CFN has also set up co-location services, having already provided connectivity to Equinix’s TY2 datacenter and Japanese provider KVH’s facility. CFN has also set up connectivity and co-lo services in Equinix’s SP1 datacenter in Sao Paulo, Brazil, has expanded its network in Europe to Telstra’s London Hosting Center in London’s Docklands area, and has reduced the roundtrip latency between Interxion’s LON1 datacenter in London and Equinix’s FR2 datacenter in Frankfurt from 8.66 milliseconds to 8.49 milliseconds. Finally, the vendor has also connected to the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s primary datafeed at Equinix’s NY4 datacenter in Secaucus, NJ, and CBOE’s disaster recovery feed from Chicago, and will begin offering managed infrastructure and market data services at NYSE Euronext’s datacenter in Mahwah, NJ later in the first quarter of this year.

“Our clients are looking for geographic expansion… but the underlying theme from customers is that they are looking for value…. The days of being willing to pay anything for the absolute lowest latency are not entirely behind us, but… cost is now the main concern,” says Wil Tirado, vice president of network and infrastructure services at CFN, adding that the new sites are the first raft of several new connectivity initiatives that the vendor is working on, with the aim of being in as many locations as possible. “As customers’ demands and requirements become better defined, we’ll add new locations,” he adds.

For example, CFN built connectivity to Mumbai for one major client, so its presence is not as comprehensive—and does not yet offer access to its Alpha managed connectivity platform of third-party data services in Mumbai—as in other market centers such as Japan or Brazil, where the vendor already has a healthy pipeline of business, Tirado says. In Brazil, CFN has already provided connectivity to local exchange BM&F Bovespa’s datacenter for around three years, but chose to set up an additional presence in SP1 because the facility allows it to offer broader services, such as Alpha connectivity, or managing more than just co-location servers for firms that want to offload more IT to third-party datacenters, whereas the exchange places strict limits on what firms can do in its own co-location center.

“Our goal is to offer our full suite of services at every site. But in some locations, such as Mumbai, we have to ‘grow into’ that,” he says. “Every market has its own complexities, so we have to make sure there is sufficient demand before we build out a full offering. Mumbai is still fairly small… but if other clients are interested, then we could add access to Alpha.”