Intra-IDC alliance, CIX service platform, and the fourth IDC together to create synergetic effects
As the transformation into post-globalization era has been accelerated by the trade war and COVID-19 pandemic, plus the promotion of the New Southbound Policy, the international and domestic positioning of Taiwanese enterprises has been greatly affected. Besides increased investment seen back in Taiwan, there has also seen a thriving expansion to Southeast Asia, thereby deriving multiplied pressing demands for telecommunication and network services.
Chief Telecom, with its interlocking policies and actions covering from the frontend service provisioning, to backend cloud service platform and IDC services, is here to fully support Taiwanese enterprises with their new positioning and requirements.
“Through a series of plans, our goal is to comprehensively provide Taiwanese enterprises, including their domestic and global branches, with telecommunication and network services that are of efficacy, quality, accessibility and security. And consequently, assist them to overcome commercial and cultural differences across regions, and solve key issues that are related to their daily operation and business efficiency,” Julius Tsai, Senior Manager of Chief Telecom’s product team commented.
(Taiwan Network Exchange Gateway)
Previously, Chief Telecom focused mainly on supporting Taiwanese enterprises in the Greater China region. Yet as the U.S.-China trade war continued to heat up, as well as the geological and manpower advantages of SEA countries, Taiwanese enterprises are quickly adjusting their overseas positioning there. And the local telecommunication and network services are undoubtedly two essential elements of the operation of enterprises. However, due to the limitations of service coverage, Chief Telecom used to only be able to provide services locally in SEA by special project, but the negotiation with local providers was very time-consuming, and the provisioning and maintenance afterward very complicated.
Nonetheless, this will be changed completely starting this year. Now for Taiwanese enterprises that would like to set foot in ASEAN, they will be able to work through Chief Telecom as a one-stop-shop contact just as what they do now in Taiwan, and choose the local IDC and network services by their demand. And the key to this change is that Chief Telecom has been actively expanding alliance partnerships with telcos and ISPs in SEA.
Chief Telecom indicates that in this year, in addition to the expansion of submarine cable backbones in Asia from 340G to 600G, it is also aiming to have telco partners with stable cooperative relationships in each Asian country. Through the partnership, both will be able to provide each other’s customers with all kinds of telecommunications services such as leasing of submarine cable systems, IDC, dedicated circuits, VPN services, internet accesses and public cloud services.
(Julius Tsai, Senior Manager of Chief Telecom’s product team)
The alliance partners now include PLDT Global from the Philippines, NeocomISP from Cambodia, True from Thailand, CMC from Vietnam, KINX from Korea, and partnerships with telcos from other countries that are underway. For example, through the alliance, Taiwanese enterprises can lease submarine cable to connect between IDCs in Taiwan and the Philippines, and use it along with local internet access; or branches of Taiwanese enterprises in Vietnam will be able to lease VPN services locally and connect back to headquarters in Taiwan. Whether it’s from Taiwan to other countries or vice versa, both the presales consulting and the post-sales support can be done via the single contact point of Chief Telecom and within the shortest time.
As the development statuses vary in SEA countries, there are also gaps in the infrastructures. Besides carefully selecting the suitable local partners, Chief Telecom also works on the technical side to strengthen the service quality and controllability.
Thus, the newly designed Chief Connectivity Intelligence eXchange (CIX) platform is born in order to provide customers with faster and more flexible cross-country services. Compared with the traditional point-to-point circuits that needed to be planned and provisioned independently, CIX platform provides services on the basis of reserved backbone and internet resources to be enabled on demand, and can therefore greatly improve the time needed for provisioning, the flexibility of expansion, and the ease of service migration. Especially as the COVID-19 pandemic has again become serious in Asia, on-site provisioning has also become difficult, and with CIX, the required time for provisioning can be effectively reduced.
A noteworthy feature of CIX platform is that it is built based on the solid infrastructure of Chief Telecom as the biggest telecom marketplace in Taiwan. Chief Cloud eXchange (CCX) platform, for example, provides direct connections to global public clouds such as AWS, Azure, GCP, IBM and Oracle. Moreover, the customer portfolio of Chief Telecom and TPIX members are constituted by international telcos such as Telstra, Telekom Malaysia and the American tech giants – FAAMG. Through CIX platform, both foreign and domestic customers can flexibly choose to use the services provided by these renowned global providers.
(Chief Cloud eXchange,CCX)
Chief Telecom pointed out though the last mile provisioning will need to be completed by local partners, Chief Telecom can ensure the tenacity and controllability of the services by means of technical capacity in order to provide services that are flexible and various, and the key lies in software-defined network technology. For example, if the dedicated circuit is down, CIX platform will come into effect and use public internet as backup to keep the service by taking different routing.
Compared with the previous provisioning situation of network services for Taiwanese enterprises in SEA, which would take several weeks averagely for resource preparation and provisioning changes, now it takes only a few hours or a few days to complete the same. More importantly, Chief Telecom can provide Taiwanese enterprises with extra service flexibility and cost advantage.
As a consequence of the changes in political and economic situation, Taiwan, located in the hub of East Asia, has gradually become the center of the region’s network and submarine cable systems. Chief Telecom, foreseeing that the overseas markets will be an important driving force for future growth of revenue and profit, has begun to build its fourth IDC under the circumstance that the existing three IDCs are nearly full. The fourth IDC’s design will be matching that of smart and green buildings, and expected to launch in 2023.
The fourth IDC will have a usable area of 5,000 ping and can accommodate 1,800 racks, with floor loading able to take up to 2,000 kilograms per square meter, and the overall design will align with the cloud generation’s requirements of IDC power and space management. Moreover, designed subject to the environmental conditions of Taiwan, the IDC will be able to withstand earthquakes of PGA 0.4 (Richter scale 7), and utilize the most advanced seismic isolation technology which is to install seismic isolation devices in the basement and thus the vibration of earthquakes will be concentrated in the bottom of the building, so the IDC will not be affected when earthquakes strike.
The four IDCs of Chief Telecom will be extensively connected by fiber networks. With the vision of building the biggest carrier-neutral telecom market in Taiwan, Chief Telecom aspires to establish a complete ecosystem of telecommunication services: locally, it aims to attract service providers that will operate across countries; internationally, it focuses on drawing global customers to come and set up POPs in Taiwan with its gateway of network and submarine cable systems.
From actively expanding the alliance partnerships in SEA, to improving the service capacity and efficiency of CIX platform from the technical side, and fulfilling the requirements of cloud generation by its fourth IDC, Chief Telecom is marching in full support of Taiwanese enterprises in their global positioning adjustment, and in the same time accelerating the implementation of its whole new business vision.
