 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Laura Nolan coming to you from ITW 2020. Joining me today is Peter von Burgl CEO of M6. Peter welcome to JSA TV. Thank you Laura and thank you for having me. Glad to have you. Well for those who don't already know can you please tell our viewers about M6. Yes thank you so M6 is an internet exchange and in that role we are one of the major connection hubs in the world connecting many people together and many companies of course together and you can probably best compare it to something like like a large port or an airport. So here in the Netherlands we have Rotterdam port for example where they actually bring a lot of containers in and then they bring them on to other parts of Europe and that's exactly what we do but then actually for internet traffic. So yeah that's what we do that's on chicks. It was a great explanation Peter. Thank you very much. So tell us about any recent news or updates. Do you have any to share with us in the ITW virtual event audience. Yeah so any recent news updates. How can I not talk about COVID of course a crisis that we've all been faced with and have to deal with and I must say for M6 of course we have had our challenges but also we've seen weirdly also a positive effect. So specifically after the lockdown came into effect in the Netherlands and in a large part of Europe we saw quite the increase in traffic which we could deal with quite easily because of the way we're designed and now we're handling that traffic but of course we also had to deal with that operationally. So we have to make some changes to our team and our process to support that. I'm happy to say that we've been able to get through that quite quite effectively but also us you know we're working at home so the whole team has been working from home for a long time. We have reopened the office although many people are still working from home as we speak and yeah we're just trying to find our way into the new normal I would say. So you know operationally and business wise we're doing okay but you know the future is somewhat uncertain like it is for everybody and to see where this crisis is going to take us. Peter as we're navigating this new normal and you know business operations are moving ahead do you can you give us an idea of maybe what the rest of the year looks like and beyond business wise or what initiatives you have moving forward to the M6. Yeah so like I said for the for the second half of the year we are relatively positive I would say. Of course it's optimistic I think the saying is in English because like I said we do expect economically there be an impact. Many parts of business have been affected and many people have been affected and that can't be without also an effect on companies like us. However when we look at our business we also seem to be in the right business right internet and internet connectivity has proven very important in these challenging times and we also see that in in our business. So for the second half of the year we have a number of opportunities with a relatively new service we launched last year it's called high access service where we help companies actually set up their own IEX and that's been proven quite successful and we also continue to invest in our network and in our services to make sure that we can you know deal with those opportunities or for that matter any of the changes that are going to happen in the in the market places. So like I said we're cautiously optimistic but keeping a close eye on market developments because of the increased uncertainty in the next couple of months. Understood well Peter tell our viewers where we can go to learn more and follow the developments of M6. Yes of course there's our website omsix.net where there's a lot of information available people can subscribe to the newsletter but also you know the normal social media channels we of course use as well so like LinkedIn and Twitter and what have you but also channels like this so we have a booth at ITW or a virtual booth this year you can find us there and find more information about us and yeah we really hope also that in the near future the real events are going to happen again and we'll be present there too in when and if they happen. Okay go check out M6 at ITW the virtual booth and their website and social channels you'll know where to find them. Thank you Peter so much for joining us and sharing with us today. Thank you Laura it's been a pleasure being here and I hope you have a good show and we'll talk to you soon. We will do that and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcast. Happy networking.