 Hi everyone and welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast where we're covering the latest stories trends and innovations from leaders in our industry I'm here Barb Mitchell at PTC 2024 and I'm joined by Richard Petrie Who's the CTO at London Internet Exchange Richard? Thanks for joining us morning Bob. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me Yeah, yeah a bit of a trek for you to get here from London. It has been a trek It's a great event. It took me about 20 hours to get here. So yes, but worthwhile Always actually amazes me how many folks we talked to that are 20-25 hours and everyone's coming and everyone just loves to be here. It's worth making the trip, right? I hope that's true. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you've had a had a good week So let's talk about Lengths a little bit if you don't mind and I know that recently you've had a bit of a technology refresh With potentially new new partners leveraging a new technology. Yeah, tell us all about that Yeah, so so we we London Internet Exchange known as links So we operate internet exchanges around the world But one of the one of the main ones we're focusing on at the moment is Novus in North Virginia We have internet exchanges so coming up for 10-year anniversary So we're we're pretty proud of where we've got to with that, but it's got to a point in time where we We the technology we invested in it 10 years ago, which was done as fantastic Needs to be refreshed to allow us for growth to allow us for new functionality We we struck a partnership with a company called Nokia. We we're investing in their their new technology platform And actually over over the next three four weeks We're going to be doing a refresh that sees all of our our customers move from the old platform to new platform And that gives us a scope for the future to build grow and add new functionality. Yeah, so Talk about how that partnership with Nokia that and the what that is enabling from a technology perspective is Really allowing you to be a bit more responsive to market demand. Absolutely. I mean we we sat with we've worked with Nokia in London where we're working with them in Africa So we've got a long and successful partnership with them We're leverage in one of their new new data center platforms for for North Virginia It's it enables us to be able to put in hundred four hundred gig technology We're seeing a research or a bit of a surgeon in demand out out in North North America We hope with our promotion that's going to be going on over the next few few weeks as well We're going to be doing some price and promotion. We've got the the technology refresh And with the demand that's coming We're hoping that we're going to see a lot more capacity flow a lot more traffic flow into the exchange there Yeah, and I also understand we were chatting a little bit earlier about just some of the the The ways that this allows you to tailor custom solutions for for your client base So tell us what what that opens up for you Yeah, so so we we Peering is our traditional product. So the IXP peering, but we also We've also embraced new technologies new new solutions. So we're we're putting in We have products that allow our customers to talk to each other over the fabric We allow them to connect to cloud partners. We we support the the map service, which is a Microsoft Azure peering service and so Leavage in the technology that Nokia provide us as well as our own tooling tooling chain and manageability Tools that we've deployed gives us that that capability to offer all of these services We we do in London, but it enables us to do that in North America as well. Yeah, great. And so we're it's 2024 Think about that January, I think we'll I'm sure we we see you it feels like once a quarter with with some updates, but What it what can we expect to hear over the coming year or when we're here this time next year? Any new developments that you expect to be sharing? Yeah, I you know I'm hoping we'll be back here next year and talking about the success and growth of Our presence in North America. We we we're doing an expansion in Africa So we've recently launched in in Kenya in Nairobi We we hope over the next six six months that proves to be successful and with that with the success That might give us opportunities to expand in Africa as well like coming back to North America I think you know, we're we're we're we're seeing a lot chatting to people this week We're seeing a lot of investment in data center footprint. We're seeing a lot of investment in cloud We as a as an interconnection platform Our role is to try and make that as simple and as easy as possible So we're we're really excited that we think next 12 months a lot of growth in North America great fantastic Thank you. Thank you. It's always a pleasure to chat with you and Enjoy the rest of the show what what there is left of it. Yeah, thank you very much Hope you get some sunshine at some point. Yeah, yeah, and and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV Happy networking