Megaport establishes Sydney to LA link

Australian interconnection services provider Megaport is continuing its global expansion, this week announcing the opening of a new connectivity route between Los Angeles and Sydney.

The SDN provider said it has opened the new route in response to demand from enterprises in both Australia and New Zealand, enabling them to connect to any cloud node across Megaport's network using one physical interface.

This allows ANZ enterprises to cost efficiently grow outside of the region, Megaport said, referring to Australia as its "most mature market".

Megaport's routes allow enterprise customers to connect directly to Microsoft Azure, AWS, Oracle FastConnect, and Google Cloud Interconnect without needing a physical presence of their own in all locations.

"The Oracle Cloud node [is] now part of the North American Megaport fabric," said Belle Lajoie, chief commercial officer at Megaport.

"This means that ANZ enterprises will now have a dedicated and reliable way to access Oracle's bare metal cloud infrastructure (FastConnect)."

Megaport had added Oracle services last month after entering a global partnership with the cloud giant to provide customers with North America-based cloud services via Oracle FastConnect.

"The addition of Oracle Cloud Services across our SDN is a major step forward in that respect. The IRUs [indefeasible rights of use] and long lease will yield substantial monthly direct network savings over the life of the agreement, increasing our competitive advantage, and enabling us to position the Asia-Pacific region towards profitability," said Megaport CEO Vincent English, who was appointed to the position following the resignation of former CEO Denver Maddux earlier this year.

"Connecting Australia to North America and delivering Megaport Exchange means that we can now provide more comprehensive connectivity options for customers."

In addition to its new Sydney-Los Angeles route, Megaport opened a new connectivity route between Los Angeles and Hong Kong in January, as well as a secondary path between Singapore and Hong Kong.

Megaport also switched on its link on the transatlantic AE Connect 13TB subsea cable connecting New York, London, and Dublin under a partnership with the cable's owner, Aqua Comms, at the same time.

In a bid to also move into the South American market, Megaport's United States subsidiary signed a deal with Seaborn Networks in February, giving it access to a fibre-optic subsea cable system between the US and Brazil to expand its services to customers in Latin America.

In return, Seaborn will be able to provide its South American customers with Megaport's software-defined networking (SDN)-enabled interconnection services via an online portal, as well as exclusively offer Megaport-enabled "broadband on demand" for connecting internationally.

The Seabras-1 subsea cable, stretching between New York and Sao Paulo, is due to begin providing services next month.

Megaport last week reported its financial results for the third quarter of the 2017 financial year, announcing that it now brings in monthly recurring revenue of AU$1 million, up from AU$909,000 last quarter.

While average revenue per port slipped from AU$615 down to AU$605 as of March 31, Megaport offset this by increasing its number of ports from 1,479 to 1,658 over the three-month period for a total quarterly revenue of AU$2.94 million, up 17 percent from the previous quarter.

Megaport's total services now number 3,269, up from 2,768, while it signed an additional 55 customers during the quarter for a total of 676, including airliners Virgin Australia and Tiger Airways.

Present in 19 countries, Megaport now has 150 datacentres in total: 45 in the Asia-Pacific region; 57 in North America thanks to the addition of seven in Ashburn, Cincinnati, Norfolk, New York, Chicago, Montreal, and Quebec; and 57 in Europe.

In Europe, Megaport said its SDN network integration with ECIX Munich has already taken place, with the remaining footprint to be completed by June, while Megaport also established three cloud on-ramps in AWS London, AWS Frankfurt, and Azure Berlin during the period.