Interconnect Services B.V. has come a long way since brothers and company co-founders Jeroen and Rob Stevens first began providing domain registration services from a loft office 27 years ago. Today, Interconnect provides a who’s who of Dutch businesses in a variety of industries, including high-tech and telecommunications, with the cloud and security solutions and services they need to succeed.
Both Jeroen and Rob still manage Interconnect, which now employs more than 120 cloud, infrastructure, application, and networking professionals. The company is growing and later this year will move into an expanded headquarters being built in the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Notably, Interconnect is also building a new state-of-the-art data center that will be located right next door.
We recently connected with Hans Derksen, marketing manager and William van Tienen, technical product manager, to learn more about Interconnect and what it means to achieve the VMware Cloud Verified distinction. We also took the opportunity to explore why Interconnect uses with the belief that most organizations should plan for a multi-cloud future to ensure that they keep business continuity and are agile in the future.
“Most of our current customers are managed service providers (MSPs), software developers and small or medium-sized enterprises and businesses,” says Derksen. “It can be a struggle for many organizations, particularly those in fields outside of technology, not only to make the right decisions and plans for the cloud, but also to maintain core systems and processes. IT infrastructure, hardware and software are not their core business.”
Van Tienen points out that many customers turn to Interconnect after struggling with everything from plotting their IT strategy, to investing in high-demand IT talent, managing hardware, and accurately predicting and controlling IT-related costs. Among these are the variable costs associated with the public cloud.
“The public cloud isn’t necessarily less expensive, particularly if you are not familiar with the costs involved. Our tailormade solutions at Interconnect help by supplying Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) for a fixed price without any surprises,” he says. “We enable our customers to focus on their core business.”
Derksen notes that Interconnect offers a wide range of cloud options, from a dedicated single-tenant private cloud to hybrid clouds that empower organizations to mix and match various use cases with the right cloud using the company’s high-performance, high security IaaS. All of this is made possible by Interconnect’s highly advanced, Tier 3+ data centers in both Eindhoven and ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Comprising a combined floor space of more than 6,800 square meters, Interconnect has the largest data center footprint in Southern Holland.
“We believe that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution for workloads in the cloud,” adds Van Tienen. “Each workload has its own requirements and therefore an ideal cloud to run on. It should be easy to use all the capabilities that various clouds offer while capitalizing on their strengths and migrating workloads between them. At Interconnect, we deliver that flexibility.”
Derksen also stresses that such flexibility is increasingly crucial for a variety of reasons. It’s a reality IT leaders should plan for.
“At the outset of any cloud journey it can be tempting to focus on a single cloud environment,” he says. “It’s an approach that is simpler and less expensive initially, but ultimately most organizations will encounter a use case where a different cloud may be preferable either because of their inherent capabilities, cost, or ease of deployment. It’s imperative to look at each organization’s unique situation and needs, and then plan accordingly. Increasingly that means planning for a multi-cloud deployment at some point in the future.”
Notably, Interconnect’s longstanding partnership with VMware can be seen in the broad array of cloud offerings the company’s customers have to choose from. All of Interconnect’s private, public, and multi-cloud related solutions use VMware technologies.
“We rely on myriad VMware innovations. For example, VMware vSphere serves as a solid foundation of our cloud offerings, VMware Cloud Director enables multi-factor authentication and VMware NSX seamlessly tackles scalability requirements,” adds Van Tienen. “Being VMware Cloud Verified ensures our customers that we supply secure, modern and future-ready services.”
Learn more about Interconnect and its partnership with VMware here.
