Eurofiber’s new Cloud Infra business unit, which was announced six months ago, has been expanded to include full integration of the MatrixMind subsidiary. As a result, Eurofiber offers colocation, cloud & connectivity, and consultancy: “Infrastructure is increasingly complex, so good advice makes all the difference for our customers,” says Daniel Danon, managing director of Cloud Infra.
The connectivity and datacenter market has changed dramatically in recent years. Supplementing the connections offering fiber and colocation, there is now a stronger focus on cloud connectivity and security. Originally a fiber-optic provider, Eurofiber has grown with its customers. Over the past few years, the company has invested heavily in building a cloud infrastructure. Eurofiber made several significant acquisitions, including Dataplace datacenters in 2016 and MatrixMind in 2020, and its range of products and services continued to evolve.
The right people in the lead
Eurofiber aims to deliver digital infrastructure across all of Western Europe. In pursuit of that goal, Eurofiber spent the last few years acquiring companies in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. Eurofiber now has more than 60,000 km of fiber-optic network and 11 regional datacenters. In addition, investments have been made in strengthening senior management and bringing in more international experience. Daniel Danon (France) joined the company in 2020, while Andrea Kraus (Germany) was appointed Chief Revenue Officer at the start of 2022.
Kraus has 20 years of experience in the international telecom and IT industry. Starting out at Deutsche Telecom, she then held leading positions in international marketing and sales at T-Systems, IBM and others. In these roles, she gained extensive experience in connectivity and cloud. As she says herself, “Eurofiber is developing very rapidly. I see it as my role to ensure that our portfolio remains seamlessly aligned with the rapidly changing needs in the marketplace, and to deliver an ultimate customer experience.”
A separate business unit: Cloud Infra
To achieve growth in cloud and reinforce the company’s European ambitions, a separate business unit was established in September 2021, with Daniel Danon as its managing director. “The Cloud Infra business unit comprises several subsidiaries: first DCspine and Dataplace, and more recently MatrixMind. The solutions and expertise of these organizations enables us to provide optimal service to our customers,” Danon says. “From 1 April on, we will start commercial operations under the name of Eurofiber Cloud Infra.”
At the opening ceremony, he explained that the new business unit can offer a complete set of cloud infrastructure components. That includes the 78 datacenters connected by DCspine as well as Dataplace’s six Tier III datacenters in the Netherlands. These datacenters are a significant part of what Eurofiber Cloud Infra has to offer, but isn’t that counterintuitive when an organization starts focusing more on the cloud? Danon: “On the contrary, the cloud is not uniform and tangible, but abstract and extremely widespread – and by definition also includes datacenters. Our datacenters are part of the Dutch and European cloud infrastructure. We also offer access to datacenters operated by dozens of other companies, ranging from regional firms to global providers.”
Increasingly complex infrastructure
People sometimes forget about the back-end of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and that is understandable, Danon continues. “Infrastructure and connectivity are evolving constantly. At first the trend was more fiber, then more servers, and then even more servers. After that, we saw servers being replaced by the public cloud. The next step was a partial transition back out of the public cloud, for example due to security considerations and changing legislation. As you can see, the landscape became increasingly complex.”
Andrea Kraus emphasizes the importance of trust: “It really wasn’t just more complex for customers, either; even experts and IT companies found it more complicated. As a result, specializations emerged and trust became increasingly important. Of course we offer the best SLAs, but you also need to be able to trust that solutions will be able to work together. We asked our customers: if we start offering multiple elements, do you see this as a lock-in, or does it actually help you move forward?
Creating complete digital infrastructures
Kraus says: ‘The result of our customer survey is that we have to combine various business units into Eurofiber Cloud Infra. This allows us to create complete digital infrastructures that are seamlessly aligned with our customers’ business models. At the same time, we will continue to offer separate services as well. That means customers can also come to us if they only need server space or datacenter connectivity.”
To give customers what they really need, Eurofiber has opted for far-reaching standardization. “Many things in the public cloud are virtualized and standardized. We can offer the same convenience, so we decided to make it possible. We offer the whole menu, but customers do not have to purchase everything on the menu. It’s like Lego: standardized blocks that fit together in any configuration,” Danon explains.
Complete integration of MatrixMind
Beyond the standardized services that Eurofiber offers, the truly distinctive factor of the Cloud Infra business unit are its experts. Danon: “Because the landscape has become so complex, it’s important that we can help the customer make the right choices. That is the key to Eurofiber’s success. The same holds true for MatrixMind, which is why this subsidiary is now fully part of Eurofiber Cloud Infra.”
MatrixMind is the third company to be incorporated into Danon’s business unit. He explains, “The experts and the product portfolio at MatrixMind are our hidden gems. We can’t support clients without personalized expertise. When it comes to the cloud, it is even more important to help customers decide which services are best for various workloads and how to manage it all. In today’s complex infrastructure, consulting is essential if we want to help our customers.
Providing all the puzzle pieces that are needed
In summary, Eurofiber Cloud Infra will offer all the solutions involved in the customer journey for infrastructure and connectivity: colocation, cloud, connectivity and consultancy. “But it will still remain an open menu,” Danon notes. “We are not competing with our customers’ datacenters. Some customers want IaaS in addition to their own datacenters, while others want access to our entire portfolio. We offer them all the puzzle pieces they might potentially need, but they choose which ones they really want.”
Written by Dutch IT