EarthLink’s Cloud Exchange Service Looks to Stand Out from the Pack
With the growing number of cloud based managed service providers, how can one provider add more value than another? EarthLink believes that it’s managed services can stand out from the pack of MSPs by offering detailed monitoring capabilities coupled with network management services that exceed the expectations of its customers.
That’s the gist of the comments provided by EarthLink CEO Joe Eazor at an investors conference. Eazor said, “If you were selling the service on a stand-alone basis, the differentiation becomes in your ability to manage it.” Eazor adds, “The monitoring capabilities to stay on top of the optimization of the network and prioritization of the data flow to and from different SaaS or IaaS players.”
EarthLink believes that its new Cloud Exchange lineup will help organizations more effectively choose the cloud services that best suit their organizational objectives. Eazor’s comments specifically mention the MPLS customers and their desire to go to 3rd party solutions.
“If you look at our customer base, especially our MPLS customers, most of them are looking to migrate more and more of their applications side to SaaS providers and the flexibility of Infrastructure as a Service provider,” says Eazor. “There are varying stages of success there, but if it becomes an offer we can provision through the network, there’s a significant amount of demand.”
As far as the overall direction of EarthLink’s managed services, Mr Eazor mentions, “We’re constantly looking to our channel partners as well as our customers on input on where to go next.” Eazor continues, “I think this first wave of products is sort of a mix of pull and push and as we go forward, we have a good process with external sources and customers on where to go next.”
