Flexential boosts its software-defined interconnection services

Managed services provider Flexential has released Flexential Fabric, a platform that enables customers to dynamically provision interconnection services through a web interface. Flexential Fabric supports both IP transit and private transport through a single port, which the company says is a first and which gives customers a simpler way to scale and manage interconnection services.

Flexential Fabric is integrated with the company’s flagship FlexAnywhere platform, a network gateway that’s linked with an array of Flexential’s connectivity services, which include IP bandwidth, data center interconnect (DCI), cloud fabric, and cloud- and data-protection services.

Flexential has 41 data centers around the U.S., all connected from a mesh perspective rather than a hub and spoke method, and FlexAnywhere is what ties them together. “We don’t aggregate in metro areas back to a single point. We just tie that into other metros, so we have every data center and a complete mesh across the actual network,” explains Ryan Mallory, COO of Flexential.

FlexAnywhere allows customers to connect into any other data center across the company’s entire network. This gives customers the ability to look at their overall infrastructure deployment and view their data center as an infrastructure-as-a-service platform, Mallory said.

Flexential Fabric includes a self-service portal within the Flexential Xperience Platform (FXP). This web-based portal offers customers control over their network infrastructure, enabling them to create secure, private virtual connections tailored to their business requirements. By supporting both IP transit and private transport, and automating virtual connections across the entire platform, Flexential gives users the ability to monitor and manage utilization, as well as the flexibility to add, change, or remove network services as needed.

Rather than buying such services piecemeal from different providers, FlexAnywhere customers will have a single point of access. “Now with that single cross connect, you have the ability to spin up and take down services across our product set in near real time, so you’re shortening your time for usability, you’re also shortening your ability to provision [services], and you’re able to manage it all through a single portal interface,” said Mallory.