Business Chief Europe Magazine June 2015 | Page 14

TECHNOLOGY

them social media , account for 40 percent of Interxion ’ s business , their preference for keeping their physical presence in Sweden rather than within the important Russian market is clear . Stockholm all at once became a major gateway for northern EU and the former CIS countries . If Stockholm could become , virtually , a Russian city , Marseille can become an African city , he believes . In terms of latency it is 17 ms from Cairo , six to Tunis , and AAE1 promises to connect Marseille and Nairobi in 25 ms .

Why do a few thousandths of a second matter so much ? The gaming website Twitch , a France-IX member , generates more traffic than YouTube , thanks to its video capture service , transmitted in full HD so that gamers can re-run their actions .

“ The gamers are crazy about latencies . If it took an extra quarter of a second to kill an enemy you could lose the game !” says Franck

Simon . And as in-game betting gets more refined the window for placing a wager gets shorter .

Gulf attraction for Marseille ’ s IXPs Marseille has achieved critical mass in terms of internet connectivity . A Marseille-based internet exchange point ( IXP ) like France-IX , that already has a large number of peering global-content providers , will find that its presence attracts even more connections , argues Franck Simon . “ This means that any Middle East operators who are also connected to the Marseille IXP will be able to get content from these global providers more quickly and so provide a better quality of service to their subscribers and , ultimately to their end users – the businesses and consumers in the Middle East .”

Middle Eastern network operators are showing interest in connecting

14 June 2015