Susan Tonkes
The cloud is not as fluffy as people think, we need to bring it down to earth and make it more understandable.
Who is NL-ix?
Behind the world of the Internet, behind the world of fibers, protocols, peers and terabytes, are actual people making it all work. But who are these people? In other words: Who is NL-ix?
Today: 🤝 Susan Tonkes - Product Marketeer, Product owner Cloud Connect
I was a fairly early user of the Internet back in the early 1990s. I used to chat on ICQ and used Hyves, a very Dutch platform. Everybody that used Hyves still remembers the dancing banana icon. Then I went to study in Groningen at the International Business School where we were connected to the Internet backbone of the University, so I spent a lot of time on Napster and LimeWire downloading things.
I studied Marketing & Management. There were lots of international students there which was unusual back then, and my course was very internationally focused. We had to go abroad for a year and I ended up in Edmonton in Canada, where the temperatures go down to minus 40 in the winter. I think this is how my love of travel began.
My background is with large telcos, I worked for Vodafone and Tele2. After many years I felt like something different and I found it in NL-ix. I remember at my job interview they told me ‘you don't know anything about networking’ and I agreed. I started working at NL-ix on March 16th 2020 – the first day of Coronavirus lockdown, I remember marathon Teams sessions with Jan where he explained a new service called Elastic Interconnect that was being developed then. I started to draw pictures explaining the service and that seemed to work.
I needed to develop a certain level of understanding, because in my job I act as a bridge between sales and technology, but I will never be a techy. What I want to do is explain things in an understandable way so that customers know what they are buying.
I am amazed by the different perceptions of the cloud. People describe it as something soft and fluffy, but your cloud actually runs in a datacenter somewhere. The cloud is not as fluffy as people think, we need to bring it down to earth and make it more understandable.
The cloud is not as fluffy as people think, we need to bring it down to earth and make it more understandable.
Susan Tonkes
Take Cloud Connect. As businesses move their IT infrastructure into the cloud there are two ways to reach it - either on the public Internet which is vulnerable, with no control on speed or route, or on a dedicated connection to a cloud service provider. This is what Cloud Connect does; it gives you guaranteed latency and bandwidth to your clouds. NL-ix brings you right to the doorstep of the infrastructure you need quickly and safely. But not all cloud connections are equal. A lot of direct connects actually drop you off quite a long way from your destination. (Microsoft) Azure, for instance is located in, amongst others, Dublin and we can get you all the way to their servers on our high-speed network. Others might drop you off on the Microsoft network in Amsterdam and you lose sight of your traffic from that point on. We can show you what happens to your traffic in real time.
I believe NL-ix has huge potential. It is made up of a bunch of very dedicated people with profound knowledge of the deep core of the Internet. We can – and do - provide solutions that are really helpful for businesses. For businesses, as well as people, the Internet has become an integral part or our lives, you will mainly miss it once it’s not there.
