Digital Island joins Focal; Yahoo signs with Equinix

(Telephony)Mirroring a trend to move varied Internet services into regional connection sites, Digital Island, a managed Internet infrastructure provider, and global communications, commerce and media company Yahoo announced plans to locate in Internet centers.

Yahoo said it would leverage Equinix' Internet business exchange (IBX) centers in the Silicon Valley and Dallas to launch its Yahoo! Internet Exchange (YIX) points. Equinix gives Yahoo the choice of ISPs, carriers and other services providers who participate in its open marketplace Internet infrastructure services.

Concurrently, Digital Island said it would deploy its Footprint servers throughout Focal Communications' Internet exchange locations.

Michael Mael, president of Focal's Data Communications business unit said that Digital Island's move is indicative of an industry-wide trend.

"They're taking all their content and putting it on their servers in our facility," he said. "They're a customer in that they're paying us for the space. They're a partner in that we want them in our facility because having their content in our facility is a good thing for all of our users."

Aggregating paying "partners," as well as users, is essential as the Internet becomes more complex and more popular, Mael continued.

"As bandwidth becomes more and more available, the applications become more bandwidth-intensive," he explained. "To provide better performance to enable end users to get access to that content and applications, you want to be as close to the end user as possible."

Once there, they facilitate communications. Equinix, for example, launched a bundled service design that will allow ISPs, content providers and e-commerce companies to establish a network presence by providing access to Equinix' central switching fabric and supporting infrastructure, the company said.

Focal follows a similar path, with a difference, said Mael.

"In our scenario we provide our customers with access through our facility out to the Internet, so we are an Internet provider," he said. "Secondly, the location of our facilities, from a network architecture perspective, is at the edge of the network, and that's a very, very important distinction."