DE-CIX Annual Report 2022: Global expansion, increasing capacity, and growing data throughput on the road to the Internet Exchange of the future

• Global revenues grow 13.7% in comparison to 2021
• Connected capacity increases by 30% globally & by 500% to cloud service providers, reflecting demand for digital services and applications
• 3500 networks connected, data traffic rises by 25%, and global reach extended by a further 11 metro markets

Frankfurt am Main, 14 June 2023: DE-CIX, the world’s leading operator of Internet Exchanges (IXs), has today released the company’s Annual Report for the financial year 2022, confirming continued strong growth in global turnover and data exchange. Global revenues of all company parts continued to grow, reaching 55.4 million Euro, an increase of 6.7 million (up 13.7%) compared to 2021. With more than 48 exabytes of data throughput globally, DE-CIX experienced around 25% increase in total traffic volume. DE-CIX Frankfurt, one of the largest IXs in the world, achieved peak traffic exceeding 14 Terabits per second (Tbit/s). The DE-CIX IXs in New York, Madrid, and Mumbai all surpassed the 1 Tbit/s mark, and other regional exchanges also saw marked growth of 30-40%.

Reflecting the trend of previous years, connected customer capacity on the DE-CIX Internet Exchanges – a metric reflecting customer forecasts of future demand – grew by close to 30% in 2022, finishing the year just shy of 124 Terabits. This represents almost a doubling of capacity since 2019. In addition, the interest in DE-CIX’s enterprise-facing services continued to grow strongly, with the connected capacity to cloud service providers via the DE-CIX Cloud Exchange increasing by 500% year on year. Connected networks ended the year at a total of 3,500 worldwide.

In terms of geographical expansion, the Internet Exchange operator announced its market entry in 11 further metro markets in 2022, with many of them implemented before the end of the year. The technical team undertook ongoing support for the expansion of DE-CIX to new locations around the world, including work on the implementation of five DE-CIX-own locations, six premium enabled sites, seven DE-CIX as a Service (DaaS) IXs, and four strategic IX partnerships, the latter opening the way for bilateral offerings of interconnection services in the markets Prague (Czech Republic), Warsaw (Poland), Bucharest (Romania) and Sofia (Bulgaria). By the end of the year, DE-CIX was present in more than 40 key metro markets globally, spanning North America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In 2022, DE-CIX also underwent the largest restructuring of its leadership in the history of the company, with Ivo Ivanov succeeding DE-CIX’s longtime leader Harald A. Summa as CEO and Chair of the Board. The management team was extended to four seats to include CFO Sebastian Seifert, CTO Dr. Thomas King, and CSO Christian Reuter.

“2022 was a year of strong and healthy economic growth and geographical expansion for DE-CIX, and a year in which the structure and leadership of the company was put in place for the next decade of growth in digital services and interconnection demand. It was also a year that saw the gradual return to normality after a global health crisis the likes of which most of us have never seen before. With the crisis as a backdrop, the excellent role that the digital infrastructure community plays on a global stage became clearly visible – an essential role in protecting economies, creating prosperity, and improving the quality of people’s lives, everywhere,” comments CEO Ivo Ivanov.

From North America to Europe – strong growth in digital hubs and at the edge

DE-CIX North America, the largest neutral interconnection ecosystem on the North American continent, comprises the five IXs New York, Dallas, Chicago, Phoenix, and Richmond, covering the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Southwestern regions. In 2022, The DE-CIX North American ecosystem saw a 30% increase in overall connected customer capacity. Data traffic at DE-CIX New York – the largest IX in the Northeast and the largest data center and carrier neutral Internet Exchange on the east coast – grew by 40% and reached a data throughput of 1.3 Tbit/s at peak times by the end of the year. DE-CIX Dallas, the largest carrier and data center neutral IX serving the Southwest region, joined the top 15 exchanges in the US, almost doubling its data traffic throughput to finish the year with peak traffic at 625 Gbit/s.

The DE-CIX Southern European region, which includes the IXs in Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Marseille, and Palermo, is the largest neutral interconnection ecosystem in Southern Europe, with 470 connected networks in 13 data centers. Customer capacity of the Southern European IXs increased by 32% in 2022. DE-CIX Madrid celebrated a new record in peak data throughput of 1 terabit per second in early September 2022, an increase of close to 140% since early 2020.

In Germany, highlights for 2022 included the opening of DE-CIX Leipzig, the first Internet Exchange for the German states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia, offering both an opportunity for companies in the region to interconnect locally and a gateway to interconnect remotely with the 1000+ networks at DE-CIX Frankfurt. Connected customer capacity across the country – also including the IXs in Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich, rose by 28%. DE-CIX Frankfurt itself – the largest Internet Exchange in Europe, based on network density and data throughput – saw more than 30% growth in peak traffic, and four new traffic peaks in a row: The IX crossed the 11 Terabits per second (Tbit/s) benchmark in February, 12 Tbit/s in August, 13 Tbit/s in September, and 14 Tbit/s in December.

From Europe to Southeast Asia – strong demand for interconnection reflected in all DE-CIX regions

In 2022, DE-CIX Istanbul continued to grow as a neutral interconnection and cloud exchange for Internet service providers, content delivery networks, other network operators, and enterprises of all sizes from Turkey, the Caucasus region, and the Middle East. DE-CIX Istanbul saw an increased demand for high bandwidth access to the platform, resulting in 25% growth in connected customer capacity. The Exchange enjoyed 27% peak traffic growth in 2022, heading towards 400 Gbit/s.

The first and foremost data center and carrier neutral IX in the Middle East, UAE-IX powered by DE-CIX celebrated its 10th anniversary in November 2022. Since its inception in 2012, the Exchange initiated by the UAE’s Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) has enjoyed consistent double-digit annual growth. In 2022, the total connected customer capacity grew by 53%, and data throughput at peak times increased by 39%, with an all-time peak of 392 Gbit/s at the end of the year.

In 2022, the number of connected networks across DE-CIX India’s four Internet Exchanges in the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai exceeded 500 for the first time. The total connected customer capacity across locations increased by 18% and grew to more than 8 Tbits. At the region’s flagship IX, DE-CIX Mumbai – the largest Internet Exchange in the Asia Pacific – data throughput at peak times increased by 18%, reaching 1.1 Tbit/s. DE-CIX Delhi almost doubled its peak traffic, reaching 198 Gbit/s by the end of the year. Meanwhile, there was 80% growth in connected networks at DE-CIX Chennai in 2022.

The DE-CIX Asia platform, the first distributed Internet Exchange in Southeast Asia – including initially Internet Exchanges in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru, and Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei – saw overall growth of 38% in connected customer capacity in 2022, and the number of connected networks increased by 31%. A cooperation was entered into during the year with GetaFIX, the Philippines’ largest neutral Internet Exchange, to connect the Philippines as a fourth market to the DE-CIX Asia distributed interconnection ecosystem. The partnership adds a further 40+ networks to the DE-CIX Asia interconnection platform and will allow all 100+ DE-CIX Asia participants to seamlessly interconnect.

The Internet of the future – dependent on globally distributed interconnected infrastructure

Always at the forefront of technological evolution for the interconnection sector, DE-CIX continues to push boundaries to develop the next-generation Internet Exchange. In 2022, DE-CIX was the first IX operator in the world to begin preparation for the advent of 800 GE – through upgrading the edge routers at DE-CIX Frankfurt. The global interconnection platform was also upgraded to “Peering LAN 2.0”, and all connections were migrated to EVPN, resulting in a significant reduction in energy consumption of customer routers. The development of DE-CIX’s latest enterprise-facing interconnection solution, the Cloud ROUTER, which enables direct connectivity between clouds and cloud-to-cloud communication directly on the DE-CIX platform, was developed in 2022 and launched in early 2023. 

The full DE-CIX Annual Report 2022 can be downloaded here (in English only).