Connecting and protecting the networked world

Q Please can you provide some brief background on Level 3?

A As a global network services company, Level 3 provides customers with communications solutions that support their business objectives around growth, efficiency and security. Enterprise, government and carrier customers benefit from Level 3’s comprehensive portfolio of secure, managed solutions, which include fibre and infrastructure solutions; IP-based voice and data communications; wide-area Ethernet services; video and content distribution; data centre as well as cloud-based solutions. Today, Level 3 serves customers in more than 500 markets, spanning owned fibre networks on three continents and over 60 countries.
In EMEA, Level 3 serves customers in more than 30 countries. We have more than 100 data centres and colocation facilities in EMEA all specifically built to meet the differing needs of customers. Locations range from central London with our Goswell Road site to Düsseldorf in Germany.
Our data centre facilities have a variety of benefits, including helping to support the high availability of businesses’ most important applications using low latency network connectivity. We also help to reduce the total cost of ownership with shared infrastructure, and multi-carrier access, whilst enabling simplified access to almost anywhere – offices, other carriers or cloud services such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
Q What are the key company milestones to date?
A Our business started as part of a subsidiary of a construction company that created one of the first competitive local exchange carriers, MFS Communications. By 1998, we set out to shift our business focus and create a company dedicated to the development of a facilities-based, end-to-end communications network optimised to provide IP communication services.
We’ve extended our reach over the years, both in EMEA and globally, most recently through the acquisition of tw telecom in October 2014. Now, Level 3 operates in more than 500 markets in 60 countries, anchored by our extensive fibre networks on three continents. We serve more than 50,000 customers around the globe and operate over 350 multi-tenant datacentres worldwide.
Other key milestones include:
 October 2011: Acquired Global Crossing and switched from
Nasdaq to New York Stock Exchange for common stock trading
 April 2013: Jeff Storey takes the helm as President & CEO
 October 2013: Level 3 introduces Cloud Connect Solutions
 November 2013: Level 3 dramatically expands global CDN
footprint
 April 2014: Level 3 introduces Video Cloud Services
 January 2015: Level 3 delivers the Super Bowl for the
26th consecutive year
 May 2015: Level 3 introduces Adaptive Network Control Solution
Q Who are the key personnel?
A At a global level, Jeff Storey has been Level 3’s President and CEO since April 2013 and under his leadership the company is capitalising on market growth opportunities with a strong focus on the enterprise market. Sunit Patel is our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
In EMEA key personnel include Andrew Crouch, Regional President and Global Accounts Management Division, EMEA, and Andrew Edison, Senior Vice President Sales, EMEA, who leads all sales channels across the region, servicing enterprise, government and wholesale customers.
Q How would you characterise Level 3’s strengths in what’s a
busy marketplace?
A Level 3’s strength lies in supporting customers from a wide range of verticals to meet their business objectives by connecting and protecting the networked world. Our globally-owned fibre network, scale and portfolio means we stand out in the marketplace and are able to provide reliable and secure network services to an increasingly complex world - while taking end-to-end responsibility for monitoring and maintaining the network. This is supported by approximately 350 multi-tenant data centres and colocation facilities.

Essentially we want customers to rely on us to connect them to their customers, employees and suppliers while transforming their business models and enabling their growth.
Q Please can you tell us a little bit about the company’s Cloud
offering – you recently added some collaboration services, for
example?
A Organisations are deciding to move business critical IT applications into the cloud. Yet business users and applications are very sensitive to poor or small variations in network performance and information needs to be secure when migrating to the cloud. Level 3 Cloud Connect Solutions enables companies to seamlessly migrate to the cloud. Whichever cloud provider or architecture they choose — public, private or hybrid — our network services guarantee the safety of an organisation’s critical data and applications, whilst remaining flexible.
Level 3, for example, connects organisations into Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an AWS Partner Network (APN) Technology Partner, Microsoft Windows Azure, HP Helion Managed Cloud Service and the Google Cloud Platform.
This year, we also worked with Microsoft to enable access to its cloud-based Office 365 and Skype for Business (formerly Lync) applications via private network connections, using Azure ExpressRoute. We are always adding to and growing our cloud offering to meet business’ changing needs. Level 3 is for example expanding its Cloud IAAS offering in our LATAM region, providing a Dynamic Compute service targeted towards enterprise customers who require a flexible cloud offering with a comprehensive managed services wrap. Another development to be aware of is our VCT offering (Voice Cloud).
Q What does the company offer around the intelligent network?
A Overall, Level 3 is well placed to offer services around innovative technologies such as SDN/NFV because of its expansive network reach, early investments in SDN, a focus on Ethernet and a comprehensive customer portal. We believe SDN and NFV services will help us better serve our customers by allowing them to have control over capacity, connections and functions, like Cloud on Demand.
Intelligent Network, which was the company we acquired, is now Adaptive Network Control Solutions. We recently announced that we will first use the power of SDN in the Cloud by introducing Adaptive Network Control Solutionsvia ExpressRoute to Microsoft Azure. Adaptive Network Control services include:
 Enhanced Management, which provides visibility into and analytics of key network performance characteristics like latency and packet loss on an end-to-end, site-by-site basis
 Dynamic Capacity, which gives customers the ability to scale their bandwidth by up to three times on demand or automatically based on scheduled events or utilisation triggers.
Q Security is becoming increasingly important, what does Level 3
offer, both for network and mobile security?
A Cyber threats are evolving on a daily basis, meaning the damage they can cause to an organisation is constantly increasing. Level 3 provides a network-based security solutions approach supported by comprehensive constant threat intelligence to protect our customers’ critical systems and data. With our unique position and scale as a global network provider, Level 3 can quickly identify and mitigate the latest threats in a way that few of our competitors can.
In terms of the portfolio, Level 3 offers a variety of security products, including intrusion prevention, real-time reporting, managed firewalls and web content filtering. These ensure our clients are safe from threats and attacks, maintaining brand integrity and regulatory adherence.
Q Specifically, the company has introduced a DDoS mitigation
offering?
A Our DDoS mitigation service was launched in February this year. As organisations fight to secure their network and their business, Level 3 can monitor customer’s traffic and route any threats to one of our globally located scrubbing centres before being returned via a private connection or the public Internet. It is a global service for a global issue which must be addressed by organisations in any sector. Having both network controls and scrubbing centres allows Level 3 to predict and detect malicious attacks, alert customers and quickly re-route traffic to defend their critical data infrastructures.
The Security Operations Center (SOC) acts as a protector of the Internet, surveying the landscape for malicious traffic and working with customers to make sure they have a strong set of policies in place to complement the technology Level 3 provides.
We also offer in-depth threat analysis as part of the service which ensures a strong security posture for organisations. We feel that the analysis is the most important stage of the process as many organisations have a fragmented security strategy.
Q What does the company offer around voice and video?
A Streaming services continue to grow across the world and customer satisfaction is critical to their success. Level 3 plays an important role in the delivery of streaming and OTT content via its Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Vyvx broadcast platforms. A global phenomenon, OTT wouldn’t be possible without a strong, broadly available and scalable network, which is where Level 3 comes into play. Not only do we provide the streaming capabilities, but we can also acquire the broadcast TV channels and encode them for delivery, providing an end-to-end experience for our customers.
We also offer a variety of voice services, including Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C), Voice Complete and Wholesale Voice. With businesses becoming more and more global, organisations require an integrated communications system across multiple sites. Implementing UC&C allows seamless collaboration between sites which enhances a business’ communications as well as their functionality.
Voice Complete is the foundation for our unified communication services and ensures a highly flexible and efficient communications service. Our Wholesale Voice offers a suite of high-quality voice services. We carry more than 13 billion minutes per month of voice traffic and have real expertise in enabling our customers to connect across the world.
Q Are there any key industries that Level 3 targets with particular
services?
A All industries nowadays increasingly rely on innovative and efficient communications to keep them competitive and relevant. Therefore Level 3 services a wide range of industries.
As an example, in the financial sector Level 3 serves eight of the 10 largest U.S. banks and six of the world’s top 10 financial exchanges. Our data centre services are particularly attractive to this industry as they allow financial institutions to efficiently outsource, easily access and analyse data.
Our CDN platform for Broadcast, Media and Gaming is another example of a prominent sector for Level 3. We offer a range of media and entertainment solutions. Our Video Cloud is a service used by several major broadcasters as it allows the fast and efficient delivery of news and events around the world. Most recently, Level 3 has provided the broadcasting services for the American Super Bowl, which in 2015 reached over 1 million simultaneously streaming viewers.
Q Looking at the technologies themselves, what does Level 3
offer in terms of data networks?
A Level 3 offers a comprehensive portfolio of data network technologies, including:
 Ethernet
 Whether it is point-to-point or any-to-any connectivity, Level 3
lets companies migrate or expand their network on a global
scale.
 Private Line
 High priority or sensitive data must be treated as so which
calls for a dedicated private line enabling security and
reliability.
 Managed Dedicated Fibre
 This technology allows companies to get all of the benefits of
network ownership without having to construct the physical
network itself. This means high bandwidth – without high
costs.
 MPLS/IP VPN
 Applications can benefit from Multi-Protocol Switching with
increased speed and reliability of data delivery as well as low
latency. This consistency is essential is to businesses in the
face of global connectivity demands.

 Converged Services
 By combining voice, data and internet services in one
solution, companies can simplify their operations and offer a
dynamic service. Convergence – increasing speed and
reducing costs – should be at the forefront of any
organisation’s network strategy.
Q And Managed Services?
A Level 3 offers a variety of Managed Services, from our content distribution to voice and video, to data centres and security. These services are inclusive of those previously mentioned, such as our data networks in the question above.
Managed Network services mean that customers have just one network provider, which simplifies management and increases productivity for their internal teams. As we have such a broad range of Managed Services capabilities, we are able to effectively implement the necessary technology on a case-by-case basis.
In the current market, businesses need to manage costs, monitor their security and improve efficiency whilst still satisfying their customers’ growing demands. Managed Services can help an organisation achieve this and stay on top of its specific goals.
Q Level 3 has a global reach right now – are there any
geographical areas that you are still looking to cover?
A Level 3 already has presence in more than 500 markets within over 60 countries. We are always looking to meet customer demand by increasing our scale to ensure more organisations around the world can benefit from our resilient and robust network. We made public announcements on expansions both in our core European and North American markets, as well as in newer markets for us such as APAC or Eastern Europe.
Q Are there any industries you are keen to target?
A With our global reach, we are keen to reach all sectors, including the Broadcast, Media and Gaming sectors, Financial Services, Healthcare and Transport and Logistics. We also have an ongoing focus in the Manufacturing and E-retail sectors. The key to all this is to target customers that efficiently fit our portfolio offering so we can add real value to their business.
Q How can Level 3 help end users address some of the present
day issues such as Big Data?
A As consumer demand for online services has increased, it means the amount of data that businesses have to face has increased dramatically.
Level 3 can help with this in a variety of ways. Firstly, our data centre and colocation facilities enable the secure storage of all big data, whilst remaining easily accessible in order for companies to utilise this to the customer’s advantage.
The speed at which this big data is delivered and received is also important and this can be addressed by implementing a CDN. Our CDN allows quick and secure delivery of information to customers across multiple platforms and can also improve web page upload speeds.
Organisations can combine their data centre and CDN infrastructures, which can help to reduce the total cost of ownership of services and the amount of third-party technology they use, decreasing the risk of external faults. This means organisations are able to adhere to budgetary and regulatory pressures while remaining competitive in their respective markets.
Q And the Internet of Things?
A Today, the IoT is connecting businesses, people and technology in real time, all the time. It is reshaping businesses across every sector of the economy and every industry. As a network services provider, we play an important role in this arena. It’s important to note that we don’t think of our network as simply fibre in the ground and spanning oceans. We think of the “network as a verb,” an active, ever-changing infrastructure that grows and evolves to address the important needs of this expanding IoT landscape – today and well into the future. The possibilities of IoT are both challenging and thrilling. Enterprises need to develop resources, expertise and alliances that enable them to manage and monetise new services or new relationships.
Q What can we expect from Level 3 during the rest of 2015?
A Expect an ongoing focus on profitable growth and the customer experience, underpinned by our strategy of Connecting and Protecting the Networked World.
Demand for online services is only going to grow alongside increased globalisation and we especially see security as a major priority for organisations. We will continue to roll out our DDoS offering, along with other offerings from our Security portfolio.

For example, in EMEA, we are preparing to open our Security Operations Centre (SOC), which is comprised of a team of security/internet experts who monitor for attacks across our entire network. This includes ALL traffic traversing our network (not just traffic from our customers). We will also continue to optimise our data centre facilities, helping to support the high availability of businesses’ most important applications.

Adaptive Network Control will be a key area of focus for us as we implement SDN/NFV strategies to get the “hands off the network.” As a part of this, we are looking at providing a globally consistent Ethernet platform across the globe for automation, control, flexibility in the delivery to our customers.
Q Are there any industry-wide developments of which end users
need to be aware, other than the ‘usual suspects’?
A The net neutrality debate is an interesting one to watch. While it currently plays out in North America, users everywhere could be affected. The Open Internet Order is a huge win for consumers in NA and for the evolution of the Internet. It means that consumers, not their broadband providers, will control what they can see and do on the Internet. A staunch supporter of a free and Open Internet, Level 3 commended the regulatory body FCC on its Open Internet order adopted on Feb. 26. It helps towards providing consumers with an Internet that is truly open. By adopting strong Net Neutrality rules that apply to consumer ISPs’ last mile networks and clarifying that ISPs can’t evade those rules through shifting harmful practices to their interconnection points, the FCC has taken the side of the users against those businesses that stand to gain from abusing their market position to harm the Internet.
Q Any other comments?

A We covered great ground with this interview. The main point I want to reemphasise is that Level 3 provides customers with communications solutions designed to support their business objectives around growth, efficiency and security.