Welcome to Let's Get Digital.
I'm Carrie Charles, your host.
And I'm so happy that you are here with me today.
So it's gonna be a great show as always.
I am thrilled to introduce to you Ivo Ivanov.
He is the CEO and Chairman of the Board for DKICS.
And Ivo, I've known you for a while now.
I've seen you at many different events here in the US.
So I just wanna say I'm so excited you're here.
And thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited being part of your great show.
uh yeah, let's have a chat about digital.
Let's go, let's go.
First, I wanna hear about you.
A little bit about uh just the twists and decisions and maybe the risks that brought you to where you are today in your current seat with Deacon.
my gosh, that's a very complex question.
Let me see how to answer.
uh Probably I will start about my origin, right?
So I have been born back in time in Sofia, Bulgaria.
And this is where my life journey started.
uh During the high school, this is one essential element, probably driving oh my emotional side until today.
I decided to...
uh
establish uh a radio show as moderator and producer so this was very close to media afterwards I did also one year with a TV broadcasting company uh on stage and in front of
camera and microphones this gave me a lot of experience with media and the way how to communicate with a bigger audience then my father told me
Son, listen, this is probably not the way you should take in your life.
I want to make sure you will be able to uh grow and create a nice career and also take care of all the family one day.
I don't think this radio stuff and TV stuff is good enough.
uh He never watched a production or listened to production.
I'm not sure how he came to that result because it was more a kind of entertainment Saturday afternoon thing.
But he advised and I was really happy to take this advice to start something completely different to start my law studies.
this is in fact one of the next important steps of my life.
I started the first year in the University of Law, Science and Soviet and then I moved to Bonn, Germany for actually initial first year.
But you'll see what happened out of this first year.
28 years in Germany now.
with uh my state exams, with my bar exams and creating my family here with two kids today.
uh new home.
And in fact my career started uh as a lawyer specialized on media and telecom law because of the media background.
You see, their elements and puzzle pieces in life, uh they uh influence the career path later.
and uh...
so yes i did my career as a lawyer and one beautiful day and that's how i'll sum up with the founder of of the case uh...
and and uh...
working on the couple of projects uh...
and uh...
because of this i felt in love uh...
with the internet uh...
felt in love with digital infrastructure decided to to uh...
to change my role being a lawyer in a in a big law firm to uh...
becoming a general corporate council with the kicks
and then i have been asked by colleagues after because my language skills are also related to eastern european languages.
you help us out to start a strategy for GKX based on eastern european markets?
I yeah why not.
Let's start traveling to telco shows and this is how we got in touch with business development and
more the business part and less the legal side of the business model.
And I have been asked lately to manage the international expansion of DICEX.
And this is how my journey has been for the past almost 17 years.
I was for 12 years CEO international of DICEX and then three years back I have been asked after Harold stepped back from active operational duties to
ah get the owner and become the new group CEO of DickX.
So every time I talk to you, I just get so energized and inspired and I just love how you said why not, right?
And you're just all about just going for it in life, in business, and I'm so excited for the rest of this interview.
I can't wait.
So thank you for sharing your story.
Let's talk about DKicks now.
What is the founding story?
What problems do you solve?
Yeah, the founding story is an amazing one.
There are not a lot of companies we see in today's telco and digital infrastructure world that are that old.
This year, a couple of weeks back, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the company.
In fact, Dickex has been founded back in time 1995 on the beautiful 26th of June.
Exactly on this day, 30 years later, we celebrated the 30th anniversary.
And the company has been found in a very special time, actually the time where the commercial internet uh has been born.
So we have been born with the commercial internet.
uh The company has been founded obviously in Frankfurt in 1995 by three different ISPs.
One based in the north of Germany in Hamburg, one in the middle of Germany in Dortmund and one in the south of Germany in Karlsruhe.
And now you can ask me why they decided to the start of the platform, the business of Digis in Frankfurt.
Yeah, because Frankfurt has been always a kind of a crossroad in the middle of Germany and crossroad in the middle of Europe.
And this is very essential for digital infrastructure because digital infrastructure is built on digital roads, our fiber installations, the telco cables, et cetera.
Now...
uh
What happened later, so 30 years later we do stay for one of the market leaders on our planet for interconnection services.
uh We operate on 60 plus markets and interconnect globally more than 4200 networks present on five continents.
Obviously the US, Mexico, South America with Brazil, entire Europe, Middle East with Turkey, with Jordan, with Iraq, Pakistan.
We have Dubai there, we have India, Southeast Asia with Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and Japan.
And you see the loop is now closed and in fact DECIX operates a global network these days.
So this is the journey from 3 ISP uh early installation in Frankfurt back in time now to a global interconnection service company.
talk about the evolution of the Internet Exchange.
From the early pairing clubs to today's global software-defined interconnection platforms, what were the big inflection points and which ones or one are we living through right now?
I think the essential service and this is how everything started, this is the peering service and peering, we will have this term a couple of times probably during our great
chat today.
Peering stays for direct interconnection of different types of networks, disregarding the type of networks in the business model.
And it's a beautiful type of interconnection.
It's probably one of the best ways to exchange traffic between different types of networks, those who deliver content and those who want
to deliver this content to their end users, the high bone networks.
So uh I think why is that so great?
It's great because peering stays for the direct interconnection.
So they are not third party networks between the content network and the internet access network.
So self-explaining, this creates a very robust way to exchange the data packages without outages.
So if you click at home on your TV and want to watch Amazon Prime or
Netflix or Disney Plus video just to mention a couple of different operators uh So your request for this video for the show you want to see uh Needs somehow to approach the
Netflix Amazon or Disney server where this show this movie is uh placed on and How this happens actually your request sits on the network of your internet access provider uh
can be can be comcast can be can be the rise in whatever you name it all the different uh...
network access operators they deliver access to homes and offices by the way the same is not for the office if those two networks are directly interconnected the comcast network
uh...
rise network at and at work with uh...
netflix apple this network this office planning the packets they they flow immediately they are
extremely fast available, no outages, no pixel failures.
If we watch a real-time show, a live show, this became even more important.
Watch uh sports or entertainment, different types of sports.
We know uh how important live TV sports shows are nowadays on IP and everybody uses almost IP, right?
So this type of quality is extremely important, but also security.
because it's changing the packets in a direct way between the network that sends the request for the content and the network that has the content.
Make sure that not a third party that might not have the best intent, can be a criminal third party, can approach this communication.
So it's about uh high performance, how we call it in our business, very low latency uh and extremely resilient and secure way
to communicate.
So this is the peering service.
This is the foundation.
And now what happened over the decades or even the past couple of years, uh more services they have been added.
Services like cloud peering, also uh peering related to specific industry segments.
We call it close user groups uh for finance, for automotive, logistic industry.
And now, nowadays,
uh the latest news is the DICX uh internet uh exchange for the artificial intelligence communication and connectivity needs.
call it AIIX.
A lot of different developments.
I think they have one thing in common.
uh The logic of direct and very secure and resilient highly performable traffic uh exchange.
uh
This is extremely relevant.
The more we talk about specific businesses, industries, are uh crucial and they are uh critical also for our economies.
uh This is even more relevant nowadays.
And Kerry, one uh more element I want to add to uh the picture here.
It's not about the services.
It's also how the way the governance on Internet exchanges has been developed over time.
uh
early days there were two types of exchanges the so-called European model this is the model we stay for that is uh very neutral as we are owned entirely by the one of the
largest internet associations of the world so we don't have one single share holder as a carrier or a data center operator so very neutral and the other model is the data center
owned internet exchange there are examples in the US companies like Equinix they have their own exchange
CoreSight as well, another example for.
And what changed over the time, especially when we entered as Dickx, the US market, introducing the European, very neutral, very distributed model.
This changed the landscape in the US as well to a very positive development because immediately the services of the exchange, they became available in 20 different data
centers across New York and New Jersey and not just available in the data center of one operator.
And this inspired the entire community
we published last year in light of our 10 years anniversary celebration in New York, a study that showed how big the market now grew in comparison to the LA market, for
instance, where we see the non-neutral uh model only.
In fact, by 400%, New York has been growing faster than the LA.
uh And this also uh encouraged the business side of data center investments to
become very focused on those markets and we see a huge increase in investments on the data center side in the great area of New York.
Just as one example, same is valid for Dallas or Chicago where we do also operate.
So this was also a very strong element in our global expansion introducing this data center distributed and highly neutral model.
So let's talk a little bit more about peering.
What is the case for peering cost, performance, resilience, and where do companies leave money on the table?
All right.
um So as I mentioned, Peering stays for rightly said uh from you.
uh It's extremely uh robust, uh very secure because of the direct exchange and uh you can have great redundancy.
uh I will talk about performance just in a sec and then uh where the companies I believe they do live money on the table.
But if we talk about uh resilience and today resilience is extremely important.
uh...
them separate done to see the model i just described perfectly matches these demands on the market uh being present in let's take example of new york again twenty different data
centers so a company can have to different different physical set ups with two different data center operators one in jersey one in manhattan probably being connected to one
distributed integrated platform for traffic exchange this makes it very robust and very resilient
Now talk about the performance, the latency talk, right?
And I say latency is the new currency.
Every single millisecond counts today for very good reasons.
We have real-time applications.
They deserve exactly this performance.
uh And this is the main advantage of peering today in comparison to other services like transit, upstream, uh IP transit as a service, or different other type of interconnections
because uh it is...
uh
highly performable and performance is everything today.
uh it's, uh I'll give you an example, when Netflix produced the show of Mike Tyson, we remember what happened.
There uh has been a big outage at the beginning of not 65 milliseconds, but more than 60 seconds.
And this is huge, right?
At the beginning of the show.
A lot of millions of users have been disappointed.
This shows us how important performance on IP is today.
It has a direct impact on business and reputation.
uh This is one of the main advantages of peering, the high performance and the great security.
Where companies might leave money on the table?
Using uh upstream services only, IP Transit only, because in a lot of cases it's...
is more expensive than peering and doesn't provide the direct controllability on the traffic flows companies need to have for their performance uh control.
And also in general, when companies, do not compare different options on the market, they do not rethink how they can change their digital strategy to uh the way their data is
stored, their data is processed or
how they plan their further expansions.
If they stuck with one data center only, uh is uh obviously very often the case that they leave money on the table.
Very long contracts is another topic here because nowadays the market dynamics are so, uh I would say, active that if a company just thinks that I will stay five years long with
this operator only, probably for the operator this is a great deal, but for the company it's not because
prices they change more dynamically these days and I recommend to have this dynamic in the contractual negotiation as well and just create a bigger redundancy.
We are not afraid of this as DxC.
I know a lot of networks that are connected to DxC New York.
They're also connected to NYX, the New York Internet Exchange operated by Tally House and this is great because this creates a huge redundancy and they can load down their traffic
better.
So let's talk about the future of the internet.
Fast forward five to 10 years with AI everywhere, immersive apps, machines, talking to machines.
What has changed in how the world interconnects?
It will change the foundation of how the Internet is built today.
It creates already the demand for the so-called new Internet.
We need the new Internet.
Internet that is highly distributed.
Talking about data centers everywhere, we're talking about exchanges everywhere, we're talking about fiber, 5G, 5G Advanced, 6G everywhere, Leo satellite capabilities.
This is really the...
the requirement uh by AI everywhere, by robotics everywhere, by automation everywhere in real time.
I want to explain this briefly for your audience using the example of a robot.
We know robotics uh as a topic is extremely important today.
We see already a lot of examples in the manufacturing center, but also
different type of of robots engaged in surgeries in the health care sector of the robots engaged in in uh...
uh...
in in in hospitals uh...
in in uh...
in households helping people right and and they are there it's not a kind of a all it might happen one day think it's they're already there you can buy them online starting by
twelve thousand dollars and they will become better all the time and they will require
a real time communication because you cannot uh build a robot that is completely isolated and disconnected from cloud, from the agents, the AI agents, from the internet, so to say.
So not everything can be in the body of robot on-prem, so to say.
The robot must be online every single millisecond.
Now, what type of digital infrastructure does this require?
And the robot here stays just as one example.
You can take also examples of autonomous driving, the uh cars outside there, or other IOTs.
But I think taking the robot is a good example to display the needs for different digital infrastructure.
We at Dickix, we did analysis with professors for uh how our uh brains function.
They gave us very interesting information.
We asked them what is the speed our human brains require for three different sensors.
The tactile information to feel cold, warm, soft heart.
The visual information and the audio information.
And they gave us free numbers in terms of latency because they have done measurements on how our human being brain functions.
Our brain on a good day without hangover
and not uh being sick, right?
It requires 18 milliseconds and even better for the tactile information.
12 milliseconds are better for the visual and one millisecond or better for the audio.
So now if we want to have one day the immersive internet application world, the robots, they function in real time, they must act as us, as human beings.
to feel very natural right otherwise will not be satisfied with the services so they must hear us properly they must see us properly and they must function in their uh other uh
features properly and this will require infrastructure that meets the lowest latency as i mentioned the one millisecond because if a robot cannot see cannot hear uh it's probably
not a good idea to send this guy out right
So the infrastructure needs to be as close as possible to the applications because one millisecond means 50, 60 miles in physics because of all speed of light.
Now, if the agent that manages this robot or different agents that manage the audio sensors of the robot are far away,
This will not function not function properly.
So the digital infrastructure data centers transmission technology fiber Internet exchanges uh Must be deployed everywhere in the deep edge This will not replace the big
aggregation hubs.
We do have nowadays like the hubs in New York Miami LA Bay Area Dallas, Chicago
This will be additionally needed.
So we'll see a more distributed, meshed infrastructure world supporting AI everywhere.
And DIGX is working already on this.
We have first prototypes designed for the deep edge to be deployed next to manufacturing facilities, next to um highway crossroads, shopping malls, business parks.
This is where we need the infrastructure of the future as well.
next to the existing big digital capitals I just mentioned.
So what do business leaders need to do to be, I guess, deep edge ready, right?
Depending on their business model, they need to accept new type of usage of digital infrastructure to uh become more interested in what I just described in peering in
different close user groups to be more present in the deep edge to support digital infrastructure development next to their manufacturing facilities.
for instance let's take the example of uh...
real-time fraud detection that is extremely important for the banks though the the finance industry this needs to be done indian strong on site where the the users are uh...
as close as possible to the uh...
as as as close as possible to the a t as close possible to the branch of the bank et cetera to the only banking where the users are not all users they sit on the east or west
coast
uh We have people, are between them.
So the need for this different uh understanding of how infrastructure should be used, but this infrastructure needs to be built as well.
So we do have in the United States 15 states without a single Internet exchange.
We do have areas without a single carrier neutral data center.
This needs to oh be changed.
We need support from...
uh
from the public administration if it comes to uh...
permissions if it comes to even the financial contribution we need more uh...
capital capital of getting interested in this area and i think now there's a great idea to invest in this area because this is the area of the future this is where we will
experience a world of undreamed off applications people will will fell in love with and they will use it i'll just give you an example of of uh...
immersive
immersive experience on a football match.
uh Just sitting with a new type of glasses, let's take the Apple's ProVision Pro on your couch in your living room, enjoying in a fully immersive uh way, uh an incredible lifetime
life, real life, uh real time experience uh with your favorite football team.
Because you are unable to buy a ticket, it's either too expensive or you don't want to do it because you are afraid
of too many people in one stadium or you're just disenabled.
lot of people they cannot do it but they can enjoy this.
are just at the beginning of an amazing era that will be only possible to happen if we understand that the underlying digital infrastructure is the must-have critical element to
build it.
And this is where it's very, very, very worth to invest in.
Well said, well said.
Let's talk about AI inference versus training.
Where in the AI lifecycle does low latency, high capacity, distributed interconnection create real competitive advantage?
uh I recall my friend the robot again here giving this example.
This is exactly thanks for the question.
So as I said the robots the cars the autonomous cars just these two examples to make it simple.
oh Let's take the the fraud detection in real time as well approaching the finance sector very important.
So these three examples they require real time interconnection.
We're talking about
one, two, three milliseconds reaction.
And I said, what does this mean?
This means a hundred hundred fifty miles where radius of the the robot of the car of the hospital where the surgery happens or or the finance fraud detection installations are at.
So this is the distance the agents, the AI agents.
And millions of those we will see in the future will need on the inferencing side.
This is the main difference between inference and training.
Training is a play about power and pipes, right?
Huge power density and big pipes.
Training is not that sensitive if it comes to latency and it's not that sensitive if it comes to certain outages even.
Yes, this make it slower, but doesn't affect it in terms of quality, right?
But talking about the inference, the world changes completely to the opposite.
It's not that power intense.
It's still power needed, but it's not that power intense.
And uh it's not really that pipe intense, but it's extremely latency sensitive and extremely security sensitive.
This is very, very, very important.
Now, why I'm saying this, because if you have a 2-millisecond uh outage, the car doesn't know what to do, the car can create an accident, the robot will fall apart, right?
uh The fraud detection will not function and people will lose their money.
We're talking about critical reaction based on data exchange.
And this is the difference why inference for
A state like Cannes cannot happen out of New York and out of Miami.
It has to be as close as possible where the robots are, the manufacturing facilities are, the cars are driving, and the people they enjoy real-time applications.
And inferencing, by the way, will be the dominant part of AI just in three to five years from now.
As I heard from a couple of friends from the data science industry, the investments today
are by 70 % focused on the training side of building data centers for training and 30 % inferencing.
This will change to the opposite just within a couple of years only.
Because what do you do with millions and billions of agents?
You train them because you want to invite them to work.
We need to send them uh the streets.
oh
like FBI does, An agent that has been trained by FBI doesn't stay in school only he or she they need to be active on the street, right?
And this is exactly what will happen with the inferencing side of the EIA.
We will need to get the agents on the streets literally in the manufacturing facilities and around football stadiums.
So this is what we will see and this is the main difference between inferencing and training.
You have a bold vision to stand up an internet exchange in space.
So I want to talk about that.
What would it take to make this happen?
And also what business value would that unlock for enterprise?
This is one of my uh favorite projects, probably the most favorite nowadays, as this is my next dream, approaching the stars and introducing DickxSpaceIX.
By the way, there is a landing page for uh the valid audience.
If someone wants to visit uh the page for more information, is space-ix.net.
Doesn't have anything to do with SpaceX.
Please do not mix it up.
It's space-ix, that's for spaceinternetexchange.net.
A lot of information about this.
No, how this will happen?
It will happen and we'll make it happen because we see a demand that is already partially there.
If we look at the landscape uh with uh LEO satellite operators, uh low Earth orbit satellite operators, we do have already three carriers in space.
This is Starlink obviously, have Kuiper, the Amazon project and we do have Rivara.
So they are three carriers with own satellites in space running their networks already in space serving on Earth customers.
Now I learned that first caches from content operators, they have been installed on one of those satellites.
What does this tell us?
That content will also approach in one or another way the space as well.
For one simple reason, it makes perfect sense.
Because in this case, the satellite operators, the Leo network operators, they will be able to serve their customers on earth with much better latency if the content comes
directly from space to their devices on earth.
This is logical, right?
And having carriers outside there, having content outside there, what is the missing element?
bringing all those guys together.
is the Internet Space Exchange as this happens on Earth with us for 30 years now.
So this is the logic we follow and we started first discussions with operators and I asked one of those, is there a chance to have a, Dick explains the Internet Exchange router, one
of your satellites and we start interconnecting and delivering
better service?
Is there a chance to put a Dicic sticker on this router so people, uh enthusiasts, they can see it from where it says yes we will do but this will be the most expensive sticker
you have ever produced.
Yeah so that's the vision but why this is important.
I mentioned latency and then the latency is not the one thing only.
It's about also avoiding the digital divide across the globe.
We do have a lot of areas and the is not an exception here.
We do have lot of areas in the US as well.
But also in countries like Brazil, look at the Amazonas area.
uh Look at countries like Indonesia or Philippines with thousands over thousands of islands.
Look at countries, huge countries like India, Africa.
uh
with different types of landscape, very difficult landscapes sometimes to deploy fiber on the ground.
All these regions, the people are living in those regions, they are disadvantaged today.
And ensuring that they will be connected to the internet uh in an affordable way and with uh appropriate quality of digital services, bandwidth, speed, performance.
of 250 megabit plus this will change their life to a much better one.
uh This is given today for me because digital services are part of our quality of life today.
Without proper access to digital services, uh people cannot enjoy education sometimes, cannot enjoy better type of healthcare services, customer...
uh
patient care, remote patient care, virtual doctor visits, they are uh isolated from even uh finding a better job, right?
I think we need to take care of enabling proper high quality access of digital services everywhere.
And this will become essential for enterprises, for automotive, that the cars are the connected cars and autonomous cars, they do not stop because they do not have internet.
middle of nowhere that robotics functions everywhere disregarding where the manufacturing facility is and fraud detection is available to everyone so the criminals have no chance
to steal money
I just love your examples and your metaphors there that makes things so clear.
I'm learning so much.
I want to talk now about, um I guess you've referenced before emerging energy ideas such as diffusion and other next wave power sources that, you know, as AI workloads really
explode.
So what do we need to know about this?
I'm a big fan of the fusion technology.
This will solve our current problem.
uh Problem with some certain power sources that are not clean enough and they're bad for our environment.
But also they are not available everywhere.
And power uh will be needed everywhere.
We describe the need for training.
We describe the need for even inferencing everywhere.
We describe the need for power in space.
Also very important topic.
um I learned recently during uh a visit I made to Seattle that uh they are visiting one of those companies working on the first fusion reactors.
are uh 37 companies actually around the globe.
Two thirds are, by the way, uh they based in the US.
that they're working on these generators and this or reactors.
These reactors, will change our world in terms of uh also power usage.
Because they uh have the size uh like a human being, right?
They're not big, they're not huge, they can be deployed much easier and they deliver great power density from a couple of hundreds of...
kilowatts up to hundreds of megawatts and even a gigawatt, bigger size then but still unbelievable small comparing this to the power capabilities.
And this will definitely change the world.
They predict to have a market ready version by 2030 to 2035.
So we are getting closer and closer and as we know the latest predictions on the so-called
general AI, this is the human being AI, are also around 30, 35, 2030, 2035.
We see uh it's a kind of a lucky situation, lucky match.
We will get the new source of power uh needed around the globe, needed everywhere, needed in the edge, in the small village uh and in space as well.
uh
in uh match with the development of the AI side.
And this will create the next era of economical industrialization, the era of um AI everywhere.
I'm curious, last question, because I could talk to you for hours and hours.
What does the future workforce look like in this world that you're painting?
It's more, it be more specialized.
I'm not the one who uh believes that AI will destroy jobs.
Yes, we will see a need for a reskill of people and upskill of people.
And I strongly believe in these two directions.
um Reskill people and as a leader, as a manager of a company,
and upscale people because if they know the business you're doing well they will be perfect uh further contribution to this business if you help them to be reskilled and
upskilled and use the AI for the stupid processes they can be done by the agent and not by real human beings.
about talent in general uh we uh need a completely new type of talent
support talent development around the globe everywhere that is more knowledgeable about AI it's not knowledgeable about digital industry in general because this will be essential
for so many different job profiles.
uh Knowledgeable about software I think it's extremely important to support schools and even even preliminary schools uh how they can teach the kids, the students uh
uh...
on on on called on coding on general awareness about the digital infrastructure and processing a i as well uh...
and and we as they kickstarted an initiative just support this in our field of the field of interconnection uh...
i call it uh...
we call it the interconnection academies of global program the the initial start has been done with the uh...
the political university in barcelona the u p f
And we have first modules available already uh online.
Interconnection-academy.net is the landing page where professionals, students, professionals, newbies, even people with more uh seniority and experience uh working for a
bank, working for a telco operator, disregarding, they can pass different modules and classes and get a blockchain-based certificate on their interconnection skills.
with the approach to have a program resulting into a uh publicly recognized um and accepted certificate for an interconnection uh expert.
A similar thing would what companies like Microsoft or Cisco they have been built in the past for their certified engineers.
uh With this we want to support the next generation of talents and experts for digital infrastructure businesses.
I want to invite a lot of partners because it's a very open program.
uh to be part of it, contribute content and enjoy the content, distribute this content further and we are in touch with a lot of universities already around the globe to start
the local uh distribution of this program as well.
How can we reach Deakin's?
Do you have any, like an open jobs page for careers?
Absolutely, we hire.
Yes, we do in all the different markets and there is a global website.
It's easy to remember.
It's de-cix.net.
I hope everybody in the audience understands that I will not share my personal mobile number.
ah But please use the website first.
Oh, Ivo, this has been a pleasure.
I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.
I know I learned a lot and I just can't wait to see you at the next event.
Same here, thank you so much for having me.
You take care.
You too.
Thanks.
Okay, I'm gonna stop recording, don't leave just yet.