CyrusOne, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cincinnati Bell has announced it is entering the Interconnect business on a broad scale and has added personnel.

Josh Snowhorn is joining the company as vice president and general manager of interconnection and Fred Holloway has joined the company as vice president of channel sales in Houston.

“Our customers are looking for many different ways to transmit their data globally and, with an increased focus on interconnectivity, we are creating an ecosystem that enables parties to share data with each other from the home base of our reliable and efficient facilities, which customers have already grown to trust,” said Gary Wojtaszek, president of CyrusOne. “By expanding the availability of dense network connections at our facilities, we are preparing for the future needs of our customers as the internet continues to grow in terms of users, content, and our customers’ reliance upon it.”

The expanded entry into the business will include the use of Internet Exchanges at all locations, significantly increasing the number of providers available to CyrusOne customers and allowing for internet peering.  Offering the broadest number of networks and providers will allow CyrusOne customers to make choices that optimize IT performance, resiliency and cost control for their respective businesses.  It can be especially attractive to customers with a global footprint that desire a global infrastructure partner, while also allowing for flexibility at the local and regional level.

Just as all other facets of CyrusOne’s relationship with its customers are customizable, the interconnection capability is also expected to offer different options, which allow customers to connect with business partners, content providers, networks, carriers, internet service providers and Ethernet buyers and sellers on a local, regional or global scale.

To helm the expanded effort, CyrusOne hired Internet industry veteran, Josh Snowhorn, who spent the last 12 years as vice president of business development at Terremark Worldwide, a data center company recently acquired by Verizon. There, he developed new business in emerging markets and drove all business related peering throughout the company’s portfolio. Among the first telecom employees at Terremark, he was instrumental in the development and design of the NAP of the Americas, which has grown to be one of the largest Internet exchanges in the world.

“Josh is an industry leader, bringing peering, Internet Interconnection, and data center power and cooling expertise to CyrusOne,” said Wojtaszek. “His can-do, problem-solving attitude is a perfect fit for our company and how we approach our business. In particular, our aggressive expansion plans and our continued focus on exceeding customer expectations will benefit from his remarkable social engineering skills and technical know-how.”

“I am truly excited to join a dynamic organization like CyrusOne,” said Snowhorn, “Gary and the team are growing the CyrusOne business globally to meet footprint demands and all other facets of their clients’ data center needs. The convergence of the Enterprise with the Internet world is the sweet spot we’re sitting in.”

In addition to his role at Terremark, Snowhorn is affiliated with industry-leading organizations such as the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE), The European Internet Exchange Association (Euro-IX),and the Global Peering Forum (GPF), a joint venture that he co-founded with Equinix, AMS-IX, DE-CIX, and LINX, as well as many other Internet industry related forums and conferences where he is a frequent expert speaker.

Implementation and partner details for CyrusOne’s expanded Interconnection business are still being finalized and will be announced accordingly.

With nearly 30 years of professional experience, Holloway is a proven success in the technology and energy industries.

“Fred’s understanding of the technology trends facing the oil and gas industry and his experience building global sales teams will greatly complement and accelerate the growth of our oil and gas practice,” said Wojtaszek. “He will be a great addition to the CyrusOne team as he is well respected throughout the energy industry.”

Holloway most recently served as director of the energy segment within Hewlett-Packard’s sales organization, where he was responsible for the sales and support of all HP products and solutions to all of HP’s energy customers in the United States, which include some of the largest Fortune 500 companies in the world. Prior to joining HP, Holloway worked at Digital Equipment Corporation in several sales leadership roles providing solutions to a broad array of customers. 

“Over the past few years, I have witnessed CyrusOne’s progression from a small regional data center operator based in Houston to become a global company with 21 operations around the world. I am really excited about the opportunity to join this company and help accelerate its growth over the next decade,” said Holloway. “I believe that CyrusOne is sitting at the nexus of a fundamental change in the way technology is being consumed and delivered. CyrusOne’s product offering combined with its unrelenting focus on customer service will enable the company to grow very quickly in the coming years.”