AT&T is targeting large indigenous Irish companies with foreign operations as a market for its internet based global networking platform, the company’s EMEA president Bill Archer told Irish Computer Channels.
Speaking during AT&T’s European customer ‘Regional Advisory Council’ that was held in Dublin on 4 and 5 of April, Archer said that while the company’s Irish operations are mainly focused on US multinationals with operations here, it has also begun targeting a “select group” of larger indigenous companies as well.
“Indigenous companies in Ireland who have a global requirement and who wish to network or connect to many locations on a common network platform are of great interest to us,” Archer said. “We have relations with some [of these companies] today and we will be actively pursuing relationships with all of them down the line,” he added.
Since 2003, AT&T says it has made “significant network investment” in Ireland with two MPLS nodes in Dublin and one in Cork. MPLS is the latest internet-based networking platform and means companies in Ireland can access the AT&T global network directly and have full connectivity to 97 per cent of the world’s economy, the company said.
“Business in Ireland is globalising and as that happens, networking follows and wherever there are a collection of multinational companies who are globalising you will find us not far behind,” Archer said.
The kind of companies AT&T are looking to target are firms which operate in multiple regions around the globe and which have a meaningful presence in the US. Such companies must also typically invest “millions of euro” per year in global network, Archer said. “In Europe that means over a thousand companies. For us at the moment, that looks to be sufficient,” he added.
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