Equinix Solution Neustar

EQUINIX SOLUTION NEUSTAR

A Global Best Practice for Online Success. Equinix and Neustar Deliver High-Performance Global Platform for Managed Services.

“With Neustar offering its DNS and monitoring service combined with Equinix’s industry leading network neutral colocation and interconnection facilities, we provide the world’s best DNS routing and application monitoring services to create a seamless IT fabric that covers the globe.”

Alex Tulchinsky, SVP Shared Services, Neustar

Performance Failure is Not an Option Consider the impact of poor network performance: Companies deploying mission and market critical online applications and websites are recognizing they can optimize their performance • Google now includes a website’s speed in its search ranking and availability by migrating from algorithms and writes that “Faster sites create happy users and a single-homed, single-site we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds 1 deployment to a globally slowly, visitors spend less time there.” distributed model. This brief • In a joint experiment, Google and Bing concluded that “Delays discusses the reasons for this under half a second impact business metrics.”2 move and key best practices for success. • Amazon.com found that every 100-ms increase in the page load time decreased sales by 1 percent.3

• AOL has demonstrated that slower page speeds reduce page views per visit.4

• Wikia demonstrated that exit rates—the percentage of users leaving a site from a given page—drop as pages get faster.5

• After a year-long performance redesign resulted in a 5-second speed up (from ~7 seconds to ~2 seconds), Shopzilla obtained a 25 percent increase in page views, a 7-12 percent increase in revenue, and a 50 percent reduction in hardware.6

1 Google: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web- search-ranking.html

2 Google and Bing: http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/29/The%20User%20and%20 Business%20Impact%20of%20Server%20Delays,%20Additional%20Bytes,%20and%20 HTTP%20Chunking%20in%20Web%20Search%20Presentation.pptx

3 Amazon: http://exp-platform.com/Documents/IEEEComputer2007OnlineExperiments.pdf

4 AOL: http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/29/The%20Secret%20Weapons%20of%20the%20 AOL%20Optimization%20Team%20Presentation.pdf

5 Wikia: http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/07/27/wikia-fast-pages-retain-users/

6 Shopzilla: http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/29/Shopzilla%27s%20Site%20Redo%20-%20 You%20Get%20What%20You%20Measure%20Presentation.ppt

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The Cause of Poor Network Performance distance and improve routes to help solve performance issues. But The internet is a complicated mesh of pathways and connectors— now the challenge for the DNS service is to make sure users are like our roads and highways, but even more complex. Driving from sent to the best server. For example, when users in California enter a building in California to a building in New York efficiently requires a website URL, is the DNS service sending them to the closest United dozens of routing decisions based on the quality of the roads and States data center to California? Are users in Berlin entering the same the current status of those roads. Today we can use GPS devices URL being sent to the closest data center in Germany? And if the to make routing decisions, even to re-route us around problem server near Berlin is unavailable, is the DNS service automatically areas. The Internet is also made up of thousands of different routes routing users to the next closest data center in Europe? with different capacities. They are connected by geographically distributed network routers managed by a multitude of Internet As the provider of the data center physical space and high-capacity service providers (ISPs), and getting from one computer (a user) telecom connections, Equinix is creating a synergistic ecosystem to another computer (a website) requires very sophisticated routing that ensures each partner’s best-of-breed services are further decisions and hand-offs between providers. enhanced by the services of all the other partners to increase reliability and availability. To ensure Equinix customers with The Domain Name System (DNS) is the hierarchical naming distributed servers can optimize their users’ experience and ensure system—like a giant telephone book—used to lookup and translate users get to the correct server, Equinix combined with Neustar, Inc. the location of computers and devices on the Internet. Every company offers advanced DNS routing and load-testing services, including with a web presence needs DNS services and reliable fast DNS intelligent server selection, which redirects traffic around trouble. services are fundamental to overall website performance.

Neustar: Optimizing Web Performance Single-Site vs. Distributed Deployments Headquartered in Sterling, Va., Neustar, is in the business of When a company has a single-homed, single-site deployment for optimizing web performance. The company’s cloud-based UltraDNS its website—that is, the physical web server exists in only one data suite of services is one of the largest and best DNS service in the center, then all users trying to access the website from anywhere in world. Neustar started providing cloud-based DNS services 12 the world are routed to that data center. Even with a sophisticated years ago and thousands of companies are relying on the service DNS service, performance can suffer greatly from the quality of the for their mission critical websites and online applications everyday. routes between website and user. UltraDNS helps enterprises manage external (the Internet) and internal (the enterprise LAN/WAN) DNS with no additional Many popular websites, however, are now using Equinix’s global capex investment in hardware or software. Regardless of an platform to house their servers in multiple locations around the world organization’s size or how many web or application servers are to create better routes between the server(s) and their target users. being used, UltraDNS ensures their DNS is functioning optimally, With more than 95 optimally located data centers in 31 markets improving user experience and productivity. located in 15 countries around the world, Equinix can reduce physical

EQUINIX AROUND THE GLOBE

AMERICAS EMEA ASIA-PACIFIC “By enabling access to Neustar across Equinix’s global platform of data centers, we’ve made it SEATTLE TORONTO easier and more cost effective AMSTERDAM CHICAGO BOSTON LONDON SILICON DENVER DUSSELDORF for our customers to implement TOKYO VALLEY NEW YORK FRANKFURT ATLANTA PARIS SHANGHAI PHILADELPHIA MUNICH highly sophisticated DNS LOS ANGELES WASHINGTON, DC GENEVA DALLAS HONG KONG services and then monitor the MIAMI ZURICH MILAN overall performance of their sites. Equinix has a significant SINGAPORE

JAKARTA customer base across multiple

DUBAI data centers all of which could benefit from these services.” RIO DE JANEIRO SYDNEY SÃO PAULO Chris Sharp, Vice President of Equinix locations Partner Data Center Interconnection and Innovation, Equinix

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Unfortunately, there are many other factors besides an inefficient “As we developed and expanded our services globally, we route that can affect website and application performance. What recognized the benefits of working with a proven partner and site owners really need is the ability to gather actionable intelligence replicating our successful deployments around the world,” said that will help them make the best decisions related to adding carrier Alex Tulchinsky, Senior Vice President, Shared Services. “Equinix resources, optimizing networks, and choosing data centers. has the vision to create and maintain the global infrastructure that companies like Neustar need to be able to continue to innovate and To provide this information, Neustar also provides Webmetrics deploy our solutions with complete confidence. With Equinix as our monitoring services that enable companies to test, monitor, and global data center provider of choice, we have a strategic partner measure websites, web applications, web services, network services that delivers the connectivity, reliability, scalability, security and cost and streaming media. Site developers can create any number of savings we need to successfully run our business.” virtual users from different regions of the world and have these virtual users travel through their website or online application using a variety of workflows—shopping, researching, watching videos, Global Scalability asking questions with online chat, leaving and returning, and For Neustar, one of the key benefits of partnering with Equinix is even buying products—and then track the individual and group being able to work with the same data center provider in different experience: What were the page load times? What was the speed regions around the world. This eliminates the need to develop new video streaming? Which individual elements of code were working contracts and face new administrative, operational and technical optimally and which slowed the users down? hurdles. Although Equinix already has the most data centers in the most countries around the world, it continues to grow, so Neustar Webmetrics can provide an excellent global view of user experience can count on using an Equinix facility in its key strategic markets. to reveal what and where the performance issues are. In addition, today’s websites are increasingly built as interactive mash-ups of “Equinix provides a significant strategic advantage,” added Alex several services from different providers—shopping cart, reservation Tulchinsky. “As we move to a new region, we’re not starting from system, weather feed, newsfeed, online chat, comment system, scratch. We know our partner and we already have feet on the survey system and more. To ensure an optimal user experience, ground—experts who understand our needs and know the lay of the website owner must monitor the performance of every feed. the land. We can get our equipment installed and our connectivity Webmetrics is one of the few select monitoring services that offers established with a minimum of hassle and in a matter of days.” this capability, tracking each feed independently and reporting on them collectively. Equinix also ensures that once Neustar establishes services in a particular region, it can scale its business there as needed. Equinix Armed with this intelligence, site owners can use Equinix to cost- is continually evaluating the needs of its partners and expands its effectively implement the needed enhancements, whether by adding capabilities accordingly. Commented Alex Tulchinsky, “If we can’t additional regional or logical connectivity (e.g. adding new data scale a successful service because our data center provider has run center sites or new carriers at existing sites), or by scaling resources out of rack space, we are either going to lose business or partner at an existing site by adding space, servers or storage. Webmetrics with a different provider—with all the cost, connectivity and reliability enables site owners to resolve performance issues before customers issues that would entail. With Equinix, we know we can reach our are seriously impacted and to proactively resolve network issues business potential.” preventing lost revenue due to slow performance or downtime—it can actually grow revenue by ensuring an excellent customer experience. Webmetrics can also protect a company’s investment by verifying that Carrier Neutral, Carrier Packed SLA performance objectives are being met and establishing a higher Another key priority for Neustar is carrier neutrality. By having level of trust with customers and partners. access to multiple carriers in each data center, Neustar is able to make strategic choices about which carriers to use in which areas. With a data center provider connecting to just one or two specific Why Neustar Relies on Equinix carriers, Neustar’s choices would have been limited, and to ensure Neustar began relying on Equinix data centers in 2001 when the optimal performance of its services globally, Neustar would likely Neustar was still primarily focused on solving the technical and have been forced to contract with providers or suffer the expense operational challenges arising from government-mandated local and time delay of manually provisioning additional circuits. With number portability. As Neustar evolved into a managed services Equinix, provisioning new or additional access is as simple as provider, it also witnessed Equinix flourish during the post-dotcom establishing a direct cross-connect between Neustar’s cabinet and crash era and grow into the dominant global data center provider a carrier’s cabinet, and this can typically be done within 24 hours. it is today. “Carrier neutrality is huge for us, but Equinix being ‘neutral’ is another key aspect,” said Alex Tulchinsky. “Equinix is not a carrier or managed services provider, so we can leverage their superior connectivity and reliability without worry.”

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Reliability and Security Time and Cost: Equinix Delivers Value Once a prospect chooses Neustar as its managed services provider, Like every service business, Neustar focuses on delivering the best nothing validates that decision more than service reliability and possible product to its customers while containing service delivery security. Equinix delivered “six nines” of power reliability across costs. Equinix offers benefits on both sides of this equation. its global footprint in 2010. Using redundant power generators, maintaining back-up battery banks, and leveraging multiple power Through Equinix’s global availability and reliability, access to multiple providers and diverse power feeds means that Neustar can focus carriers, and 24-hour provisioning of new connections, Neustar on increasing the value it delivers to its customers, not on repairing can ensure high levels of customer satisfaction. At the same time, relationships damaged by an unreliable service. Equinix’s global and highly scalable presence has eliminated the need for Neustar to manually provision circuits or build and maintain “Entering an Equinix facility is really the best way to understand its own data centers—and hire the expertise to do so—creating a just how secure it is,” said Amir Shahmir, Vice President, Network sustainable cost model that enables Neustar to prosper. Engineering and Operations. “Once you get past the security guards, biometric scanners, kinetic locks, CCTV monitoring and Companies looking to roll out global services need to think recording, and other protection mechanisms, you realize the extent strategically in approaching connectivity,” said Chris Sharp, Vice to which Equinix is in the business of protecting your business.” President of Interconnection and Innovation at Equinix. “For most, contracting with a data center provider will be a no-brainer, but not all providers are equal. No other provider can match Equinix when it comes to an experienced, carrier neutral partner that offers reliability, scalability, security, and the highest levels of connectivity.”

GLOBAL INTERCONNECTION BUSINESS “As the leading provider of DATA CENTERS 900+ Networks ECOSYSTEMS 95+ Data Centers 100,000+ Cross Connects Equinix Marketplace™ network neutral colocation 7M+ Square Feet Direct to 90% of Internet Routes 4000+ Businesses 99.999% Uptime Record Revenue Opportunities and interconnection facilities, Equinix is creating a synergistic ecosystem that ensures each partner’s best-of-breed PLATFORM services are further enhanced EQUINIX™ by the services of all the other partners to increase reliability and availability.”

Amir Shahmiri, VP Network Engineering and Operations, Neustar