In an email interview with the WHIR, Kevin Dean discusses his recent appointment as Interxion’s senior vice president marketing and chief marketing officer and how he will contribute to the future growth of Interxion.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In a move that signaled a proactive focus on the company’s growth strategy, earlier this month, European carrier-neutral data center operator Interxion (www.interxion.com) appointed Kevin Dean as the new senior vice president marketing and chief marketing officer.
He has extensive experience leading marketing strategies in the data, voice, managed services, colocation and hosting.
In the past, Dean has served as marketing director for C&W Global Markets, marketing director for the major enterprise division at Colt Telecom, and more recently, vice president of marketing planning and strategy with Cable & Wireless Global Markets.
He will use this ICT B2B marketing experience to carry out Interxion’s pan-European marketing and business development strategy.
Dean discusses in the following interview the significance of his recent appointment and how he intends to shape the company’s marketing and business development strategy.
The WHIR: How will your experience at Colt Telecom and C&W help you in your marketing duties at Interxion?
Kevin Dean: Having worked at these two companies I have a good understanding of the telecommunications market dynamics, customer needs, and the product portfolio that these companies offer. (Voice, Data, and Managed Services = Hosting.) Specifically my knowledge of how customers look for solutions that blend the various different components, data centers and networking, helps me to position the value that a carrier neutral data center provider can offer. It also provides a good understanding of the value of the network to customers, and what they look for in terms of key performance criteria. Essentially, the experience I have had in the carrier market and understanding how it works enables me to appropriately position Interxion’s carrier neutrality as a key strength.
Could you highlight some of the main goals behind Interxion’s pan-European marketing and business development strategy?
KD: The number one objective for us is to make sure we identify the key high growth customer segments that deliver the level of revenue growth and rate of return that fits in with our business strategy. Part of identifying the customer segments involves understanding which segment will be able to extract the most value from Interxion’s proposition. It’s also about identifying sectors that have or will from communities of interest and enabling these communities to thrive within our data centers. A classic example of this would be our financial hub, which is an ultra-secure physical space within our data centers, where our financial community of brokers high-frequency traders, exchanges, ISVs and VARs can interconnect at low-latency.
How do you and the Interxion team plan on achieving these goals?
KD: It’s about making sure we have identified the right segments. We will continue to improve our understanding of the customers’ needs and make sure that we are hand in glove with sales when it comes to executing on our strategy. This is partly about lead generation from a marketing perspective, but it’s also about making sure we have the right anchor tenants inside our data center footprint for the specific markets segments we are after. If we are looking to generate positive network effects, then we need make sure we have the right customer footprint in our data center in order to make our strategy a success.
What are the greatest barriers to achieving these goals that are facing Interxion?
KD: One of the challenges we face is raising people’s awareness of what Interxion is actually doing and educating them on the assets we have to offer across Europe. Interxion is unique, in the reach it has across Europe. This is an area, which is becoming increasingly important, as customers want ubiquity of service across the whole of their footprint and it’s about getting these key messages out there for customers to understand the company’s capabilities.
What is the current economic state of the European data center industry as a whole?
KD: We are seeing a situation at the moment whereby all the analysts are predicting growth in demand outstripping growth in supply till 2013. This is manifesting itself in strong demand for data center services, that is being seen by the European data center industry as a whole.
