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CENTURY LI NK ASI A PA C I F I C

Identifying the right blend of IT services for enterprise customers www.centurylink.com.sg

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GLOBAL LEADER IN

Hybrid IT ith an 85 year-long history, stemming from being the second largest telco in the US, CenturyLink has now reached new heights as a global Hybrid IT provider, thanks to making aptly timed acquisitions and strategic moves into cloud and associated services in the late 2000s. Today, the Company has a comprehensive suite of Hybrid IT offerings, including data centre collocation managed services, cloud and network services in the US, EMEA and Asia Pacific. CenturyLink has a global reach across 85 countries with more than 400,000 kilometres (km) of owned and operated fibre network in the US, and a 480,000km international transport network. The CenturyLink Data Centre Initiative (DCI) interconnects not just other CenturyLink data centres and buildings, but to more than 250 third party data centres, and more than 40,000 buildings and offices. “Our comprehensive IT solutions help enterprises accelerate business performance throughout their organisation, and ultimately transforms an IT department from a cost centre into a business enabler,” explains CenturyLink’s Managing

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With a clear vision to transform its business to become a truly global IT services provider, CenturyLink embarked on a series of strategic acquisitions from 2008 to enhance its overall service offering. Today, the Company is focused on strengthening its position as the global leader in Hybrid IT Writer: Emily Jarvis • Project Manager: Donovan Smith

Gery Messer

Managing Director, Asia Pacific

Director for Asia Pacific, Gery Messer. “We began to see a growing trend in businesses outsourcing their workloads to the cloud early in the game, and we identified this as a key focus area to capitalise on, making a decision to enhance our overall offering in accordance with this trend. Looking back, it is obvious we made the right decision and we are ahead of the industry when it comes to our expertise in Hybrid IT,” explains Messer. CenturyLink has come a long way from being a US$2.6 billion business with 6,500 people in 2008 servicing mainly US customers, to one with combined revenues of more than US$18 billion, 45,000 employees with an end-to-end portfolio. With more than 60 data centres

globally, coupled with the support of its local infrastructures and dedicated in-house expertise and support, CenturyLink customers can enjoy consistent levels of service anywhere in the world. “These are just some of the reasons why 98 percent of Fortune 500 companies chose us for their cloud, collocation, network and managed services needs. We have a robust, mission-critical platform that supports various industries, including financial services, retail and government,” Messer adds. “Our uniqueness and ability to compete within a competitive market extends from our reputation, vast experience and proven track record. Unlike our competitors, we own our data centres, and we manage our data centres end-to-end with our skilled in-house talent. This is a key differentiator and sets us apart from others.”

A cut above the rest

Some of CenturyLink’s more recent Asia-Pacific expansions include the availability of its global managed hosting services in China to better serve multinational corporations conducting business in the world’s second-largest economy. CenturyLink customers can now access a comprehensive portfolio of managed hosting, security, cloud and networking solutions through a Shanghai data centre. “For multinational corporations looking to grow their customer base, entering China presents enormous opportunities and challenges,” explains Messer. “CenturyLink makes it easy for businesses to host within China’s borders, offering access to the same highly secure managed services and consistent IT experience available

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EXFO support CenturyLink’s expansive IP-network system “In order to ensure the best quality of service possible and improve overall customer experience. EXFO’s service assurance solutions have enabled CenturyLink to increase visibility throughout its network, flagging potential issues before affecting customers and offering operational efficiency pointers to optimise the network quality”

across our global footprint.” On the cloud front, CenturyLink has a proven history and has a total of 13 cloud nodes globally. Since 2011, the Company has been offering its public cloud making it one of the first cloud offerings in the region. In March 2015, CenturyLink Cloud, the fourth generation cloud, was launched in Singapore. Further to this, in April 2015, the Company announced their global data centre expansion into Australia, one of the most connected countries in the world. Messer details: “CenturyLink has a great value proposition for local companies in Asia-Pacific who are looking to expand to the US and/or EMEA. Given that we own our data centres and operate fibre network in the US, coupled with an international transport network, we can offer better performance, agility and cost effectiveness when compared to other providers.”

It’s all about the people

Throughout the decades of CenturyLink’s existance, the Company has never detracted focus from the one thing that made it successful: its people. CenturyLink prides itself for nurturing the right talent that will drive their business and ensure their customers receive the highest levels of service quality.

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Recent Company Timeline 2015 Acquired Orchestrate, a Company that offers a fully managed database service for rapid application development 2014 Acquired Cognilytics, a leading provider of advanced predictive analytics and big data solutions to midsized and large enterprises > Acquired Data Gardens, a pioneer of disaster recovery and threat management software systems > Launched its managed hosting availability in China 2013 Acquired cloud provider, Tier 3 to accelerate the Company’s cloud platform strategy and AppFog to extend its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities 2011 Acquired Savvis, a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions 2009 Acquired Embarq Corporation, the largest independent local exchange carrier in the US > Acquired Qwest, a telecommunications and network provider

EXFO

enturyLink constantly innovates to push the boundaries of performance, reliability and quality even further. In order to continue growing, the company needed to gain more visibility throughout its network and access actionable information to proactively detect and address potential end-to-end service impacting issues—all in order to optimize service delivery, improve quality of service (QoS), and maximize customer quality of experience (QoE). Over the years, EXFO developed a strong relationship with CenturyLink, demonstrating its leadership and technological expertise by introducing innovative solutions tailored to help CenturyLink overcome challenges in a competitive market and achieve key corporate objectives including improved end-to-end quality of service and operational efficiencies. EXFO’s Service Assurance Division proposed a comprehensive solution comprised of a centralized test orchestration system (EXFO Worx) and strategically deployed measurement probes (Verifiers) throughout CenturyLink’s network. This combination solved the operator’s challenges in multiple ways: • The Verifiers provided continuous network and service assurance via highly accurate performance measurements taken at the transport and application layers — a unique approach that combines QoS and QoE in a single platform. • EXFO Worx gave users complete network visibility by managing and leveraging the highly scalable Verifiers and processing millions of measurements per second, enabling quick deployment of new services and test sequences as well as providing near real-time access to performance metrics. • The solution generated gains in process efficiency via centralized test management service activation, where trucks rolls were eliminated in favor of remote service turn-up and troubleshooting.

www.EXFO.com/Xtract

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“I am very proud of my Asia Pacific team. Together, we have achieved so much in such a short time. It’s remarkable to see such passionate people,” Messer shared. “All our achievements in Asia-Pacific are only possible with the support of a worldclass team and I am very honoured to be working alongside them.”

What is Hybrid IT?

Hybrid IT delivers the network, systems and IT environment to businesses that need to optimise their IT infrastructure, workloads, and business strategy with the best mix of internal and external solutions for critical business needs. Hybrid IT is not a one-size-fitsall solution, but instead should be uniquely tailored to the capabilities and strategy of the business. CenturyLink can manage their collocation, private and public cloud assets, and network demands so that IT can be an agile service provider to their organisations and end users Demand for Hybrid IT is driving business growth across Asia-Pacific. According to Frost & Sullivan’s recent report titled ‘Asia-Pacific Data Centre and Cloud Computing Market Update 2015’, Hybrid IT is fast becoming the new

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Any Distance. Any Speed. Anytime. Connecting to the cloud will never be the same. Trust the global leader in datacenter interconnect to deliver the capacity, scalability and intelligence you need to transform your cloud network. www.ciena.com

CIENA

iena has been partnering with CenturyLink for over 15 years to deliver best-in-class solutions for carriers and enterprise, specializing in: • Connecting to the cloud - named the current leader in the data center interconnect market by research firm Ovum, Ciena has a successful track record of providing scalable, efficient, and cost-effective solutions. • Bandwidth on demand - transform your networks into nimble and dynamic platforms, with SDN enabled applications • Security - safeguard your critical data from unwanted intrusions, transporting it reliably and transparently across a variety of architectures. For more information on Ciena’s capabilities, visit:

www.ciena.com/solutions/enterprise

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Awards CenturyLink has been operating and serving global and local customers in Asia-Pacific since 1999, and has invested more than US$400m across the region since 2008. Over the past two years, the company has accumulated an impressive list of regional awards and accolades, reinforcing its dominance as a leader in hybrid IT: > Awarded the ‘Asia Pacific Hybrid IT Strategy Award’ in the 2015 Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific Best Practices Awards > Best in the ‘Managed & Consulting Services’ category of Enterprise Innovation Technology Innovators Awards, 2015

Need for financial and human resources to manage IT infrastructure continues to grow

normal across organisations in AsiaPacific. With the increasing utilisation of data centres and cloud services across the Asia-Pacific region,increase companies have see significant in people and or costs every yeartheir gradually updated upgraded existing IT systems, giving rise to the Hybrid IT environment.

What’s trending

Key Business Priorities

ToP 3 AsIA/PACIfIC IT Concerns 1

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25 50

Need for financial and human resources to

manage IT infrastructure continues to grow According to a study conducted by international research firm, Vanson Bourne, cost savings, in-house skills say that their company mandates shortages and growing emphasis on them to control see significant increase in power and cooling people and costs every year consumption costs in their datacenter business-advancing applications will drive enterprises to outsource nearly 70 percent of their IT infrastructure by 2018. This study projects a reversal of say that their company mandates today’s situation, in which 65 percent them to control power and cooling consumption costs in their datacenter of IT infrastructure resides in in-house environments, and suggests most organisations will arrive at outsourced Asia/Pacific CIOs' cloud through hybrid approaches top business priorities Asia/Pacific CIOs' to collocation and managed-service top business priorities models.

Winner of the ‘Data Centre & Hosting’ category of Computerworld Reader’s Choice Awards, 2015 > Winner of the ‘Cloud Services’ category of the Network World Asia Reader’s Choice Awards, 2015 > Winner of the ‘DCIM Award’ category of the Network World Asia Information Management Awards’, 2015 > Recognised as a visionary in the 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting Asia Pacific > Winner of the ‘Best Hybrid Cloud Service’ category in the Asia Cloud Computing Awards, 2014

This third installment of the IDC Infographic series sponsored by CenturyLink throws the spotlight on the role of scale, efficiency and execution in driving competitive differentiation.

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The Call for Efficiency

The Call for Efficiency People and power costs are forecast to constantly rise with the need for new skills and more, densely packed hardware form factors

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of Asia/Pacific organizations are suffering from the increase in costs and yet...

are doing nothing to measure power consumption. These organizations need to change and take control of these issues

of Asia/Pacific organizations are suffering from the increase in costs and yet...

Consumption-based Services for Better Cost management

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To download the full IDC toplinebetter titled ‘Managed Hybrid IT – Enabling Enterprise Agility’, click HERE or simplifing

1 in 5 Asia/Pacific organizations say reviewing and developing a robust governance Risk management for strategy and plan is a

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Source: IDC Asia/Pacific C-Suite Barometer Survey This IDC Infographic was produced by IDC Go-to-Market Services. Any IDC information or reference to IDC that is to be used in advertising, press releases, or promotional materials requires prior written approval from IDC. For more information, visit: www.ap.idc.asia or email: gmsap@idc.com Copyright 2015