Interxion Croatia, Former Altus, Shows Resilience in a Challenging Year

When a big crisis like a pandemic comes, with strong earthquakes in the spring at the very end of the year, and when you add to that a sale to a large American corporation and one of the largest data centers in the world, it is clear that the year was anything but ordinary. We talked about all these events with the director of Interxion Croatia, formerly Altus IT, Goran Đoreski, who points out that the crisis has increased the burden on telecommunications and data centers.

Đoreski said that the next period will be used to increase connectivity opportunities for their customers in Zagreb and to increase the availability of global services that they often use from some European capitals, and we will also consider other value-added services to strengthen the regional position.

What events have marked 2020, what were your key projects, key events? What was the year like when it comes to business?

We are all aware of the influence the COVID pandemic is having on individual lives and societies all over the world. When it comes to digital transformation, the pandemic has significantly accelerated progress in both private and public sectors.

Experts across different occupations have started working from home, which increased the load on telecommunications and data centres. The number of tasks and interactions with customers we had to perform increased, which added to the risk for employees and customers visiting the site. We had to find ways to become more efficient and to reorganise our operations in a safer way.

Outside the COVID pandemic, earthquakes that hit Zagreb in March and Petrinja in December have tested our ability to deliver uninterrupted service. We had no damage or downtime, but we used those events to carry out additional tests and finetune our processes. Addressing these challenges was our biggest achievement in 2020.

The year was also a huge milestone for Altus IT as, at the beginning of the last quarter of 2020, Altus IT became part of Interxion: A Digital Realty Company. Successfully reaching that partnership, despite the events of such a challenging year, was a success in itself. This partnership gives our customers access to PlatformDIGITAL, Interxion's global, flexible data centre platform, so we can help them adapt and scale, quickly and simply, no matter where they need to be or what they need to achieve.

What do you expect in 2021? What technologies and solutions do users expect?

The present conditions resulting from the COVID pandemic are not expected to change in early 2021, so we will continue working to ensure our customers are receiving the support they need. In the second half of 2021 we expect a gradual return to normal. We will use that period to increase the connectivity list for our customers in Zagreb and to increase the availability of the global services that our customers often use from some of Europe's metropolises. We will also investigate bringing additional value to our customers, to strengthen our regional position.

Interxion recently released research showing that by 2029, AI, Blockchain, IoT and 5G will drive a staggering $721 billion in revenue per year to cities around the world and it is clear that the changes created by coronavirus in the past year have accelerated those trends. This year, we’ll see that acceleration continue, with consumers and businesses rapidly adopting new, data dependent technologies - and to support that acceleration businesses will need global, flexible platforms that make supporting those technologies at the most foundational level as simple and easy as possible. Companies need to start finding solutions sooner rather than later, to ensure they can digitally transform and keep up with the rapidly growing technology sector.