A third subsea cable and new ports in LATAM
In 2022, we aimed to further localize the LATAM traffic and added new private peerings with leading ISPs in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This adds capacity, direct access to millions of end-users and further eliminates the need for third-party transit in the LATAM region.
Our third 100G circuit from Ashburn to Paris went live this year via Dunant, the subsea cable that went online in 2022! Three separate circuits mean that the path between the EU and North America is more resilient than ever before. All of the paths land in completely different states or even countries on both sides of the ocean, and subsequently connect towards totally independent i3D.net PoPs, which protects our network against failures or outages on one route. Even unpredictable and potentially catastrophic events like Hurricane Sandy taking out most of the subsea cables landing near New York are mitigated through this. In case of an outage on other paths, the backbone design will automatically reroute our traffic and keep the network stable.
Increasing capacity and finding new connections is a continuous process to eliminate the need for third-party transit and reduce latency even further by finding a more direct route for connection to our compute nodes across the network. The result is naturally a smoother and improved experience for customers and the end user.
Prioritizing sustainability and efficiency
Our data centers are growing. We operate our data centers under the Smartdc label, and the team is happy to report that the heat pump project is very close to completion at our Rotterdam data center! The three new heat pumps being installed allow us to save 800,000 m3 of gas per year. The carbon avoidance brought as a result of this sustainable project stands to benefit all customers operating out of Smartdc Rotterdam. We also continue to investigate more sustainable practices throughout our operations and will continue to investigate innovative ideas to further improve upon sustainability practices in 2023.
Looking ahead
The year 2022 also reshifted some priorities, resulting in us transitioning away from Consumer Game Servers. We have offered this service from the early days of i3D.net in which we’ve found many players still playing older titles on our infrastructure, that we’ve now had to say goodbye to after helping them find a new home for their games. Our scaled-up software teams now have full focus on building and supporting products that provide our partners with more ease of use and additional services that complement our compute, connectivity and data center products.
ONE Game Hosting Platform
One of these products is our suite of software services dedicated to the game industry — the ONE Game Hosting Platform. ONE is a multifunctional platform designed to help developers and publishers alike manage their multiplayer game with great ease. Multiplayer games have become more and more live services that have to be managed, something our platform helps with. Whether that is keeping player communities safe and online due to our DDoS protection for games, distributing and updating game patches so players around the world play the latest version of the game without disruption, or our Orchestrator managing the balance between concurrent users (CCU) and the available infrastructure resources, scaling up and down automatically as needed to run your multiplayer game. And of course, with Unreal Engine 5 released in 2022, our SDK now also is available for easy integration with games built on Unreal Engine 5.
In 2023, we will be offering more Game Online Services to support game studios, ranging from AAA to indie studios to help launch and keep their multiplayer games online.
Scale-up and consistent growth
In June, the Top 250 Dutch Scaleups for 2022 featured i3D.net in the list for the second year running! The research by the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship at the Rotterdam School of Management (Erasmus University Rotterdam), and NLGroeit assessed a pool of 3000 fast-growing firms in the country to pick the top 250. i3D.net managed to keep its spot on this highly competitive list! Sustainable scaling is one of the core values here at i3D.net, focusing on the company’s growth while ensuring our employees want to continue their journey with us. This is what has made working at i3D.net so appealing for years!
1st place in FD Gazelle once more
i3D.net won first place in the FD Gazelle for the second year in a row! 2022’s win came exactly ten years after our first FD Gazelle gold prize when we were awarded the award for the fastest growing startup. This year’s victory was in the category for large enterprises, which reflects the strides we have made in the past decade. And this is only one of the reasons for making this special. Within 10 years, i3D.net has won first place thrice, 3rd place once and has been nominated an additional five times. We are incredibly proud the company continues to grow consistently and has been awarded first prize as the fastest-growing, profitable company in the Netherlands for so many years. The fact that we have witnessed this consistent rise as a truly global performance hosting company shows how our team has planned for future growth and is implementing successful strategies to make the vision possible. Onwards to another successful year!
2023 and beyond
2022 was undoubtedly fruitful, with upgrades to the global network and increasing partnerships with a growing base of customers and users. We aim for 2023 to be just as successful for all of those working with i3D.net and its products. We will continue to strive to bring you the best online experiences through top-tier compute and networking products this year and hope to speak to you about how we can best help with your hosting or network infrastructure needs!
