Speaker 2: 0:02

Welcome to Uplink, where we explore the world of digital infrastructure, uncovering the technology, fueling AI and cloud innovation, with the leaders making it happen. I'm your host, michael Reid, and my guests today are Emmanuel Servais, head of Sales for Southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and solution architect Lionel David two of Megaport's early pioneers in France, and they talk about building the business from the ground up to shaping the customer solutions, with a focus on culture and curiosity. They share what keeps them driven and how they're making a massive impact here at Megaport. Let's dive in. Well, here we are with the two musketeers, but there is three musketeers. You're missing one. So you've been building. Well, it started with France, you two building for Megaport, and my notes say you've been here three years and eight months and three years and three months. You've managed to actually achieve a significant amount in that time and you're expanding everywhere. So why on earth did you guys come to Megaport when we have nothing here? Now you've built something incredible, but what made you jump ship to come to this company way back?

Speaker 3: 1:18

I don't know. You started this whole maybe group, I think it was the people first.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Yeah and for sure. The technology it's cool.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Tech, yeah, cool technology, but we landed in France when you were there. We'd just been there for a bit.

Speaker 1: 1:31

Yeah, a couple of customers like OVH Cloud was already present, okay.

Speaker 3: 1:35

L'Oreal as well. Oh, managed by, yeah, the North Europe, yes, okay.

Speaker 1: 1:42

But it was almost the only customer that we had, so it was not zero, but almost from scratch. Yes, and after three years, yeah, I think we have more than 100 logos in France.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Yes, huge logos too, phenomenal companies.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Yeah, exactly Cacaron company, largest French companies, and it's continued to grow, of course. So it's great, yeah, and we start to do the same now in the other countries, like Spain, italy and Benelux.

Speaker 2: 2:08

Yes, it's true. So that's what's really interesting is, we saw your success and so we've basically asked you to continue that and expand it to new countries, new regions. Again, why would you have taken the leap to Megaport and what have you enjoyed about it? Why are you still here and why would you have taken the leap to Megaport and what have you enjoyed about it? Why are you still here and why would you recommend someone to come and join you on your mission as you continue to scale?

Speaker 3: 2:31

everywhere. Yeah, I think as a technical guy so I used to be an architect network architect. Yeah, I wanted to expand some pre-sales also job and when Alex told me that he will join Manu in his job, I just told him hey, just if you need, if you require any pre-sales, just give me a call. He gave me a call a week later and it was done. You know and I met Manu and I met other people and the technology the fact that you know if you need some things you need to discuss with the CTO, you need to discuss with the CEO, even if it is in Brisbane, you can do it. It's very everyone is reachable. The technology is so easy also to understand and to sell that you know it's, yeah, it's really good and we've been talking.

Speaker 2: 3:22

you guys are really pushing the boundaries of what the technology is capable of doing. One of the things I love about megaport is when we go and talk to our customers, we always talk about megaport as these sort of lego blocks each, each lego block is a piece that does something interesting, automated, all these cool pieces and in it. By itself, it's cool, but when you start to build them together and turn them into sort of a Hogwarts castle or you know, whatever it may be Millennium Falcon that's what I'm building at home at the moment but when you build it into these things, that's what's interesting and I think you're pushing the boundaries of what's possible and that's really cool.

Speaker 3: 3:58

Yes, I mean, recently we had some big demands in terms of of capacities, of new features and, uh, we are got the. Just as an example, we have got two big um uh projects with the guys that really needed the the best, uh, yeah, the best solution possible, and it was only feasible with the new hardware, like the super micros, and we had to push a lot to get things ahead of time, I suppose, and everyone in Brisbane and in the US has been very involved to make us succeed in that. So, yeah, I mean we push because the clients are pushing us as well.

Speaker 2: 4:44

And what you're talking about is a virtual edge platform, when we've just rolled out brand new, super fast hardware with crazy speed on it. How has the customer received that? How has that been playing out for them? Is it delivering what you need?

Speaker 3: 5:02

Exactly. Just one example is Sending Blue Bravo. They are mass mailing and they required lots of bandwidth because Huge bandwidth, huge bandwidth, like they use 50 gigabits per second during Christmas period or Black Friday and in order to do that you must Either you need to parallelize, so doing some horizontal scaling of lots of MVs, or they need huge boxes and the virtual edge. What are they using software-wise? So they use FortiGate and they are just testing 6-Win at the moment and they're pushing 50 gig out of these things.

Speaker 1: 5:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 5:42

They are actually just testing that and they are just expecting to be able to do that with a much better ratio in terms of vCPUs and bandwidth.

Speaker 2: 5:54

So you guys are always doing something interesting. This is just one of many, many different pieces.

Speaker 1: 5:58

It's never the same day. So that's the magic of Megaport, because every day is another day, but at the end you build a project. So it is short term, medium term and long term. So that's the magic. We have no time to be bored about what we are doing. As you say, we have a lot of support from everywhere across the globe, from the US, from Australia, from Brisbane. You have a feeling sometimes that you work in the same city. You have a feeling that you are working from Paris, but no, because you have a jet lag. But yeah, it's super easy to work with Megaport.

Speaker 2: 6:32

And so one thing that I'm so impressed with a what you did you started with again. The thing that fascinates me is people that take something from zero and build it to one and then scale it. And you took france from pretty much nothing, one customer, a few pops, yeah. And now you're convincing people to join you to do the same in all these new countries. So they're, you're telling them the story of what you did and then you're bringing in no, no, no, you've got two new countries or totally brand new locations that we've just launched into as well.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Yeah, I think they really like the project and our strategy based on the ecosystem works very well. When you have a small team three, four, five people you can't cover the market. It's impossible. So you need to use and to work with partners, and it is what we are, I think, doing well, and we're going to try to do it in the other country, like Italy.

Speaker 2: 7:20

Spain, benelux. Yes, yeah, and it's only because we want to go to Italy and Spain. Is that why we landed there? You just said there is cool. It's actually. They're different markets. Actually, I mean France is. And particularly, congrats on the logos. You've brought many global big brand logos that are coming through, which is fascinating. And what's cool about Megaport is when you win a, say, french logo here, that's in every country. You win connectivity in the US, in Singapore, if you look at this success.

Speaker 1: 7:50

Most of these customers are not in France. They are in France, but they are global customers. I don't want to give names, but you take the big name from France. They are global with us. So I think that's the magic, of course, of Megaport to have this capability to serve these customers everywhere across the globe. Around 1,000 pops no, that's fantastic.

Speaker 2: 8:12

It's cool. And so what are you guys excited about? Something that?

Speaker 3: 8:16

is very rewarding. I mean, the people are always wondering how can we be so agile? Yeah, we hustle, yeah, things are fast, yeah, exactly, but we are so agile ever on the sale size as well as on the technical size, because you know all the chain. Like this, we will be agile for the all the. You know all the process from sellings to deliver, and that's something that I have never lived before. And that's why it's so enjoyable to work with Megaport, because you 12 hours, 24 hours.

Speaker 1: 8:58

This could be a big decision and we are able to do it, and I think it can change everything.

Speaker 2: 9:03

Well, that's what's good. I mean, you guys are pushing us to actually support you, but you're the feet on the street giving us the guidance as to where we need to land, what data centers we need to land in and pop, what connectivity we need. We need low latency pass. We need higher connectivity speed here.

Speaker 2: 9:17

It's teamwork, it's teamwork yeah, but the feedback we get. We're very grateful for that feedback from the ground and our job is to just make sure we give you all the support we can and we obviously have to do it in a way that makes sense. But the answer is probably yes, I think, in most cases when you bring us some questions and Manu has a way, a way of getting yes from our team in Australia. I don't know what yes is.

Speaker 1: 9:44

This is not for the cameras, no no, no, no, it's cool.

Speaker 2: 9:49

So the innovation piece. One thing about Megaport, and particularly Cam as our CTO he's come back into the business. One of the missions certainly I've pushed the company to be on is to listen to our customers, the challenges that they've got and how can we solve them, build that and basically deliver that into the platform. And so NatGateway was a great example. Customers came to us and said we're spending a fortune on Nat, literally translation, and is there a way to solve that? The cool thing is when we work out a way to solve it for one customer. It's likely that more than one customer has this problem usually and then if we solve it once, we can actually solve it. In 26 countries and 900 data centers it's actually delivered at scale instantly and that's one of the things I love. But that engineering team there's smoke coming off their keyboards, the amount of development and cool stuff that they're bringing out.

Speaker 2: 10:42

Two parts One you kind of constantly innovate to stay ahead of you know what your customers need, the competition and what have you. The other is to expand TAM and what we can solve for customers. So new markets, new areas. We launched internet recently. That thing's exploded and that gateway we've got, you know, we've gone from 10 gig to 100 gig Backbone. Backbones are now at 400 gig. More and more subsea cable, more and more speed, more and more locations, you know, yeah, and a lot of the feedbacks come from your team as well.

Speaker 3: 11:13

That's good to know. Yeah, I'm proud of that.

Speaker 2: 11:16

That's cool, of course, yeah, no, the team really enjoy it.

Speaker 3: 11:42

Of course, yeah, no, the team really enjoy it and I know you're pushing them because you're finding opportunities for them to improve. They do very big companies worldwide and and sometimes they have crazy demands. So, yeah, we need to uh find the right balance between what we are going, the way we are going to sales and the way we are going to discuss with the technical team, because sometimes we have to potentially go ahead of the world map. Yes, but we try not to, of course, no, but, but it's good that you push the team. Yeah, but we make sure everyone is aware about what we hear from the field.

Speaker 2: 12:03

Yes, and, yeah, someone who's considering coming and joining. You know the team. What sort of culture do you ascribe? What would you say about the business and why to come, and what sort of style of person?

Speaker 1: 12:18

I think we have a collaborative way to work. We work as a team. Again, there's a lot of support between people. Of course, we need a lot of energy, because to cover all the demons that we have, we need a lot of energy and we need to be creative as well.

Speaker 2: 12:32

Hustle creativity collaboration.

Speaker 1: 12:34

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 12:35

Yeah, would you say, it's fun, would you say it's challenging. Yeah, it's super fun as well.

Speaker 3: 12:40

Yeah, it's both. Would you say it's fun? Would you say it's challenging? Yeah, it's super fun as well. Yeah, it's both. It's challenging. Working also in a worldwide context is very interesting. It's different Cultures. You meet lots of people from Lots of cultures. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 12:52

Lots of time zones, lots of regions. What is?

Speaker 1: 12:55

Australian, something complicated. Yeah, there are these.

Speaker 2: 12:57

Australians yeah, they speak funny.

Speaker 3: 13:01

Lots of crocodiles and snakes. Yeah, exactly, that's okay.

Speaker 2: 13:05

Well, keep building what you're building. We're super happy to have you guys doing what you're doing, Very excited to see not only the continued build, I mean France. Now you have how many people in just France?

Speaker 1: 13:18

Just France, five people.

Speaker 2: 13:19

Five people. You went from one when you started, now five people, five people. You went from one when you started, now five people. Now you've got, uh, spain, that's come on, that was probably the second, I think. And then you've got um, milan milan and benelux again lux is expanding.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Yeah, yeah, we expand everywhere, by the way, yes, and you always what.

Speaker 2: 13:38

maybe one thing I love what you're building is you find um and I think I've seen this successful for us everywhere. You find two people. You find almost like a country sales lead that does everything from a sales perspective for the region in that country, that new country, that particular language, and you find a technical solutions architect, partnership between them Exactly, but at the end end, we hire a team and not individual people, because it doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 14:05

So it's exactly what you said if we want success, we need to have a team and not individual people, delivering the mission that we expect from them yeah, and I think we enjoyed make the in Milan and Madrid the interviews together. Yes, we make a couple of them.

Speaker 2: 14:26

It's cool. It's pretty cool and you've landed some incredible talent for each of those regions. That's what I love. I love watching people who take a step from sometimes a very big corporate that's very stable and safe and come to a pretty dynamic company. That's just for the first time landing in this country. Now we've got great tech yes, you can see it worldwide but landing is zero, person zero. And then one Huge respect for the folks that do that. It's why I get on the plane and come and see you guys as well. It's why I want to make sure that we're supporting the region.

Speaker 2: 14:56

Yeah, I mean we get to go to Milan. And yeah, I mean, we get to go to Milan. When is that Not tomorrow, the next day, and then we're going to.

Speaker 1: 15:02

Yeah, and Madrid after all.

Speaker 2: 15:03

What's that? Madrid, then Madrid, exactly, yeah. So keep building what you're doing. We love it. It's taking this tech around the world. We're going to keep scaling. Which country is next? Where are we going next?

Speaker 1: 15:22

Are we more or just keep building? What's the answer?

Speaker 2: 15:23

what do you have in place? Discuss? It's awesome. I appreciate you guys. With a drink, yeah, yeah, perfect, okay, well, cheers guys. Thank you, thank you.