I posted a recent entry about my nomination for the TorIX board. I am happy to report that during the Annual General Meeting, the TorIX members officially voted me to their Board of Directors, along with Joe Abley, Paul Andersen (EGATE), Jason Lixfeld (Ario Networks), Sameer Khosla (Neutral Data Centres), Jon Nistor (Rogers), Vince Mammoliti.
Several peers had the confidence in my abilities to request that I act as their proxy during the meeting and for their benefit, I’ve included my speech below:
Hi everyone. I think many people here know me, but for those who don’t, my name is Ben Lucier and I’m the Vice President and General Manager of HIP Communications, a hosted IP application service provider and sister company of Accelerated Network Connections – a TorIX peer.
I have to say before I begin that when I took over the network architecture and support responsibility for ACI more than three years ago, TorIX was not high on my list of concerns. Back then, I viewed TorIX as peering point we connected to that saved us a few dollars on our expensive transit links and thanks to the Jason, Scott and Jon’s technical capabilities, I didn’t have to worry about the switch going offline; They knew what they were doing and they made it work, plain and simple.
Well here I stand before you three years later, with the same respect for the TorIX founders and the exchange they worked hard to build. Something has changed though.
Like many of you, TorIX has become an integral part of HIP and ACI’s network strategy. We’re doing things at HIP that depend on the Exchange. For instance, we currently send a significant amount of latency sensitive voice traffic to FCI Broadband over SIP trunks. I’m depending now on TorIX to not only save me money, but also to help me deliver sensitive traffic to my carrier partners. This is just one example of many.
If a switch at TorIX failed tomorrow, my customers’ phone calls would be routed over the public Internet through our upstream transit providers. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it’s certainly something I have to consider when offering Hosted PBX services to my customers. When I was nominated to participate on the board, I considered it carefully before accepting. I thought about how TorIX would benefit from my experience and in the end it was a no brainer for me.
I will work hard with the other members of the board to put processes in place that will let current and future peers know that TorIX is not just a switch we connect to to save on transit costs — As an elected board member I will ensure that TorIX remains a sustainable platform its peers can depend on now and in the future.
Thank-you.
Now the hard work begins, but I’m looking forward to it. The board has already exchanged a plethora of emails to keep the momentum going and a list of action items targeted at improving the exchange from every angle will be the first step.
Without a doubt, 2007 will be a very good year for TorIX.