Seaborn Networks Saves $4 Million Annually and Increases Profitability with Kentik

Background

Seaborn Networks (Seaborn) is a leading developer, owner, and operator of submarine fiber-optic cable systems that connect the Americas. Its flagship route, Seabras-1, is the only direct PoP-to-PoP system between São Paulo and New York, forming a critical backbone for global communications. Delivering a full portfolio of transport, Ethernet, and IP services to carriers, content providers, and enterprises, Seaborn owns and operates every layer of its network infrastructure, including 75+ landing stations, 250,000 kilometers of subsea cable, and over 250 global PoPs.

With so much of Brazil’s and the Americas’ connectivity relying on Seaborn, maintaining a world-class network that’s reliable, congestion-free, and ultra-low-latency is mission-critical. But network performance is only half the equation. Profitability – understanding how customer traffic patterns, destinations, and usage trends either create value for the network or drive costs higher – is a tougher puzzle to solve.

Using Kentik’s traffic analysis and commercial insights, Seaborn turned network intelligence into a competitive advantage – successfully improving customer margins, decreasing costs, and making faster, smarter business decisions that boosted the company’s top-line revenue and overall profitability.

To learn how, Kentik spoke with Steve Orlando, CEO, and Dave Siegel, EVP of IP Network Architecture and Engineering, about Seaborn’s journey driving operational excellence and revenue growth with modern network intelligence.

The challenge

Before adopting Kentik, Seaborn had built a world-class subsea infrastructure, but had limited visibility into how that network was actually being used.

“In 2021, we had no visibility,” recalls Orlando. “We were guessing. We priced based on what we thought the market could bear, but we had no idea what our traffic really looked like – where it came from, how it moved, or what it cost us to deliver. We could celebrate top-line growth and still be losing money on specific customers without knowing it.”

Without that visibility, Seaborn couldn’t fully understand the economics of its business. Sales and pricing decisions were based on market instinct rather than data – a risky approach in Brazil’s intense IP transit landscape, where dozens of providers compete for the same top 1,000 customers.

“In Brazil, it’s a hyper-competitive market,” Orlando explains, “Margins are thin, suppliers are fragmented, and the pressure to discount is constant. Without hard data, you’re negotiating blindfolded.”

To stay competitive, Seaborn needed more than a network performance monitoring solution. The team required a platform that could illuminate how their traffic moved, what it cost to deliver, and where profitability was being gained or lost. In other words, they needed a solution that connected network operations to business outcomes – turning technical visibility into commercial intelligence to guide strategic decisions.

The solution

In late 2021, Seaborn enlisted Dave Siegel, EVP of IP Network Architecture and Engineering, and founder and CEO of NetMavens, a consultancy specializing in network architecture, transit, and peering strategy for service providers, to help chart a new course and overhaul its IP network strategy.

“When NetMavens started our engagement with Seaborn, they had excellent subsea assets, but the IP layer needed optimization,” Siegel recalls. “The network was overly reliant on transit, poorly classified, and we didn’t have a clear picture of how traffic was moving. Without understanding traffic flows, it’s difficult to design an efficient network or negotiate from a position of strength.”

The Kentik Network Intelligence Platform became the foundation for an end-to-end audit. Siegel and his team cleaned up interface data, identified misclassified traffic, and mapped out every route, peer, and transit path across the network.

“The first thing we did was bring Kentik into the mix. It’s the only platform that lets you see the complete picture: what’s on your backbone, what’s on your peering links, what’s coming in via transit, and how that impacts both performance and cost,” Siegel says. “Once the data was right, the insights started flowing. Kentik gave us a crystal-clear view of where traffic was going, how it was flowing, and where the inefficiencies were hiding.”

The results – improved bottom and top lines

Armed with newfound visibility, Seaborn began reshaping its network from the ground up and executing on a full optimization strategy.

Peering and transit optimization

The first priority was peering. Using Kentik’s Peering and Interconnection workflows, which correlate enriched traffic data with key database integrations like PeeringDB, Seaborn was able to optimize their edge, understand how they exchange traffic with other networks, and ultimately establish the most effective peering and interconnection agreements.

“Our transformation between paid IP transit to private peering resulted in annualized savings of approximately $4 million utilizing Kentik tools to optimize our edge and traffic exchange between networks,” says Siegel. “Those were immediate, high-impact wins that translated straight to the bottom line and increased performance. Without Kentik, that kind of progress would’ve been complete guesswork.”

Seaborn also uses Kentik to monitor how its customers connect to the world’s largest networks – tracking traffic volumes, prioritization, and backbone capacity. This visibility ensures the right peering relationships are in place, performance remains consistent, and network growth stays aligned with demand.

As Seaborn’s peering footprint grew, so did its visibility in the global internet ecosystem. The company’s CAIDA AS ranking, a measure of global interconnectivity, jumped from around 50th to 18th worldwide – an extraordinary rise for a provider operating primarily in Brazil.

Connectivity cost tracking

But the most transformative shift came when Seaborn began using Kentik not only for operational insight but for commercial intelligence.

With Kentik Connectivity Costs, the team modeled their upstream, peering, and IX costs directly in the platform. They could track global connectivity costs by provider, connectivity type, region, and more over time – revealing the drivers of network spend and giving the team the ability to measure the financial impact of their traffic engineering and peering changes. The result: faster auditing, accurate cost attribution, and a data-backed foundation for financial planning.

Smarter customer renewals and margin growth

With their connectivity cost structure in place, Seaborn was then able to take commercial intelligence to the next level with Kentik Traffic Costs. Using the feature’s per-customer cost calculation, Seaborn could now dynamically see exactly how much each of their 250+ customers’ traffic was costing them in underlying connectivity costs – and which high-cost routes were contributing the most.

“We used to spend hundreds of hours building these reports manually,” Siegel explains. “Now Kentik does it automatically every month, saving Seaborn over $100,000 per year in data analysis time alone – and it gives us a built-in profit and loss view for the network.”

These insights reshaped Seaborn’s renewal strategy. Now, when customers come up for renewal or prospective clients begin a trial, Seaborn can identify those who strain network resources or carry unprofitable traffic – and adjust pricing or peering dynamics accordingly to maintain healthy levels of profitability.

“When a customer or prospect asks for a lower rate, we can see exactly what they cost us,” says Orlando. “Sometimes that means pushing back or even walking away. Other times, it highlights opportunities to improve peering and keep us profitable. Either way, we’re negotiating based on real-time data.”

Better sales prospecting

Seaborn also uses Kentik to uncover new business opportunities by analyzing where large volumes of traffic enter and exit its network. By pinpointing third-party networks that exchange significant traffic with Seaborn but aren’t yet customers (second-hop networks), the platform helps Seaborn’s sales team identify high-potential prospects and prioritize outreach.

“I want to know what’s on the other side – where traffic originates and terminates, which carriers and providers it touches, upstream and downstream,” says Orlando. “That visibility is critical for understanding our addressable market and identifying who to pursue next.”

Board-ready network health analytics

For Seaborn’s executive and product leadership team, Kentik has evolved from a network analytics platform into a strategic engine for business growth.

“Most people think of Kentik as an IP analytics tool,” he says. “We see it as a commercial analytics platform. It helps us decide which customers to keep, which ones to renegotiate, and where to grow next.”

Every Monday morning, automated Kentik reports deliver a snapshot of Seaborn’s network health and growth opportunities – peering versus transit balance, top ASNs, customer renewal margins, and emerging private peering opportunities.

“I’m not deep in the dashboards every day,” Orlando adds. “But those weekly reports tell me everything I need to know – traffic balance, cost trends, and where to focus next. It’s executive-friendly and board-ready commercial intelligence for our network.”

Conclusion

Kentik helped Seaborn connect the dots between performance and profitability. With deep visibility into network behavior and cost drivers, Seaborn has reduced expenses, improved operational efficiency, and achieved a substantial return on investment. The final words are best left to Steve:

“Kentik is a key component of our profitability strategy. It lets us see what’s happening across the network, make faster decisions, and compete smarter in one of the toughest markets in the world.”