Can/Should I connect to an IX or Transit provider?

I’ve never dealt with this. I’ve done my fair share of BGP configuration with ISPs and internally, but I’d been reading a bit about various IP transit providers (namely HE) and had never worked with them. I’d also noticed that there are IXs at colos that I have fat pipes to already.

For context, I work for a modest sized enterprise. We have an ASN, v4 /16 and v6 /40 (which I’m yet to use), all in an ARIN region. There are 2200 or so users, and roughly half have been remote WFH for the past year. The remainder had been spread through a number of SDWAN sites.

Our biggest internet traffic uses are, in no particular order:

• General web traffic (we require full tunnel VPN and for the time being, everything is funneled through HQ). We are moving to a cloud proxy soon.

• SDWAN

• Remote access VPN

I’d noticed that HE peers with the cloud proxy provider we are moving to. I’ve also noticed that they peer with the majority of ISPs that our WFH users and SDWAN sites use. Many of these ISPs are also present at our local IX.

As a modest enterprise, and not by any means a content or service provider, am I able to just “join” an IX? Is purchasing IP transit through a provider like HE an option? It seems they do not allow using this service for a default route l, but I imagine I can just continue to receive that from my ISPs.

Is this a common practice? I’ve only really ever gotten regular internet service, either business class or with BGP, in the past, so this is somewhat new territory for me.

Thank you.