Equinix Announces Channel Partner Program For Resale And Referral Of Its Interconnection Technology

On March 17, Equinix announced the launch of its global channel partner program that gives managed service providers, network service providers and other partners the ability to resell Equinix services. The release of Equinix’s channel partnership program promises to dramatically expand the distribution of Equinix’s products and services for creating multi-cloud deployments in collaboration with Equinix partners such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and IBM SoftLayer. Partners can function either as a “reseller, referral agent or cloud technology platform partner,” and notably, in the case of a reseller or referral partner, stand to benefit from a recurring revenue stream resulting from the resale of the Equinix Cloud Exchange that provides their customers enhanced access to multiple cloud platforms to create hybrid cloud infrastructures. To date, the Equinix Cloud Exchange features approximately 100 technology partners including, most recently, companies such as Datapipe and Dimension Data. In early March, Equinix partnered with Cisco to facilitate multi-vendor orchestration and expanded its global interconnection footprint by opening data centers in the critical technology epicenters of New York, Singapore, Melbourne, London and Toronto, bringing the total number of Equinix data centers over the globe to over 100. Equinix channel partners can also implement the Equinix Performance Hub to distribute an organization’s data center in multiple locations to improve performance. The larger significance of Equinix’s decision to announce a global Channel Partner program, however, is that end user customers can now enjoy access to a platform for creating hybrid cloud infrastructures in multiple geographies in collaboration with channel partners with which they are familiar and trust. In other words, creating large-scale hybrid infrastructures just got easier now that Equinix’s technology can be resold by MSPs, NSPs, System Integrators and Solution Providers via a strategic offering that promises to expand Equinix’s market footprint further and subsequently enrich its product development by means of iterative feedback from a larger swath of customers.