Category: Equinix

Digital Realty Partners With Megaport To Launch Service Exchange To Facilitate Access To Multiple Cloud Providers

Digital Realty recently announced the release of a Service Exchange that facilitates access to multiple cloud providers by way of a direct, secure connection that bypasses the public internet. Digital Realty’s Service Exchange provides connections to Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. The Service Exchange expands Digital Realty’s portfolio of service offerings from data center, colocation and interconnection services to include a service offering aimed at enterprise customers seeking enhanced performance, reliability and scalability with respect to connecting to cloud providers as well as colocation facilities. Digital Realty’s Service Exchange is enabled by means of a partnership with Megaport, whose Megaport Service Exchange platform delivers the foundational infrastructure that enables Digital Realty Service Exchange customers to connect with cloud providers as illustrated below:

service-exchange-diagram-1

The Digital Realty Service Exchange competes directly with the Equinix Cloud Exchange and subsequently aims to carve out market share in the rapidly growing space of interconnection solutions for cloud service providers. The combination of Digital Realty’s experience delivering a global IT infrastructure to enterprise customers in conjunction with Megaport’s expertise in interconnection services means that Digital Realty Service Exchange customers stand to benefit from a service that specializes in empowering customers to tackle and surmount challenges related to predictable performance and security. The Digital Realty Service Exchange will be available as of Q4 in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Ashburn, VA. Plans are underway to render the Digital Realty Service Exchange available in 24 data centers spanning 15 markets by the middle of 2017.

Equinix Cloud Exchange Delivers Direct Access To Microsoft Office 365 Via Azure ExpressRoute

Equinix recently announced that its Equinix Cloud Exchange platform will support private, managed connectivity to Microsoft Office 365 by way of Azure ExpressRoute, the infrastructure that provides a direct connection to Microsoft Azure that bypasses the public internet. As of Q3 of this year, Equinix will become one of the first vendors to deliver a private, reliable, low latency, high performance connection to Microsoft Office 365 via its Equinix Cloud Exchange. Equinix’s support of a direct connection to Microsoft Office 365 gives enterprises the valuable option of ensuring that their employees have access to the Office 365 productivity suite of applications with minimal downtime, latency-related interruptions or performance issues. By providing access to Microsoft Office 365 via Azure ExpressRoute, Equinix enhances the cloud security of data leveraged by Office 365 because of its private, non-public internet connection. Equinix’s direct access to Office 365 will be available in 15 markets worldwide including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Osaka, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. One of the additional benefits of the Equinix Cloud Exchange’s direct access offering to Office 365 via Azure ExpressRoute is the ability of customers to modulate network performance to ensure high speed, secure access to Office 365 while concomitantly taking advantage of recent security upgrades to the Azure ExpressRoute infrastructure.

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.

Equinix And Cisco Partner To Enhance Multi-Cloud Management On Equinix Cloud Exchange

Today, Cisco and Equinix announce that Cisco Tail-f Network Control System (NCS) will now form part of the foundational infrastructure of the Equinix Cloud Exchange. Cisco Tail-f Network Control System (NCS) enhances the Equinix Cloud Exchange by delivering multi-vendor orchestration functionality in addition to the automation of networking solutions. As such, TCS empowers customers to rapidly provision multi-cloud environments and thereby optimize the selection of different cloud platforms for a multitude of use cases. By facilitating the rapid deployment of multi-cloud environments, Cisco Tail-f NCS further empowers customers to leverage a myriad of cloud platforms for redundancy and failover purposes in addition to empowering them to avoid vendor lock-in. Because NCS complies with the YANG and NETCONF protocols, it can manage use cases requiring the configuration and orchestration of multiple cloud platforms in real-time. The innovation of Cisco Tail-f Network Control System (NCS) consists in its ability to facilitate agile multi-cloud development and orchestration by integrating with the Equinix Cloud Exchange SDN’s Equinix Programmable Network (EPN). Built on a modular architecture and a “proven set of APIs that allow customers to self-provision multiple new connections instantaneously,” the Equinix Cloud Exchange delivers an infrastructure that mitigates against vendor lock-in and gives customers more choices with respect to their deployments and long-term cloud strategy. Equinix’s partnership with Cisco and its NCS technology represents a breakthrough in multi-cloud management and underscores the degree to which the industry can now support operational agility with respect to the management of multiple cloud vendors as represented by the ability to provision and configure multiple cloud deployments in real-time.

Equinix and Datapipe Collaborate to Deliver Hybrid IT Solutions for Enterprises

PRESS RELEASE

Datapipe will offer Hybrid IT Solutions including managed AWS within Equinix data centers

REDWOOD CITY, CALIF. and JERSEY CITY, N.J. — November 11, 2014 — Equinix, Inc., the global interconnection and data center company, together with Datapipe, the global leader in managed hybrid IT solutions for the enterprise, today announced a collaboration to provide managed Hybrid IT Solutions for Amazon Web Services (AWS). The solution leverages Equinix’s global footprint of more than 100 International Business Exchange (IBX®) data centers and combines Equinix’s Cloud Exchange interconnection solution with Datapipe’s managed services and the AWS platform. The integrated solution gives enterprise customers unprecedented security, choice and control for how they architect, build, migrate and manage enterprise applications and workloads in the AWS cloud.

Studies show that enterprise customers are turning to hybrid clouds to maximize performance of business-critical applications, but are continually faced with challenges related to reliability, performance and security. In fact, in a recent survey of more than 650 global enterprise IT leaders, security, reliability and performance were listed as the top three drivers for a direct connection to the cloud. By deploying Hybrid IT inside an Equinix data center, organizations are able to strike the right balance between the AWS public cloud, private clouds and traditional IT environments, all of which are architected, deployed and fully managed by Datapipe.

Highlights / Key Facts
•Equinix and Datapipe customers deploying hybrid IT solutions are able to achieve the benefits of agile and elastic cloud environments while not having to compromise on the security and control offered by traditional IT environments. These multi-platform solutions are delivered through a global footprint of datacenter choices combined with Datapipe’s deep expertise in architecting, deploying and managing the unique demands of managing highly available enterprise class applications.
•The joint solution provides improved security and performance, better control, and higher throughput versus connecting to AWS via the public Internet. It provides direct bandwidth for access to AWS services and the seamless integration with dedicated IT environments, such as complex databases, to support highly available, data-intensive applications. The result is improved user Quality of Experience (QoE) and more effective migration to and adoption of the AWS cloud.
•A recent survey of more than 650 global enterprise IT leaders conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by Equinix showed that 91 percent of global businesses planned to deploy public cloud services in the next 12 months, and 85 percent of respondents indicated that they see strong value in having direct connections to those providers. Security, reliability and performance were listed as the top three drivers for a direct connection, with 77 percent placing strong value on having a single source for colocation and interconnection.

Key use cases for the Datapipe and Equinix Hybrid IT Solution for AWS include:

•Compliant solutions – With Hybrid IT, sensitive data is protected in a Datapipe- managed private cloud or physical environment within an Equinix data center, while public cloud compute resources can be accessed, as needed, via the AWS cloud.
•Complex database environments – Datapipe offers integrated managed solutions for end-to-end hybrid infrastructures encompassing AWS environments, Direct Connect, highly available database components housed in an Equinix data center, and the security and governance controls around the entire environment.
•Cloud disaster recovery – A Hybrid IT model allows organizations to maintain mission-critical applications in a secure Datapipe-managed private cloud or physical environment within an Equinix data center while using the AWS cloud for Disaster Recovery services.

Quotes

Phillip Marangella, Sr. Director, Market Development Cloud Solutions, Equinix:

Our collaboration with Datapipe on a managed hybrid cloud solution for AWS removes many of the common barriers to cloud adoption. It offers customers the best of both worlds by providing Equinix’s secure data center platform, including private access to AWS, along with Datapipe’s expertise in designing and managing an optimal IT architecture for enterprises.

John Landy, CTO, Datapipe:

Datapipe partners with our clients to future proof their IT, to enable innovation and growth. This joint solution with Equinix allows us to plan, build and run secure, high performance hybrid IT solutions leveraging the AWS platform and delivering from the Equinix global data center network.

Additional Resources
•Global Study Finds Enterprises Planning Widespread Deployment of Multi-Cloud IT Architectures
•Equinix and Datapipe Hybrid IT Solution for AWS
Datapipe and Equinix will be exhibiting at the AWS re:Invent conference being held in Las Vegas, Nevada, November 11-14, 2014, booths #1000 and #406, respectively.

About Equinix
Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), connects more than 4,500 companies directly to their customers and partners inside the world’s most networked data centers. Today, businesses leverage the Equinix interconnection platform in 32 strategic markets across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. http://www.equinix.com/.
About Datapipe
Datapipe is the only global managed service provider to future proof IT for the enterprise. We do this by architecting, deploying and managing multi-platform hybrid IT solutions, including public, private and hybrid clouds integrated with traditional IT environments. Datapipe automates IT to support the continuous development and delivery of secure, highly available enterprise class applications. We deliver operational excellence through proven ITIL processes delivered by a global network of experienced professionals and next generation data centers in New York Metro, Ashburn VA, Silicon Valley, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Kansas City, Dallas, Iceland, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix services; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenue from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; and other risks described from time to time in Equinix’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see Equinix’s recent quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

Equinix Announces Support For Google Cloud Platform On Equinix Cloud Exchange

Equinix today announces the availability of the Google Cloud Platform via its Equinix Cloud Exchange platform. As a result of its partnership with the Google Cloud Platform, Equinix will have the ability to offer its customers dedicated connections to the Google Cloud Platform characterized by high performance and low latency connections that bypass the public internet. The Equinix Cloud Exchange product will render the Google Cloud Platform available in 15 markets worldwide and thereby give enterprise customers the flexibility to deploy the Google Cloud Platform in multiple geographies in conjunction with Equinix’s other IaaS partners, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. As such, the Equinix Cloud Exchange gives customers the ability to quickly deploy combinations of AWS, Azure and GCP in multiple geographies and use combinations of the three most popular public cloud environments to differentially support discrete workloads in their production and test environments. Equinix will offer a 10 GB connection to the Google Cloud Platform in conjunction with bursting functionality. In all, today’s announcement continues to strengthen Equinix’s position in the colocation space for public clouds by giving its customers an enviable degree of flexibility with regard to choices of public clouds for different workloads. As cloud adoption continues to accelerate, expect Equinix’s Cloud Exchange to continue gathering momentum particularly given its ability to support Google Cloud Platform, AWS and Microsoft Azure all over the world.