In the process, of course, Equinix takes ownership of those enterprise customers.Įxisting ECX customers can make use of the new capabilities, and new customers can get started by establishing their own colocation presence within Equinix or partnering with a service provider who already has such a presence. What Equinix is offering them is an easy, one-stop way of connecting to a variety of ecosystem partners, including cloud service providers, telecom networks and even their business partners, suppliers and customers.

Enterprises don’t want to use public internet connections into the cloud because they are slow, best-effort and not secure, Staten claims. “That applies to any type of connection whether it is within the same data centre across North America or across the ones in Europe.”Īll of this is being done in service of the enterprise cloud market and the need for simple and more automated ways to support hybrid clouds connections and make them efficient and affordable. “You need it for 15 minutes? Use it for 15 minutes, and you only pay for what you actually used.”Īnd third, customers can use the ECX fabric, which offers direct connections to many popular public clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, and its portal to set up either LAN connections inside data centres or WAN connections between data centres, depending on where their network partners/cloud providers/business partners are located, through a single process, he adds. Secondly, virtual connections will be set up on a pay-per-use basis, “so if you are building out a new service or new capability and you are not sure how much bandwidth it is going to need, or how successful it is going to be, you don’t have to worry about signing up for a one-year contract,” Staten says. “So customers will be able to build new digital programmes that automatically set up their own connections on the fly,” he comments. The new Platform Equinix amounts to three significant separate expansions, Staten notes.įirst is the more rapid service turn-up via the portal and API, with service now delivered in five minutes or virtually on demand. In early 2018, Equinix will add two facilities in the US and one in Europe, and the roadmap includes six facilities in Asia-Pacific, says James Staten, chief strategist for the cloud and enterprise group.Īlso planned on a more long-term basis is connectivity across continents.

What Equinix is calling Platform Equinix enables local-area or wide-area interconnections within five minutes, and is available immediately in nine US data centres and 11 European facilities. The new capability can be used by service providers to extend their reach for their enterprise customers – but it also could become a competitive force, as Equinix is tied more tightly to the enterprise customers and telecom networks become connecting pipes. The data centre/interconnection specialist will now allow enterprise customers to use its portal to rapidly order interconnection within an Equinix data centre or between data centres on the same continent, and pay for those connections on a usage basis. Equinix has announced a major expansion of its Equinix Cloud Exchange and in the process, dove much deeper into the enterprise market, reports Light Reading ( Banking Technology‘s sister company).

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