Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) says it is planning the next phase of its global platform to provide digital customers on-demand connection to any other customer from any Equinix location by physically and virtually connecting its International Business Exchange (IBX) global data centers. This includes the evolution of its current Equinix Cloud Exchange platform to the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric).
Over the next several months, Equinix will introduce a series of connectivity, coverage, and service initiatives to enable customers to scale their digital businesses rapidly through the Equinix data center and interconnection platform, the company says. This includes both cloud service provider on-ramps within a metro or across other metros for geo-redundant multi-cloud establishment and hybrid cloud architectures, and connections between a customer's distributed points of presence for addressing distributed applications and big data use case demands.
The new inter-metro connectivity will be delivered through the ECX Fabric. The ECX Fabric will use the software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities built into ECX to enable any customer to connect its own infrastructure across Equinix locations or connect to other Equinix global platform customers.
According to Equinix, customers can customize their connectivity to partners, customers, and suppliers through an interface offering the necessary "as-a-service" model features, including pay-as-you-go billing increments, real-time provisioning via a portal or API, and friction removal in implementing elastic connectivity between metros.
The new ECX Fabric capabilities are now available in all ECX locations in North America and the EMEA region, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, New York, Paris, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Stockholm, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Zurich.
In the fourth quarter of 2017 and into early 2018, Equinix is rolling out ECX Fabric to new metros in the Americas, and in the EMEA regions of Denver, Düsseldorf, Geneva, Helsinki, Miami, Milan, and Munich. In 2018 Equinix will extend connectivity to São Paulo within the Americas region, and between the APAC region ECX Fabric metro locations of Hong Kong, Melbourne, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
Equinix says this expansion will allow customers to interconnect their worldwide infrastructure and request connections to any of the over 1,000 participants on ECX Fabric, such as global enterprises, Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud and other cloud service providers, and SaaS providers, including Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow.
This initiative is part of the company's strategic expansion, which includes the acquisition of the 29 Verizon data centers, adding three new markets and extending Equinix's presence in several others earlier this year (see "Equinix completes Verizon data center buy"). Platform Equinix currently reaches 190 IBX data centers in 48 markets, including more than 9,500 of leading global businesses, Equinix says.
"As digital transformation intensifies, business possibilities have no limits and neither should an organization's IT infrastructure," Sara Baack, Equinix chief marketing officer. "Building a digital business requires the ability to reach strategic global destinations on demand, to access everyone that matters, and to bring people, clouds, data and things together. Today's announcements and our future product and services roadmap are aimed at leveraging the Equinix global platform to serve as a strategic partner for companies on this journey."
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