Equinix has announced the direct physical and virtual connection of its International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres around the world, enabling customers to connect on demand to any other customer from any Equinix location, through the Cloud ExchangeTM (Equinix ECX), which has been renamed the Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric).
Over the coming months, Equinix will announce a series of coverage, connectivity and service initiatives to customers through its data centre and interconnection platform.
It will leverage the software-defined networking capabilities currently built into Equinix ECX to enable any customer to connect its own infrastructure across Equinix locations or connect to any other customer on the Equinix global platform, regardless of location.
Customers can customise their connectivity to partners, customers and suppliers. This includes real-time provisioning via a portal or API, pay-as-you-go billing increments and the removal of friction in establishing elastic connectivity between metros.
Equinix’s chief marketing officer Sara Baack said, “As digital transformation intensifies, business possibilities have no limits and neither should an organisation’s IT infrastructure. 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.”
The new ECX Fabric capabilities are immediately available in all Equinix 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 Q4 2017 and early 2018, ECX Fabric is rolling out to seven new locations in the Americas and EMEA regions (Denver, Düsseldorf, Geneva, Helsinki, Miami, Milan and Munich).
Equinix will extend connectivity to São Paulo within the Americas region, and between APAC region Equinix ECX Fabric metro locations (Hong Kong, Melbourne, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo), in 2018.
With this expansion, any Equinix customer will be able to interconnect its global infrastructure and request connections to any of the more than 1,000 participants on ECX Fabric today.
This includes some of the world’s largest enterprises, cloud service providers (including Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud) and SaaS providers (including Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow, among others).
Earlier today, Equinix also announced the expansion of the Equinix Internet Exchange into nine new locations in the EMEA and Americas regions in Q4 2017 and early 2018, including Amsterdam, Denver, Dublin, Frankfurt, Houston, London, Manchester, Milan and Stockholm.
Last month, Equinix’s chief product officer Brian Lillie visited the UAE, where he held a “knowledge sharing” session with du.
You can also watch Brian’s interview with Tahawul Tech below.
