Equinix has made the largest ever expansion its Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) to seven new EMEA markets to help digital businesses “simplify hybrid multicloud deployments” and expand global interconnection opportunities on Platform Equinix.
The ECX Fabric service has been extended to Barcelona, Brussels, Geneva, Istanbul, Lisbon and Sofia, and extending into Hamburg in Q2 2020, allowing enterprises and service providers to “seamlessly interconnect to a rich ecosystem of clouds, networks, partners and customers that matter most to their digital businesses”.
According to Equinix, global IT decision-makers are accelerating their digital transformation efforts and continuing to prioritise the adoption of hybrid and multicloud solutions in order to respond to “an increasingly dynamic world including competitive pressures, growing customer demands, globalisation, and challenges posed by COVID-19”.
Designed to support enterprise digital transformation initiatives, Equinix says its ECX Fabric, a global interconnection service across 45 strategic markets allows businesses to exchange their data on demand, and between metros through private connections, enables enterprises, network services and cloud providers alike to consistently scale their digital businesses as rapidly as the digital economy demands.
“Irish enterprises have been propelled into an entirely new way of doing business; one that relies on fast, secure digital connectivity across multiple locations and geographies,” said Maurice Mortell, managing director, Ireland, Equinix. “While many were already well on their way to digitally transforming their operations, none expected their entire business to depend on that progress so soon.
“The restrictions being implemented by authorities across the world in response to COVID-19 present challenges for businesses, including those looking to scale internationally. By expanding our interconnection service, ECX Fabric, we are helping Irish enterprises to scale into, and reach, even more European markets without requiring a physical presence in them. In doing so, we are ensuring that Irish enterprises do not have to halt their expansion plans due to an inability to reach new markets.”
Scalable, agile
ECX Fabric provides scalability, agility and connectivity over a self-service portal or APIs, says the vendor. Through a single port, customers in any ECX Fabric-enabled market can create and manage on-demand connections in a globally consistent way. By extending ECX Fabric from Lisbon in the West to Istanbul in the East, Equinix is making it easier for digital businesses to increase their global reach by gaining broad access to the ecosystems they need for scaling their businesses globally.
The addition of the seven new EMEA markets, will see ECX Fabric available to users across 45 strategic markets in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Barcelona, Boston, Brussels, Canberra, Chicago, Culpeper, Dallas, Denver, Dublin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hamburg, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Houston, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Manchester, Melbourne, Miami, Milan, Munich, New York, Osaka, Paris, Perth, Seattle, São Paulo, Silicon Valley, Seoul, Singapore, Sofia, Stockholm, Sydney, Toronto, Tokyo, Warsaw, Washington DC and Zurich.
“Most of the organisations we work with around the world are already on a digital transformation journey, and are using the cloud to improve their global reach and seamlessly connect with the customers, partners and suppliers that matter to them,” said Eugene Bergen Henegouwen, president, EMEA, Equinix.
“Indeed, in our latest global survey of IT decision-makers, nearly three-quarters (71%) said they plan to move more of their IT functions to the cloud. COVID-19 has accelerated this trend for some businesses that have had to rapidly virtualise their services to respond to the extremely fast-changing nature of business during this crisis. We believe our expansion of ECX Fabric will help them to not only successfully navigate the difficult months ahead, but come out the other side fit for the future and ready to seize the opportunities the cloud offers.”
Enterprise benefits
Equinix says that among the benefits for enterprise are on-demand, software-defined interconnection on ECX Fabric that gives enterprises the agility to capitalise on changing market conditions and new opportunities. Through one port, on one platform, enterprises can quickly connect to the largest ecosystems of clouds, networks and partners available on ECX Fabric, including clouds not currently available for direct connection within a local market. By connecting local services and distributed infrastructure via ECX Fabric, enterprises can also solve their application performance and digital customer experience challenges. Additionally, ECX Fabric, along with a growing portfolio of Edge Services, offers enterprises the ability to quickly deploy and interconnect virtual network functions globally.
For cloud and network service providers, leveraging ECX Fabric as a global extension of their infrastructure can quickly expand global reach into new markets and respond to the connectivity needs of their customers with dramatically reduced time to market. The virtualised nature of these connections is also ideal for testing local market demand before deploying physical infrastructure. The rich ecosystem of cloud service providers available on Platform Equinix, says the vendor, also allows network providers to offer customers on-demand, private connectivity to multiple cloud providers via ECX Fabric, ultimately helping their customers extract more value from the cloud.
Private interconnection is essential, Equinix argues, as digital transformation fuels higher demand for localised digital services at the edge. According to the recently released Volume 3 of the Global Interconnection Index (GXI), a market study published by Equinix, installed interconnection bandwidth capacity is expected to reach 13,300+ Tbps with a 51% compound annual growth rate worldwide by 2022.
“The migration to digital platforms, as well as the requirement for seamless and efficient interconnection to network providers and cloud platforms, are strong drivers for the colocation and interconnection market for enterprises, content and service providers,” said Courtney Munroe, global vice president, Telecommunications Research, IDC.
“Equinix’s ECX Fabric interconnection service offers additional enhanced and efficient options for service providers and enterprises alike and will continue to drive growth of the digital ecosystem. This expansion is timely given the increased demand for interconnection as a result of shifting network patterns and the spike in network usage from some segments, due to the impact of COVID-19 quarantine policies.”
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