Equinix is boosting enterprises' journeys to the hybrid cloud by offering a private cloud onramp with Amazon Web Services (AWS.)
Equinix was already offering private connectivity with AWS Direct Connect and will now take part in the launch of the new AWS Direct Connect Service Delivery Program, which enables Equinix customers to use hosted connections with 1G, 2G, 5G and 10G capabilities on the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric).
The boosted capabilities allow enterprises with mission-critical workloads to benefit from lower latency and higher bandwidth features for hybrid cloud architectures on Platform Equinix.
"This is a significant announcement," said Alan Weckel, founding analyst, 650 Group, in an email to FierceTelecom. "More and more enterprises are building their data center in colocation facilities, like Equinix, to have better proximity to hyperscalers, like AWS, and to other enterprises. We expect that next year over have the servers enterprises buy will be deployed in colocation facilities instead of in enterprises.
"The enterprise gets a lot of advantages, especially global enterprises that will be able to connect to AWS in multiple regions around the globe, this will help reduce cost for the enterprise and provide better application performance in a multi-cloud world."
Enterprises and organizations of all stripes have been moving to hybrid clouds, whether that's a combination of public clouds or a blend of private and public clouds. To support the hybrid workloads, the new gigabit capacities allow Equinix customers that are using its ECX Fabric, which is an on-demand, SDN enabled interconnection service, to connect to a range of AWS services via the AWS Direct Connect locations in the same metro areas where the customers' infrastructures are located.
For workloads that need low latency and higher bandwidth, as well as country-specific data sovereignty requirements, Equinix customers can tap into the higher capacities on ECX Fabric to access all of the AWS services via the AWS Direct Connect locations in metros that aren't in the same locations as customers' infrastructures.
ECX Fabric allows any business to connect between its own distributed infrastructure, and any other company’s distributed infrastructure, including the world’s largest network service and cloud providers, on Platform Equinix.
Direct and private connectivity to large cloud service providers is key to companies' digital transformations that include increasing demand for localized digital services at the network edge.
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Equinix, which is the colocation market leader, is a long-time AWS Direct Connect provider, supporting both Dedicated Connections and Hosted Connections in the global Equinix IBX data centers. According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 2, which is a market study published by Equinix, interconnection between enterprises and cloud and IT providers is projected to grow 98% per annum through 2021. That growth is due to the build out of new digital services and the need for migrating existing workloads to third-party cloud platforms.
“Digital transformation is driving enterprises to move their IT infrastructure to the cloud," said Jennifer Cooke, research director at IDC, in a statement. "Key to making this move successful is having the flexibility and scalability advantages of hybrid cloud architectures that enable them to easily move workloads and data between public and private clouds.
"Interconnection is a critical component, providing enterprises with a more secure, higher bandwidth and cost-effective connectivity option to the public cloud versus the public internet. Equinix's ability to provide enterprises, especially those with sensitive workloads, enhanced capabilities to build a hybrid cloud environment enables frictionless migration to the public cloud, and allows enterprises to reap the enormous benefits the cloud has to offer.”
To enable hybrid cloud deployments for enterprises, Equinix said it provides more AWS Direct Connect onramps than any other data center provider. AWS Direct Connect is available to customers via the ECX Fabric in 27 markets, including Amsterdam, Chicago, Dallas, Dubai, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, London, Madrid, Manchester, Miami, Munich, New York, Osaka, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Warsaw and Washington, D.C.
On Monday, Verizon announced it was providing its enterprise customers with more flexibility and faster provisioning times with the launch of its Software-Defined Interconnect (SDI) solution. SDI works with the ECX Fabric by offering organizations with Verizon's MPLS service, which is called Private IP, direct connectivity into 115 Equinix International Busienss Exchange (IBX) global data centers.