Equinix and XO Communications have struck a new agreement where they will jointly provide enterprise customers with dedicated connectivity to various cloud service providers through Equinix's Cloud Exchange.
The Cloud Exchange is an interconnection platform that allows enterprises to get on-demand and direct access to multiple clouds and networks inside Equinix's data center facilities.
Under the terms of the agreement, XO will offer direct access to multiple cloud services on the Equinix Cloud Exchange in five Equinix IBX data centers across the U.S., including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.
This joint offering plays into the overall trend of giving businesses a private option to connect to the cloud. Traditionally, the only available option for cloud connectivity was through the public Internet.
Customers will be able to get access to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services by leveraging a combination of Equinix's Cloud Exchange with XO Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network (IP-VPN) technology.
In addition to having access to the VPN technology, XO recently began offering access to network connection speeds to Amazon Web Services' cloud computing platform from 50 to 500 Mbps.
Having access to multiple clouds has become a growing desire amongst business customers. A recent Forrester Consulting study revealed that 72 of IT respondents surveyed stated that application developers want a multi-cloud environment to compose business services across multiple platforms.
Equinix and XO may be the latest service providers to enable access to third-party cloud providers, but they are hardly alone.
AT&T (NYSE: T) recently established a partnership with Box where it will provide its business customers access to the Box cloud using their existing VPN service via the telco's NetBond technology, for example.
XO also faces competition from Level 3. Earlier this year, Level 3 established a new partnership with Digital Realty Trust where it will provide the data center provider's customers in 14 U.S. and European markets access to its growing base of cloud service partners including Amazon Web Services (AWS Direct Connect) (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Microsoft Azure (NASDAQ: MSFT) (ExpressRoute).
For more:
- see the release
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