Equinix Enhances Global Platform to Accelerate Interconnection for Global Businesses at the Digital Edge

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the global interconnection and data center company, today announced the completion of its most recent phase in the evolution of Platform Equinix^® with expanded connectivity options that help enterprises, cloud providers and network providers interconnect their global business at the digital edge. 

To meet the ever-growing, on-demand interconnection needs of customers and to strengthen Platform Equinix as a global platform for digital business, Equinix has expanded its connectivity service delivered via Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric™ (ECX Fabric™) to now support connections between all of its 37 ECX Fabric markets located across five continents.

With this expanded interconnection service, available between any two ECX Fabric-enabled markets, customers can now leverage the power of Platform Equinix to privately interconnect clouds, networks and services to global data centers at their digital edge. This new ability to connect businesses globally allows customers to connect to clouds in other regions, and directly enables customers for the first time to establish on-demand network connections between the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Additionally, customers can use the expanded ECX Fabric service as a primary connection between Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX^®) data centers or as a complement to their existing networks. This further unlocks the power of the world's largest ecosystems located at Equinix by helping customers gain access to potentially thousands of new global partners they can interconnect with via ECX Fabric.

Highlights/Key Facts

• The world is digitizing at a rapid pace as major macro, technology and regulatory trends are mandating a business shift to the digital edge. For many firms, the impact of this shift is outpacing their ability to digitally transform and compete in an increasingly cloud-first world. A global interconnection platform designed for digital business can accelerate digital transformation efforts by helping enterprises and providers reach everywhere, interconnect everyone and integrate everything.
• ECX Fabric is an on-demand, SDN-enabled interconnection service that helps meet these needs by allowing 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.
• To help customers scale their businesses as rapidly as the digital economy requires, the expanded ECX Fabric global connectivity functionality can be used as a primary connection, or as a complement to a customer's existing MPLS or Ethernet-based network for data center-to-data center connections by handling backup connections between metros, seasonal spikes in traffic, offloading lower value network traffic, or for short-term projects requiring more bandwidth.
• ECX Fabric also enables customers to streamline their access to the world's largest cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Google Cloud on Platform Equinix. As Equinix offers direct access to the highest concentration of major cloud provider onramps in the world, ECX Fabric is ideally suited to solve customers' multicloud network connectivity challenges.
• ECX Fabric is currently available in 37 metros globally, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Culpeper, Dallas, Denver, Dublin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Manchester, Melbourne, Miami, Milan, Munich, New York, Osaka, Paris, Perth, São Paulo, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Warsaw, Washington, D.C. and Zurich.
• To date, more than 1,400 customers currently using ECX Fabric, including leading enterprises, cloud and network service providers, have established more than 14,900 active virtual connections to ECX Fabric.
• Access to ECX Fabric is now available through a new self-service portal user interface or API that enables customers to create and manage connections on demand, within or between metros globally.
• In addition to the expanded global connectivity functionality and increased traction in the market, ECX Fabric was honored in December 2018 at the DCD Awards with the 2018 Smart Data Center Award. ECX Fabric received this recognition for having the richest ecosystem and for quickly becoming the de facto global standard for how enterprises and service providers connect to the cloud.
• Private connectivity between enterprises, strategic cloud service providers and network services is essential as digital transformation fuels higher demand for localized digital services at the edge. According to Volume 2 of the Global Interconnection Index, a market study published by Equinix, the capacity for private data exchange between enterprises and cloud and network service providers is forecast to grow nearly 10 times faster than public internet traffic by 2021.

Quotes

• Rodrigo Silva Simão, IT Director, Agência Estado

"ECX Fabric allows us to easily interconnect our infrastructure in São Paulo and New York. We are impressed with the potential and simplicity of the product. We can manage and scale the solution via the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric Portal and it is implemented in near-real time. In addition, the connection is less expensive, provides a more consistent connection and has about 20% lower latency compared with the dedicated telecom links we use. This latency reduction is essential for us. The core business of Agência Estado is to deliver information in real time, so the lower the latency, the better efficiency in the content delivery—and this becomes a competitive advantage for us."

• Troy Heffern, Director of Operations & Engineering, WorldAware

"ECX Fabric allowed us to build a global mesh between our data centers and cloud providers. Whether an employee is accessing our network from Annapolis, London, Cape Town or Singapore, they are always routed to the closest data center for access to the services and tools they need to carry out our mission 24/7."

• Brad Casemore, Vice President, Datacenter Networking, IDC

"The imperative of digital transformation is driving enterprises to adopt multicloud strategies, which entail complex management of multicloud environments. Indeed, as their applications become increasingly distributed, residing not only in on-premises datacenters but also in public clouds, these organizations are finding that the parameters of what constitutes a datacenter  network must be redefined. In this context, IDC finds that interconnection architectures at the digital edge are becoming integral elements of a comprehensive network for the cloud era. The geographic expansion of ECX Fabric will play a valuable role in helping companies accelerate their digital transformation initiatives through having the  ability to instantly deploy flexible, interconnection-oriented network architectures worldwide ."

• Bill Long, Vice President, Interconnection Services, Equinix

"Our vision is to evolve Platform Equinix into a global platform that interconnects and integrates global businesses at the digital edge. This capability is critical for the digital transformation efforts of many enterprises, cloud providers and network providers today. With our expanded ECX Fabric global connectivity functionality our customers can now privately interconnect to key service providers and across their global digital infrastructure anywhere their business needs to be, at anytime, enabling them to reach anyone in the world, on demand, through a single private connection."

Additional Resources

• Accessing Clouds, Networks and Services Just Got Easier [blog]
• Learn more about Platform Equinix [website]
• Learn more about ECX Fabric [website]
• Equinix to Connect its Data Centers Globally to Expand Interconnection Opportunities for Businesses [press release]
• ECX Fabric Service Provider Availability [website]
• Global Interconnection Index Volume 2 [market study]

About Equinix
Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) connects the world's leading businesses to their customers, employees and partners inside the most-interconnected data centers. On this global platform for digital business, companies come together across more than 50 markets on five continents to reach everywhere, interconnect everyone and integrate everything they need to create their digital futures. www.equinix.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX data centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix products and solutions; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenues from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; risks related to our taxation as a REIT; and other risks described from time to time in Equinix filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see recent Equinix quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

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SOURCE Equinix, Inc.