Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider CloudSigma was looking for ways to expand its presence in the cloud marketplace, particularly in Latin America, but its plans seemed certain to be slowed by the limited reach of its data centers providers. The company found a strategic partner in Equinix, and gained the global reach, agility, interconnections and control it needed to grow its worldwide cloud IaaS business quickly and efficiently – cutting its customers’ deployment time in half.
“We moved from large hubs to a local model,” said Robert Jenkins, CloudSigma’s chief executive officer, in an interview with Data Center Knowledge. According to Jenkins, customers prefer having public cloud services in close proximity to their existing infrastructure, particularly when it comes to building hybrid clouds.
Equinix’s broad geographic reach, with more than 100 data centers spread across 32 top business markets on five continents, gave CloudSigma the ability to easily establish its IaaS presence close to any of its targeted industry centers. The benefits to CloudSigma were substantial. No matter what its data center requirements were anywhere in the world, CloudSigma would only need to call one company – Equinix.
“As the person responsible for operating the business, anything that makes my life easier is a good thing,” said Jenkins, in an Equinix case study. “With Equinix, I deal with one service desk, one sales representative, one set of terms and conditions, no matter where we’re doing business.”
Latin America is the place to be for cloud adoption
One area where CloudSigma sees a significant cloud growth opportunity is Latin America. TechNavio’s analysts forecast the Latin America cloud market to reach a CAGR of 26.1% from 2013-2018, based on estimated revenues generated from SaaS, IaaS and PaaS deployments. One of the primary drivers of this market growth includes telecommunications companies that want to scale their operations and increase services revenue. There is also increased cloud adoption by large Latin America enterprise IT organizations and small-to-medium businesses wanting to deliver better services and achieve greater operational efficiency.
According to Jenkins, in a recent Equinix press release, featuring CloudSigma’s expansion into Equinix’s MI3 Miami data center, “…we also see a lot of promise with Latin America as companies go straight to the cloud to deal with the explosive growth they’re experiencing, especially in mobile services. These types of native cloud apps, alongside the progress we’re seeing with Internet of Things (IoT) and web services being developed in our cloud, will further the success of this expansion and lay the groundwork for more locations in the near future.”
Equinix was quick to seize the growing cloud adoption opportunities within the Latin American market. In 2011, we entered the Brazilian market by acquiring a majority stake of the ALOG Data Center of Brazil S.A. and, in July 2014, we completed the purchase for 100% ownership. ALOG gave us four new data centers in Brazil, making Equinix the only data center provider to offer Tier III services in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the country’s largest markets. Our MI3 and RJ2 IBX® data centers seamlessly bridge the distance between the U.S. and Latin America, providing its customers a high-speed, digital express lane between Miami and Rio de Janeiro. Since the original announcement in 2011, CloudSigma and other Equinix customers, representing companies from several vertical industries, have expanded their infrastructure into Brazil including GlobeNet, Level 3, Orange Business Services and Telefonica.
We also announced that CloudSigma is the latest cloud service provider to join the Equinix Cloud Exchange™. The exchange helps businesses create hybrid clouds through secure, on-demand access to multiple clouds and networks across the globe. Our Cloud Exchange enables CloudSigma to expand its reach into emerging markets, such as Latin America, and establish standardized business processes globally, lowering its operational expenses. CloudSigma also benefits from the automated ordering and provisioning, which helps decrease the time required to onboard customer network connections.
“By providing enterprises with direct, private access to our public cloud, we are able to significantly enhance performance and security, while capitalizing on Equinix’s global footprint,” said Jenkins. “We are actively expanding our partnership with Equinix across new geographies and joining the Equinix Cloud Exchange will enable us to extend our reach even further. Now, more enterprises and network service providers will be able to use our services in an even easier and cost-effective way.”
Download the entire CloudSigma case study or press release.
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