The digital future is now. Even before COVID-19 accelerated socially distant interactions, every sector was facing digital disruption. A recent article by ESG Analyst, Mark Bowker, “ESG Research: Key Trends Impacting Tech Spend During COVID-19,” notes that over three-fourths of organizations already had digital transformation initiatives underway prior to the pandemic. At the same time, while digital transformation is helping organizations become more agile, flexible and efficient, Bowker points out that IT complexity continues to be a challenge – nearly two-thirds of respondents said their organizations IT environment is more complex than two years ago.
With IT complexity growing and new technologies emerging faster than ever before, having a real-world proving ground can make all the difference in your company’s digital transformation. Equinix provides a wide range of capabilities for customers and partners to test solution concepts and architectures including:
- Solution Validation Centers (SVCs) for testing Enterprise IT deployments: Staffed by Equinix Global Solutions Architects and present in 19 metros around the world, the Equinix Solution Validation Centers® enable businesses to test their deployments prior to roll-out on Platform Equinix®. Each year, SVCs handle more than 70 Enterprise IT engagements with an average duration of 90 days.
- Proof of Concept Centers (POCCs) for emerging technologies: Collaborative environments enabling technology providers to test, demonstrate and accelerate complex deployment and interoperability scenarios for emerging technologies. For example, the 5G Edge POCC is at the Dallas Infomart campus and the artificial intelligence (AI) Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) test drive is at the El Segundo campus in Los Angeles.
- Co-Innovation Facility (CIF) for sustainable data center design: Located at DC15 on the Equinix Ashburn International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center campus, Equinix’s CIF enables innovative suppliers to work with Equinix on developing and trialing sustainability technologies such as advanced power, cooling and control methodologies that can be used in our future data centers.
Solution Validation Center™ Data Sheet
Equinix Solution Validation Centers™ help companies mitigate risks and make the most of their data center investments by testing deployments prior to roll-out.
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Scale your proof-of-concept into production faster
Equinix SVCs are comprehensive, state-of-the art facilities for testing and implementing data center, IT infrastructure, network and cloud rollouts. Today Equinix has SVCs present in 19 metros across three regions:
- Ten Americas metros: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Toronto and Washington, D.C.
- Four EMEA metros: Amsterdam, Dubai, Frankfurt and London
- Five Asia-Pacific metros: Hong Kong, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo
The purpose of SVCs is to enable customers to fully experience what it’s like to deploy with Equinix. Every Equinix SVC provides carrier-grade networking and virtualization infrastructures, as well as access to the full gamut of Equinix capabilities offered as a service on Equinix’s globally interconnected data center platform. These Equinix capabilities can be combined with a customer’s/partner’s own equipment, in a stand-alone model or in partnership with other technology partners. In some cases, such as the AI PaaS, the SVC will provide pre-installed technology stacks on which companies can test their proof of concept (POC).
SVC projects are managed by Global Solutions Architects and supported by dedicated technical experts with decades of experience. Common customer project goals include:
- Try before you buy – validate deployment scenarios prior to rollout
- Define migration strategies and a roadmap, while overcoming technical barriers
- Validate POCs and technology stacks in a real-world production environment – prove the value/ROI of new offerings and architecture
- Build and test distributed architectures
- Stress-test applications and remove performance bottlenecks
- Develop/incubate innovative ecosystems with partners such as Autonomous Vehicle services, AI as a Service marketplaces, etc.
3 example use cases
Example use cases for the Equinix SVC include:
Use case 1: Integrating networks with ECX Fabric
Open Systems, a secure access service edge (SASE) pioneer, wanted to test the integration of their secure SD-WAN product with Equinix Fabric™ (formerly ECX Fabric®) to facilitate connectivity to various cloud service providers (CSPs) in different regions. By leveraging an Equinix SVC, the company was able to validate integration with ECX Fabric in the U.S. East and Northern Europe regions and develop a business case for the Equinix/Open Systems partnership. This partnership later led to a joint customer win with KEMET, a global electronics manufacturer, who wanted to move to a more agile and cost-efficient secure SD-WAN.
In another example, Verizon wanted to test integration of its MPLS network with ECX Fabric. Working with the SVC, Verizon was able to fully deploy a validation platform that led to successful testing and rollout of Verizon’s software-defined interconnect service on ECX Fabric. As a result, Verizon is the first network service provider (NSP) to offer an API driven MPLS offering via ECX Fabric.
Use case 2: Managing large data volumes
Test driving autonomous vehicles generate massive data volumes daily. The biggest challenge for Elektrobit, a global supplier of connected software for the automotive industry, was how to securely store, transfer and process these large amounts of data. By leveraging an Equinix SVC to build a “digital data garage”, the company was able to test various connection speeds and methods for uploading data to Microsoft Azure from 30 test cars daily – public internet (1 Gbps), direct connect (1-10 Gbps) and ECX Fabric (10 Gbps). As a result, the company was able to validate that ECX Fabric drastically reduced the upload times to the cloud and sped up the development process.
Use case 3: Proving product value
Dell EMC wanted to prove the value of housing data on its Unity storage array to address some common customer concerns when moving to public cloud such as data sovereignty, cost predictability, performance and control. Dell EMC used the flexibility of the SVC to test various approaches to validate that connecting Unity storage to public cloud compute resources can address these concerns and provide performance improvements to applications running in public cloud infrastructure.
Whether you need to build a POC or solve a technical challenge, Equinix SVCs provide a unique experience on Platform Equinix – a global distributed test and production platform, with interconnection to dense ecosystems including more than 2,900 cloud providers and 1,800+ networks. This combined with industry-leading expertise, will help you turn your digital future into reality.
Learn more about the global Equinix Solution Validation Centers.
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