2020 may have taken us all by surprise, yet change often provides new opportunities. Today, the way we interact with one another and the way we conduct business have fundamentally changed. Enterprises all over the world, including Equinix, have had to rapidly transition to remote work and quickly adapt to a new normal. Connectivity has never been more important as our bricks-and-mortar economy is being hit hard by continued disruption. Digital transformation has never been more important as businesses seek ways to remain agile.
At Equinix firstly, and most importantly, I am proud that we have managed to keep our team across Asia-Pacific safe, while at the same time going above and beyond in supporting our customers’ growing digital infrastructure needs. With Platform Equinix® expansions and product innovations, the team has worked day and night to help customers accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Not only have we been able to further deepen our collaborations with our partners by continuously optimizing our offerings, we have also continued building a diverse and inclusive workplace. I’m proud to share 20 of the achievements the Asia-Pacific team have helped deliver this year.
Supporting our team and customers through COVID-19
At Equinix, the safety of our employees, customers and partners, has always been our top priority and this has become even more critical during the pandemic. Since the beginning of the outbreak, we have made great effort to ensure our employees can work in a safe environment with the flexibility to also take care of their family members. I am proud to say that the team excelled in making all these achievements possible across the region:
1. Continued to deliver industry-leading uptime: maintaining uptime at a time when digital services have become a life blood for organizations
2. Enabled distributed and remote workforces: supporting our customers’ most urgent needs associated with direct connectivity to business-critical cloud services, rapidly expanding video conferencing capabilities, and increasing local VPN capacity
Expanding Platform Equinix Footprint
To enable our customers to access all of the right places, partners and possibilities they need to accelerate their digitalization, we also strove to extend our digital edge. This year, we completed several expansions of our footprint in the region, adding a total of 3,850 cabinets of capacity in colocation space in Asia-Pacific. We also announced plans to invest US$414 million to grow our footprint in the region through M&A and organic expansion, further strengthening our market leadership and enhancing capabilities to support our customers’ global journey:
3. Completed two new builds: including ME2 (an initial capacity of 1,000 cabinets) and SG4 (an initial capacity of 1,400 cabinets)
4. Expanded two data centers in Hong Kong and Seoul: HK4 (adding 1,000 cabinets in Phase 3) and SL1 (adding 450 cabinets in Phase 2)
5. Announced to bring Platform Equinix to India: Announced an investment of US$161 million to plant our digital flag in a whole new market – India – with the addition of two world-class, highly interconnected data centers in Mumbai, providing 1,850 cabinets at full build-out through the acquisition of the India operations of GPX Global Systems.
6. Announced three new additions in three markets: investment of US$144 million to build SG5; US$55 million for OS3 and US$ 54 million for PE3, all scheduled to open in 2021
7. Recognized by Frost & Sullivan: We were proud to receive the Data Center Service Provider of the Year Award for the 8th consecutive year in recognition of our continued commitment to the region.
Revolutionizing the Way Enterprises Connect Digital Infrastructure with Innovative Products
As the demand for ecosystem access, infrastructure performance and network agility has continued to rise when enterprises seek to enhance their digital advantages, we have worked tirelessly to innovate our products to deliver an ultra-fast, secure and seamless connection experience. Through our expanded ecosystems and a series of transformative new capabilities, we are able to empower digital leaders to architect a network with the agility and speed they need. Our industry-leading portfolio of physical and virtual infrastructure products includes:
8. Developing three hyperscale data centers in Japan: with an over US$1.0 billion joint venture with GIC, we are continuing to satisfy both the interconnection and core workload needs of the top hyperscale and cloud companies in order to power hybrid and multicloud infrastructure
9. Innovated Equinix Fabric™ to become the new standard for interconnecting digital infrastructure: Evolved from delivering cloud connectivity to now serving as the interconnection method for all types of IT infrastructure; launched in Canberra and Seoul earlier this year and now available in 8 metros in Asia-Pacific; supporting approximately 27,500 customer connections globally
10. Added new appliance to Network Edge: Silver Peak Unity Edge Connect virtual SD-WAN appliance has been made available to further expand our virtual network function (VNF) services ecosystem; expanded collaboration with VMware which offers its SD-WAN Edge as a VNF on Network Edge; currently available in Singapore and Sydney, the service will be rolled out in Hong Kong and Tokyo in 2021
11. New automated bare metal servers available with Equinix Metal™: enabling customers to accelerate workloads with fully automated bare metal that is secure, powerful, and cost-effective; available in Singapore and will soon be expanded to more markets in 2021
Growing Hand in Hand With Our Partners
Unquestionably, our partners are an indispensable part of our growth story. This is particularly true as the industry has been working closely during the pandemic to safeguard our customers’ digital journey. We are glad to see that we have further deepened our collaborations with partners through a wide array of projects to help our customers deliver success over the past year. Highlights include:
12. Strengthened our partnerships with major cloud service providers;
a. Extended customer access to Alibaba Cloud in 17 markets, including Hong Kong, Jakarta, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo in the region
b. Further strengthened the partnership with Oracle Cloud to expand options to architect effective geo-redundant cloud solutions into Melbourne and Osaka, aiming to deliver comprehensive resiliency for Asia-Pacific
13. Secured new wins with channel partners: joining forces with our channel partners to continue securing a significant number of new logo customers this year
14. Achieved record channel bookings throughout the year: In Q3 alone, the channel’s contribution was over 30% to total Asia-Pacific bookings showing the power of our partnerships and the combined solution that the Equinix platform can deliver.
Creating Greater Value Through a Customer-Driven Approach
Everyone agrees that the operational environment has changed significantly in 2020, which has required us to connect more closely with our customers. This has been a joint effort to ride out the disruption and I am proud to say that our efforts were successful:
15. Conducted our first Asia-Pacific wide virtual Customer Advisory Board: continuously hearing customer feedback to support them in turning digital challenges into business opportunities
16. Hosted 45+ webinars with subject matter experts from different industries: Helped the Asia-Pacific community of digital leaders to stay connected, providing insights to help them navigate the new normal
Delivering a Diverse and Safe Workplace
People have always been the most important asset for Equinix and will remain the case as we move into the future. With Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (“DIB”) sitting at the heart of our culture, we are on a journey to build a workplace where everyone can say “I’m safe, I belong, I matter.” As such, we didn’t stop our pursuit of this goal this year, indeed we have taken a number of new steps in the region:
17. Held 12 Impact initiatives: Equinix Impact Month has always been a time for us to give back to the community. Impact Month 2020 surpassed our expectations despite working remotely. Our team supported a variety of organizations across the region including donating to programs for under-resourced youth, providing meals for those in need, supporting breast cancer awareness month and raising money for animal welfare.
18. Established both Asia-Pacific and local WeAreEquinix councils: This employee-led initiative brings our staff’s commitment and passion to advance on our DIB aspirations
19. Hosted 18 Equinix Women’s Leader Network (ELWN) sessions: Helping women employees pursue growth, visibility, and opportunities
20. Launched two new Equinix Employee Connection Networks, Pride Connect and InterAsia Connect, to enable and support our diversity, inclusion and belonging goals
Paving the Way to Success in 2021
Given the unprecedented challenges, I would like to close off 2020 with a huge thank you to our team, our customers and our partners as we achieved so much together. Thank you!
With the new year just around the corner, I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone all a happy and safe holiday season! As we bid farewell to 2020 we all look forward to a better 2021 together.
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