Digital Infrastructure Use Cases: Hybrid Multicloud Architectures

How digital leaders are accelerating hybrid infrastructure for application modernization and data integration across clouds

Jed Bleess

With a year of experience dealing with a global pandemic, IT organizations across all industries are closely looking at their service delivery – but often their core infrastructure is holding them back. Traditional IT architectures are typically isolated silos that can’t benefit from rapidly growing partner ecosystems, while cloud-only architectures are hitting data management and egress challenges that block scaling application performance cost-effectively. The reality is neither of these approaches is getting to the core need – transforming IT architecture for new forms of engagement, partnership and digital service delivery.

Across the IT leaders that we support on Platform Equinix, the common solution we see them trending toward is a hybrid approach. The combination of private cloud deployments, strategically located at key points for engagements, direct multicloud integration and access to a wide range of rich ecosystems, has become a mandate from industries like healthcare to manufacturing, to the latest born-in-the-cloud digital service providers.

IDC predicts that, “Through 2021, all enterprises will struggle with app modernization and data integration across cloud silos; 20% will adopt connected cloud architectures to overcome these concerns.”[i]

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At Equinix, we see a number of businesses interconnecting to multiple private and public cloud providers increasing. The fourth edition of the Global Interconnection Index (GXI), a market study published by Equinix, shows a 59% annual growth rate of interconnection bandwidth capacity for enterprises connecting to cloud and IT providers between 2018 -2023. One reason for this growth in cloud interconnection is that businesses on Platform Equinix® can realize an up to 70% reduction in connectivity costs to clouds via greater connectivity options and reduced complexity.[ii]

Network agility simplifies hybrid multicloud complexity

Equinix Fabric™ software-defined interconnection enables the creation of hybrid multicloud architectures in an orchestrated fashion. Provisioning virtual connections and integration across private and public cloud silos only takes a matter of hours, versus weeks. The IP network peering capabilities of Equinix Internet Exchange™ also enables network aggregation among internet service providers (ISPs) for greater network scalability. In addition, Network Edge services from Equinix enable businesses to deploy modern virtual networks at the edge in minutes. These agile networks can be used to connect users to private and public clouds more cost-effectively than MPLS networks, as well as seamlessly interconnect multiple clouds on Platform Equinix.

How hybrid multicloud architectures are powering modern digital infrastructures

The following Equinix customers have leveraged software-defined and virtual networks on Platform Equinix to create hybrid multicloud architectures that modernize application and data integration in a variety of scenarios:

Zoom expands video collaboration services in new global markets

In 2015, Zoom began building its multicloud environment on Platform Equinix in Australia. It then leveraged Equinix’s extensive colocation footprint and interconnection portfolio to expand its worldwide presence and today, Zoom is in Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in nine markets worldwide. The company leveraged Equinix Internet Exchange to achieve more scalable network-peering aggregation across its global carriers. In addition, it harnessed Equinix Fabric™ software-defined interconnection to quickly set up and scale its access to networks, clouds, partners and customers.

According to Zak Pierce, Data Center Operations Manager for Zoom, “Equinix makes everything very easy for us because of the consistency across its global platform. For this reason, and its private interconnection solutions, Equinix is by far our largest data center provider.”

Watch how Zoom grows with Equinix:

Conductor drives multicloud payments processing Innovation

A Brazil-based digital payments provider, Conductor became an Equinix customer by migrating from its in-house operation to Equinix colocation environments in São Paulo IBX® data centers. Two years later, Equinix and Conductor collaborated to create a solution for the company to grow and innovate its payment processing solutions offered to customers.

Conductor has two payment method platforms: “Conductor,” its main payment platform, which is a hybrid between Equinix and Microsoft Azure, and “MarketPay,” a platform hosted on AWS. Both platforms use Equinix Fabric™ to directly, securely and dynamically connect users to Microsoft Azure and AWS. By building an infrastructure designed for rapid scalability and real-time agility, Conductor can maintain high SLAs and ensure the company’s commitment to its customers. Conductor innovated its payment processing solutions and improved customer satisfaction by reducing the number of support tickets submitted by 27%.

According to Marcelo Fonseca, IT Infrastructure Manager, Conductor, “The entire payment method operation flow—from purchase approval, through the entire anti-fraud built-in service, to final invoice issuance—is handled through Platform Equinix and Azure. These technologies support 100% of our business.”

3verest delivers real-time healthcare diagnostics across private and public clouds

3verest, a global provider of private cloud solutions for healthcare, located in Australia, England and the U.S., offers customers the ability to share diagnostics services and consume, system resources, data and applications on demand. Medical data comes into 3verest’s platform from different sources and geographies and was being distributed and shared across multiple diagnostic ecosystem partners. 3verest needed to ensure seamless and secure interconnection for greater collaboration, while at the same time maintain country-specific data governance, privacy and protection. As many diagnostic artificial intelligence and machine learning platforms are located in the public cloud, 3verest global customers needed high-performance, low-latency connectivity to those services.

The company leveraged Equinix Fabric to provision virtual connections to private and public clouds in minutes rather than weeks, and quickly replicate its solutions globally by tapping the extensive ecosystem of healthcare providers on Platform Equinix. 3verest can now manage large diagnostics workloads, enabling providers to access information using scalable, on-demand software-defined networking across multiple geographies.

Sheraz Bhatti, Chief Innovation Officer, 3verest, said “Equinix is everywhere we need to be and its private connectivity and scalability to the cloud is second to none.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLW1xWd-oBM

Private interconnection accelerates application modernization and data integration across clouds

These hybrid multicloud use cases are just a small representation of a rapidly increasing number of Equinix customers that are leveraging interconnected private and public cloud environments to innovate new digital solutions for their customers on Platform Equinix.

Read the GXI Volume 4 to learn more about how private interconnection is helping digital leaders to create more agile, scalable and cost-effective hybrid multicloud architectures.

[i] IDC, “IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2021 Predictions,” October 2020, IDC #US46420120.

[ii] Global Interconnection Index Volume 4, September 2020.

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