During the past year, the global pandemic caused businesses to transform their operations almost overnight, catalyzing a period of unprecedented demand for digital infrastructure and connectivity. Organizations that made digital infrastructure mission-critical to their operations maintained business continuity and gained a competitive edge during one of the most disruptive periods in modern times.
Despite the need to adapt to the pandemic’s lockdown constraints and record numbers of remote workers, Equinix customers were not only able to adapt and survive but thrive. In large measure, their success was due to the pioneering efforts, resourcefulness and deep expertise of our channel partners. Through their vision, ingenuity and advocacy, our partners drove outstanding advances in digital transformation and network modernization both globally and regionally, creating expansive opportunities across our value chain.
Two’s company, three’s a powerful ecosystem
We’ve always believed in the power of ecosystems, where partners come together to create innovative solutions for our joint customers and speed time to market. This year’s Equinix Partner Award winners embody how our partners are cooperatively powering global digital transformation.
Congratulations to this year’s Equinix Partner Awards winners. We are thrilled to recognize the significant value you bring to our digital partner ecosystem and our customers and the impact you have on our global communities. Together, you continuously work to create new integrated solutions that fuel the digital ambitions of enterprise customers around the world and we thank you for your continued partnership.”Karl Strohmeyer, Equinix, Chief Customer and Revenue Officer
Digital leadership paves a path for others
In 2020, we tracked the extraordinary digital leadership of our global partners and customers as reported in the fourth annual Global Interconnection Index (GXI), which explores how business leaders use digital infrastructure to fuel growth. It identified three levels of digital transformation maturity: Digital Leaders, Digital Enablers and Digital Followers. Digital leaders are the most digitally mature and are primarily made up of our service provider partners that are long-established or born-in-the-cloud businesses. They efficiently provide agile solutions to extend their reach and gain proximity to the users and businesses they support, which include Digital Enablers and Digital Followers.
Over the last year, our amazing partners have worked with us to close the gaps for customers around the world as they progress along this spectrum of digital readiness. They have helped businesses deploy outcome-based solutions that accelerate their digital strategies toward success. It is these partners who have demonstrated extraordinary digital leadership that we are acknowledging with this year’s Equinix Partner Awards.
New award categories reflect channel program growth and evolution in the Americas and EMEA
This year, we’ve updated our annual partner awards program to showcase new categories of excellence and distinction to reflect the continued modernization and growth of our channel programs. These categories acknowledge partners who have transformed their enterprise customers from traditional businesses to digital businesses on Platform Equinix. They also recognize partners who are innovators in next-generation technologies and social programs.
Join us in celebrating these industry pioneers who have set the pace of progress for digital business transformation globally and regionally across the Americas and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Asia Pacific (AP) award winners will be announced at our Annual Partner Summit in the fourth quarter.
Global Transformation Award Winners
Reseller: Demonstrated excellence in driving global growth of services, markets and customers through the development of new vertical acquisition approaches, solutions enablement and marketing support.
AT&T has opened up new global markets for Equinix solutions, including Equinix Fabric™, colocation, Precision Time and managed Cross Connect services. With revenue growth in both existing and new customers and local market presence in the U.S., Canada and EMEA, AT&T and Equinix are providing foundational infrastructure offerings to a global customer base.
Alliances: Demonstrated excellence, innovation and customer success in applying Equinix technologies with their own solutions to deliver breakthrough services across multiple countries or regions with Equinix, our partner community and customers.
Cisco is our largest technology alliance partner, with outstanding developments and growth in driving customers’ network modernization on Platform Equinix with its SD-WAN and software-defined cloud interconnection (SDCI) in dynamic industries such as healthcare and retail. Cisco also partnered with Equinix on enhancing remote workforce collaboration via Cisco Webex® Edge Connect on Equinix Fabric and Network Edge.
Master Agent: Demonstrated excellence in expanding into new countries/regions, through services, market and customer growth, facilitating new regional sales pairings and providing marketing support to ensure partnership success.
Rating Equinix as their #1 infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider, the Intelisys team has continued to drive Equinix solutions within its subagent community. Through monthly engagements with their sales and technical teams, team training sessions, and virtual events, Intelisys delivered the greatest bookings growth, largest number of new logos and record deal registration counts in our master agent community of partners.
Social Impact: Demonstrated excellence in partnering with Equinix to protect, connect and power a more sustainable digital world through the use of Equinix and partner resources and investments to deliver specific social initiatives with Equinix.
Verizon’s continuous commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) has led to a number of joint initiatives with Equinix – in particular, its executive support in enhancing Equinix’s PrideConnect employee network for its LGBTQ community and the joint development of self-identification of personal identity attributes within both companies’ HR systems and tools. Verizon has also collaborated with Equinix on racial justice initiatives and the Never Ever Give Up [NEGU] campaign. 3,000 Verizon and Equinix employees produced 10,000 care cards and donated over $7,500 to lift the spirits of pediatric cancer patients.
Regional Award Winners
Regional Acceleration:
Demonstrated excellence in driving services, market and customer growth, with support for technical and services certifications/competencies and customer growth/retention/satisfaction.
AMERICAS
Presidio’s success in its record year-over-year growth was powered by its training program around joint Presidio and Equinix offerings, with over 20 sales and solutions architects training sessions conducted in 2020. In addition to realizing significant new regional and existing customer extension sales, Presidio partnered with Equinix on marketing initiatives including a focused customer event with Cisco and Dell, which resulted in strong partner ecosystem alignment.
EMEA
I3D.Net substantially expanded its presence in over 20 Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center locations around the globe, transforming itself into a global partner that has successfully accelerated digital infrastructure growth for its customers. i3D.Net is also a great Equinix interconnection solutions partner, with growing sales in Equinix Metro Connect®, Cross Connect and Equinix Internet Exchange® services.
Partner of the Year:
Recognized for value delivered to their customers’ business through the use of Equinix digital infrastructure solutions, where the partner has a proactive strategy and program to establish customer value before opportunities arise.
AMERICAS
AT&T and Equinix have forged an exciting partnership in the Americas through executive sponsorship and joint sales and marketing programs in vertical markets such as eSports and healthcare. AT&T achieved significant year-over-year end-user account, revenue and global channel growth through its joint marketing ventures, sales enablement and relationship-building initiatives.
EMEA
Orange Business Services (OBS) is deployed in 25 Equinix metros across 16 countries and leverages Equinix Fabric with the OBS global network to interconnect enterprises securely and reliably to leading network and cloud providers. In 2020, OBS saw substantial global growth, especially in EMEA, offering joint use cases for WAN modernization, hybrid multicloud, M&A integration, agile data center infrastructure and digital business.
Trailblazer Award:
Demonstrated excellence in pioneering the use of Equinix products in combination with next-generation technologies including 5G, edge, IoT, blockchain, and AI /ML/cognitive/advanced analytics, with proven ability to implement greater penetration of a joint value proposition for market verticals.
AMERICAS
Verizon delivered outstanding value in accelerating the growth of Equinix digital infrastructure offerings through its innovative solutions, API integration, and adoption of new tools and agile processes. Complementing software-defined interconnection solutions, such as Equinix Fabric and Verizon SDI, with its own infrastructure, Verizon offered a suite of professional services, edge technology and management to expand its presence in new markets and vertical industries, creating unique product offerings within their enterprise catalog.
EMEA
BT developed a global joint offering, with content, collateral and training in support of complementary Network Edge services from Equinix, driving significant engagement across three key verticals – Retail/Manufacturing/Logistics, Financial Services and Technology/Life Sciences/Business Services. BT has also developed joint education and awareness webinars and sales alignment programs to help facilitate market activation.
Alliances:
Demonstrated excellence, innovation and customer success in applying Equinix technologies to achieve breakthrough solutions through work with us and our clients, as well as our partner community.
AMERICAS
With Azure ExpressRoute deployed in 26 Equinix metros on five continents, Microsoft is one of our strongest cloud partners driving growth for Equinix Fabric. In 2020, as remote work created a surge in traffic for virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI), Microsoft worked with Equinix to help our joint customers scale their remote worker access to Azure cloud services and Microsoft 365 applications via Equinix Internet Exchange ISP aggregation.
EMEA
Oracle continues to expand its collaboration with Equinix enabling enterprises to connect securely to Oracle Cloud with low latency and high performance for use cases such as cloud adjacent databases, hybrid cloud, disaster recovery, and multicloud access solutions. Oracle exemplifies the “Power of Three” working with partners such as Accenture to help enterprises accelerate their adoption of Oracle Cloud solutions enabled by Equinix Fabric and Network Edge.
As the world’s digital infrastructure company, we’re committed to creating and interconnecting the foundational infrastructure digital leaders need to accelerate business growth and competitive advantage. Congratulations to 2020’s outstanding Equinix Partner Award winners who make that growth possible!
Check our Equinix Partner Program Portal and stay tuned to Interconnections for more exciting partner news.
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