Atlanta: Prepared to Meet A New Era of Digital Business Demands

Why is Atlanta a hot spot for digital business?

Working in the technology industry has given us the opportunity to live and work in some of the country’s great metropolitan areas. Given the chance to expand Equinix’s business profile in Atlanta, we’ve been charmed by a city that exceeded our expectations as both an extremely business-friendly and diverse environment with a huge array of entertainment options. Its vibrant music scene, wide choice of restaurants and museums, and the closeness of the beautiful North Georgia Mountains, makes Atlanta a cultural center for its business community and residents.

Supportive Infrastructure for Digital Business and Innovation

The state of Georgia was ranked as the best state to do business for eight years in a row by Site Selection magazine, with top criteria including workforce skills/development and a robust transportation infrastructure. To meet the needs of both national and international business and tourism, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the busiest airport in the world, channeling a staggering 100 million passengers a year.

According to the U.S. Census, the Atlanta metro area is the country’s 7^th largest, enabling the city to be known as the economic center of the South. The home base for 16 Fortune 500 companies, the city also boasts more than 1,200 multinational organizations and 13,000 tech companies. Atlanta is also one of the top 10 best cities for attaining a tech job, with Georgia Institute of Technology ranked 12th in Forbes’ top 25 STEM colleges.

While giants of the corporate world such as Coca-Cola, CNN, Delta Airlines, and UPS call Atlanta their home, a list of 2,465 start-ups makes it one of the top cities in the U.S. with a dynamic emerging business scene. Atlanta has also put into place several city-wide initiatives to impact sustainability goals. The Clean Energy Plan intends to move Atlanta to 100% clean energy by 2035, which includes energy efficient and renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, in addition to transitioning 20% of its suitable fleet to electric vehicles as part of the city’s Alternative Fuel Conversion Plan.

Global Enterprises Demand International Launching Points

As a top-5 fiber and bandwidth city in the U.S., the Atlanta-based facilities offer low-latency network routes to Washington, D.C., Miami, and Dallas, as well as a gateway to the Equinix global platform of 220+ data centers in 63 metros across 26 countries, allowing the flexibility and resources to grow your digital business worldwide. As an interconnection hub, Equinix provides direct access to Europe, South America, Latin America, and Mexico creating an ever-expanding digital corridor in established and emerging markets.

Key Industry Ecosystems at Equinix Drive Growth

The Atlanta metro area is one of the world’s top 10 financial centers and 70% of all U.S. payments are processed in Georgia. While the area is a major global center for financial technology, with over 160 FinTech organizations including global giants like NCR, Equifax and Worldpay, several other industries enjoy the thriving business climate that the area provides including:

Content and Digital Media

• Low operating costs have helped attract CDM companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Sony.
• Rising popularity of gaming and eSports has turned Atlanta into the Southeast hub of video game programming and development with over 160 gaming companies.

Healthcare and Life Sciences

• With over 200 health IT companies, Georgia is known as the nation’s Health IT capital.
• The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is headquartered in the city, along with the American Cancer Society and other major research centers. 

Manufacturing

• The city of Atlanta houses 773 manufacturers, making it the state’s largest industrial city, with a GDP of $32B and 173,000 manufacturing workers across the metro.
• The state sees high job growth in machinery, plastic and especially the automotive manufacturing industry as Georgia sits at the center of the thriving Southeastern Automotive Corridor.

Why grow your digital business on Platform Equinix?

Equinix Atlanta is home to more than 210 diverse companies in our International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers, including 57 G2000 businesses. The number one retail colocation provider in the U.S., our five facilities in the Atlanta metro area provide more than 184,000+ square feet (17,125+ square meters) of colocation space and the highly integrated campus is one of the metro’s main connectivity hubs.

To address key aspects of the financial services market, Equinix hosts a mature financial ecosystem for the Americas’ largest multi-asset trading community, supporting an expanding payment, fintech and insurance network. As a financial services customer on Platform Equinix®, deploying in one of Equinix’s Atlanta IBX facilities enables access to one of the world’s largest internet exchanges and peering points for unparalleled digital reach, while enabling next-generation WAN architecture for secure, direct, and reliable connectivity to network service and cloud and IT providers.

In addition, direct cloud connectivity to nine local cloud service providers (CSPs) including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Salesforce, Equinix Fabric™ provides quick and direct access to cloud services worldwide, as well as local access to 54 network service providers (NSPs).

Equinix Atlanta Metro IBX Data Centers

All the right possibilities

On Platform Equinix, you can quickly and simply deploy agile digital infrastructure for network optimization, hybrid multicloud, distributed data and security, and application exchange to accelerate your business’ digital transformation. Build next-generation SD-WAN architectures for more flexible, scalable, secure, and reliable connectivity to users, NSPs, CSPs and other dense digital and business ecosystems at the edge. Equinix’s global footprint provides multiple points-of-presence (PoP) proximate to employees, partners and customers, where you can harness high-speed, low-latency connections for the best possible user experience.

At Equinix Atlanta, you can quickly and easily deploy and connect digital infrastructure from the core to the edge, leveraging a broad array of IT services such as:

• Equinix Fabric™ – Access distributed users, digital infrastructure, industry ecosystems and your own infrastructure directly, securely, and dynamically on Platform Equinix®.
• Network Edge – Modernize your network by deploying virtual network devices from leading network functions virtualization (NFV) vendors at the edge in minutes, with no additional hardware requirements.
• Equinix Metal™ – Deploy physical infrastructure for compute, storage, and networking at software speed on-demand with automated, interconnected bare metal-as-a-service.

In addition, our Future First sustainability strategy rallies our people and partners to envision a better future and then do what it takes to make it happen. As the world’s digital infrastructure company, we have the responsibility to harness the power of technology to innovate and contribute to a more accessible, climate neutral and sustainable future. In the EU alone, we purchase 100% renewable energy for all sites,  and across the world we are at over 90% renewable.

At Equinix Atlanta, take advantage of the ability to leverage proven digital and business ecosystems to expand your business locally while accelerating performance and access globally.

Learn more about the Equinix Atlanta metro IBX data centers.   

At Equinix Atlanta, take advantage of the ability to leverage proven digital and business ecosystems to expand your business locally while accelerating performance and access globally.