Tapping into New Growth Opportunities in Greater China

As the saying goes, ‘the only constant is change’. We live in a world that is evolving and changing faster than ever before. This makes agility essential to today’s businesses that have to navigate uncertainty, sudden changes to market dynamics and emerging trends at the drop of a hat. As a result, enterprises need to be ready to transform their operating models almost overnight to prepare for every contingency. Although adapting to the new normal can be challenging, it is encouraging to see that despite the last 18 months businesses are have been able to get back on track and continue with their expansion plans.

According to our annual Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), which captures insights from 2,600 IT decision-makers across 26 countries, more than half (57%) of the companies are planning to expand despite the disruptions in the past year.^[i] Among all the markets, Greater China remains a strategic location and vibrant market for global businesses seeking sustainable growth, with a US$6 trillion digital economy making it the second-largest in the world.^[ii]

Tens of millions of citizens in Greater China are adopting an entirely new set of consumption patterns during the lockdown, encouraging greater and wider internet usage.  According to The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the number of internet users in China reached 989 million internet users at the end of December 2020, representing a jump of 85.4 million from March 2020.^[iii] With enormous growth potential and a competitive business environment, Greater China has become an ideal location and the very first step for business expansion in the Asia-Pacific market.

To ensure smooth operations in the Greater China market, businesses will need to understand a large series of industry regulations and standards such as telecommunication industry ordinances, jurisdiction requirements, and evolving geopolitical complexities in the Greater China region. All these have made cross-border connections exceptionally vital in underpinning business success.

Cross-border connections – the building block for business expansion

The advancement of technology has induced an explosive growth of data flows in the modern world, with Greater China being among the world’s highest. In extending cross-border connections for businesses to access their enterprise applications, cloud services, and data on demand, a critical question needs to be addressed: how can smooth and seamless transmissions of data across boundaries be facilitated with ease? To achieve this, businesses have to rethink their network architecture – and that’s where Equinix comes into play.

As the world’s digital infrastructure company™, Equinix is empowering digital leaders with a flexible and distributed network architecture with Equinix Fabric™. Businesses can enjoy direct, on-demand access to top NSPs in Greater China through Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in Hong Kong. This software-defined interconnection service offers data center-to-data center private network connections between any two Equinix Fabric locations across 50+ metros around the world. With dedicated cross-border bandwidth and point of presence (PoP), businesses can securely and easily interconnect with China and Taiwan through Hong Kong. It will also enable them to connect between their own distributed infrastructure and any other company’s infrastructure on Platform Equinix®, where they can seamlessly interconnect to a rich ecosystem of clouds, networks, partners, and customers that matter the most to their digital businesses.

Today, multiple leading NSPs in Greater China have integrated with Equinix Fabric in Hong Kong to provide secure connectivity in the region. These include the top two NSPs in mainland China, namely China Mobile International (CMI) and China Telecom Global; Chief Telecom, the largest internet exchange center in Taiwan; and Hong Kong Broadband Network, one of the largest residential and enterprise internet, communication, and telecommunications service providers in Hong Kong. By gathering the best local and regional service providers on an interactive dashboard for easy orchestration via a one-stop ecosystem, we help businesses accelerate the deployment of private, cross-border network connections with easy, on-demand virtual connections to network providers, cloud service providers, and last-mile connections in key parts of the region.

With the commitment to delivering a world-class customer experience, Equinix is dedicated to supporting our customers scaling from traditional, centralized architecture to the distributed edge to optimize speed, accessibility, and performance. With a full suite of interconnection and digital infrastructure services, we enable businesses to virtually connect with users and service providers for real-time interactions, making connectivity in Greater China through Hong Kong easier than ever.

Level-up your digital business with Equinix

In addition to offering cross-border connectivity, Equinix is also committed to assisting businesses in optimizing operations and improving efficiency. By simplifying network modernization under a single on-ramp service, your IT department can significantly streamline the provisioning of private connections at the edge for accessing cloud, networks, and other IT services via an Equinix Fabric port, achieving efficient management and policy control for distributed infrastructure.

From a managerial perspective, Equinix helps the CFO and CTO eliminate costly CAPEX investments and up-front capacity planning previously required for private network services to minimize the turnaround of new services. To enable the delivery of the consistent experience required for critical workloads with cloud-like agility, speed, and scalability, we bring low-latency edge connections closer to customers and partners across Greater China by eradicating the unpredictable network performance and security risks associated with public internet connection.

Tapping into the opportunities of a booming market can be exciting yet challenging. By working with leading NSPs and other service providers, we can help businesses architect a digital infrastructure with the agility needed to enter and respond to increasingly dynamic markets. Find out how Equinix can enable you to simplify expansion into the Greater China market and achieve sustainable growth.

[i] Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey 2021

[ii] Digital Economy Development in China (2021)

[iii] Forbes: China Now Has Almost 1 Billion Internet Users