New Equinix App Offers a Streamlined Azure ExpressRoute Experience

Recent research indicates that B2B companies are increasingly turning to digital marketplaces to help fulfill their business goals. According to Forrester, “Online marketplaces offer a lower-cost route to market for many sellers and a more convenient way for buyers to find, compare, and purchase products and services.” With both buyers and sellers recognizing the opportunities that digital marketplaces present, it’s no wonder there are now more than 200 funded B2B marketplace operators across various sectors.[i]

Microsoft is one example of a company that has recognized the benefits of using digital marketplaces and a co-selling approach to make their offerings more accessible to customers. Since its co-selling program began in 2017, the company has more than $9.5 billion in partner-contracted sales volume and more than 36,000 co-sell wins, with the Microsoft Azure Marketplace serving as the foundation for that success.[ii]

At Equinix, we also recognize the potential for digital marketplaces to quickly and easily connect our customers with the capabilities they need to power their digital transformations. That’s why we’re so excited to announce the Equinix Managed Marketplace Application (EMMA), a new way for customers to access Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute via Equinix Fabric™—directly from the Azure Marketplace.

Giving customers a more streamlined way to connect with Azure ExpressRoute

As the world’s digital infrastructure company™, Equinix is dedicated to making it as easy as possible for our customers to interconnect with the cloud partners they need to help them succeed in the modern digital economy. As our first integrated product experience to appear on a third-party marketplace, EMMA represents a key milestone for us as we work toward that goal.

In the past, customers needed to take a two-portal approach to access Azure ExpressRoute via Equinix Fabric, navigating between the Azure portal and the Equinix Fabric portal to complete provisioning. This made for a time-consuming, disjointed experience, and we knew there had to be a better way. We started looking for an opportunity to provide a more seamless experience for our customers, ideally presented through a single pane of glass.

We also knew that our customers consider cloud service provider marketplaces to be a quick and convenient way to get access to the applications they rely on every day. Integrating our solutions into third-party marketplaces such as the Azure Marketplace was another key priority for us. We came to see that these two different objectives were actually well aligned with one another: putting an integrated product application on the Azure Marketplace would not only make it easier for our customers to find Equinix Fabric connectivity to ExpressRoute, but it would also make it easier for them to manage that connectivity.

EMMA features a user interface (UI) that calls both the Azure API and the Equinix Fabric API, creating an automated provisioning experience for ExpressRoute. Instead of taking a two-portal approach, Equinix Fabric customers are now able to deploy their ExpressRoute environments by making a few clicks on the Azure Marketplace.

Customers simply select EMMA in the Azure Marketplace and are passed through directly to the application itself, running natively on Azure. Once they sign in to their Equinix account, they’ll be able to create or delete ExpressRoute circuits with Equinix Fabric virtual connections, right from their browser window. They can use this simple interface to configure Layer 2 ExpressRoute deployments to their exact specifications without ever having to visit either the Equinix Fabric portal or the Azure Resource Manager portal.

Equinix Fabric and Azure ExpressRoute help enterprises tackle their digital transformation initiatives

EMMA is only the latest chapter in a long history of Equinix and Microsoft Azure collaborations. Equinix has been a leading provider of Azure ExpressRoute deployments for years, and we currently have Azure ExpressRoute locations in Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in 33 metros, spread across five continents.

Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute Locations on Platform Equinix®

With the help of Equinix Fabric, enterprises can get direct, on-demand interconnection to Microsoft Azure in proximity to the most users for the greatest experience. It also allows them to bypass the public internet and move data to the cloud with increased security and lower latency. Equinix Fabric one-to-many software-defined interconnection helps give enterprises the agility and scalability to work simultaneously with Azure and other top cloud providers, adapting their hybrid multicloud environments quickly without the need for major hardware investments.

Distributed global access to digital infrastructure and services

EMMA is just one example of how Equinix helps enterprises take a digital-first approach to overcome the business challenges they face every day. By replacing legacy siloed IT infrastructure architectures with distributed digital infrastructure that connects to an interconnected ecosystem of partners and customers spanning the globe, enterprises can shrink the physical distance between their infrastructure, applications, data and users. In turn, this will help cloud applications run when and where they’re needed, with sub-millisecond latency. Furthermore, Equinix’s global interconnected ecosystem of more than 1,800 network service providers and 3,000 cloud and IT service providers helps ensure that customers can always find the right partners to help them meet their digital business goals.

Equinix Fabric already offers a quick and simple way to access Azure ExpressRoute. Now, we invite you to see for yourself how we’ve made it even quicker and simpler. Access the Microsoft Azure Marketplace today to try the Equinix Managed Marketplace Application for Azure ExpressRoute.

[i] Forrester – Marketplaces Unlock New Markets For Sellers—And Tech Providers, Author: Allen Bonde, April 20, 2021.

[ii] Sales data courtesy of Microsoft.