The supply chain disruptions of the past two years have impacted many businesses, as they waited on the delivery of physical networking hardware and devices to connect crucial business operations. We’ve all seen the videos of container ships in holding patterns offshore, waiting for the green light to unload their cargo at destination ports.
Once the hardware and devices arrive, businesses may still need to order and install international lines for connectivity between a colocation facility in one country and a colocation facility in a different country. Something that sounds like a simple order can take upwards of 90 business days to complete. These delays can derail plans to make crucial connections to cloud, networking and IT service providers, or customers and partners.
Software-defined interconnection is an excellent alternative, and the current supply chain issues may be just the impetus businesses need to make the leap away from physical connectivity. Making the switch creates opportunities beyond making a single point-to-point international connection.
As the digital economy continues to expand, companies have recognized that relying on the specific expertise of other businesses, such as cloud, SaaS and other service providers, is foundational to accelerating their journey to become digital leaders. Capitalizing on more efficient and less costly options for connecting to those companies is also necessary for achieving digital advantage in increasingly competitive environments.
Vendor-neutral data centers can provide private connectivity, or “interconnection”, between enterprises and leading cloud, SaaS and network service providers deployed in the same location or in other connected data centers. Software-defined interconnection enables hybrid infrastructure and network agility via direct access to hundreds of cloud and network service providers. According to a 451 Research[1] survey, 51% of businesses use data center-provided interconnection to connect to public clouds, while 36% connect to deployments in other data centers.
In my previous life as an enterprise network technician, I experienced the challenges of procuring an international line and trying to explain to my colleagues why what seemed to be a simple task was taking so long. Imagine how pleased I was to discover Equinix Fabric™ software-defined interconnection and see those turnaround times drastically reduced.
Lowering reliance on physical connectivity
Connecting to one or more of your cloud service providers from any Equinix IBX® data center where you have a presence only requires a single physical Equinix Fabric port. Equinix Fabric supports several industry-standard networking services and topologies.
Equinix Fabric can be used as a primary connection, or as a complement to a customer’s existing MPLS or Ethernet-based network. Potential use cases for Equinix Fabric include making Equinix IBX data center-to-data center connections to manage backup connections between metros, scale to handle seasonal spikes in traffic, offload lower-value network traffic, or support short-term projects requiring more bandwidth.
Equinix Fabric provides direct, private connections to enterprise digital infrastructure deployed in any of the more than 50 metros where it’s currently available. Customers use the Equinix Fabric portal or APIs to streamline their access to the world’s largest cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud and Google Cloud on Platform Equinix®. With the highest concentration of major cloud provider on-ramps in the world, Equinix Fabric is ideally suited to solve a range of multicloud network connectivity challenges.
Setting up Equinix Fabric in minutes, not months
With Equinix Fabric, it’s simple and quick to connect to a data center location in another country. Once customers are set up on Platform Equinix in an Equinix IBX data center and install a port (typically less than ten working days), they use the Equinix Fabric web portal to set up the connection. Customers can connect to a cloud service provider in just a few minutes, in the same Equinix IBX or a location in another country, as shown below. Equinix Fabric interconnects the business in the New York IBX and the business colocated in the London IBX with one or more of their cloud service providers in the London IBX.
These private connections allow businesses across multiple industries to manage and share data securely and locally, while meeting data sovereignty requirements, HIPAA regulations and financial regulations. Local resellers and e-commerce businesses can easily and quickly expand to other countries worldwide, without ordering costly, time-consuming network connections that require a substantial CAPEX investment in equipment.
Organizations accelerating and expanding across borders
A global provider of private cloud solutions for healthcare offers customers the option to share and consume system resources, data and applications on demand. It needed to ensure seamless and secure interconnection for greater collaboration, while at the same time maintaining country-specific data governance, privacy and protection. Equinix Fabric enabled this company to provision virtual connections to private and public clouds in minutes rather than weeks, and quickly replicate its solutions globally by tapping into the extensive ecosystem of healthcare providers on Platform Equinix.
A European government agency made the decision to employ an interconnection strategy with Equinix Fabric. As the agency moved services to the cloud, it was able to reduce latency by two-thirds and decrease the time it took to add new connections from months to hours.
A European-based e-commerce company uses Equinix Fabric to connect to a cloud provider hosted in an Equinix data center in another country. As the company expands to other countries and regions, it can use the Equinix Fabric dashboard to connect with other customers, partners and service providers directly and securely across the global Equinix Fabric footprint.
To learn more about getting started with software-defined interconnection, read the Equinix Fabric data sheet today.
For more technical details, check out our Developer Resources for Equinix Fabric.
[1] 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, Voice of the Enterprise: Datacenters 2021.