Today’s digital businesses face a variety of opportunities and challenges. The acceleration of new technologies is helping enterprises increase flexibility and serve customers in unexpected ways. At the same time, labor shortages, supply chain challenges and economic uncertainty are forcing businesses to transform how they operate.
To overcome the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities, many businesses are turning to cloud services. This is one key takeaway from the Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS). The survey found that despite the key role cloud services already play within the digital economy, there’s still room for significant growth going forward: 71% of global IT leaders said they were likely to move more functions into the cloud over the next year.
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To meet this increasing demand, the top cloud service providers—Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud—continue to expand their cloud capacity with new locations and optimized hardware platforms. Many of these new locations are expansions of their regional cloud infrastructure, but there’s also a growing movement toward smaller, more localized compute regions that enable workloads closer to the end user.
In addition, each of these CSPs are enhancing their hardware to support greater densities and cloud-adjacent deployments at edge locations or customer premises. While these solutions help, they also create a greater need for an interconnection platform such as Equinix Fabric™ to move data between the distributed environments. By tapping into the robust interconnection capabilities and ecosystem of Equinix Fabric, cloud providers can expand their reach even further.
Equinix Fabric offers more resilient, cost-effective cloud connectivity
Equinix Fabric, a part of Platform Equinix®, is the software-defined interconnection platform used by Equinix customers, networking partners, and cloud providers. It makes it quick and easy for enterprises to connect infrastructure and services anywhere across our global footprint.
Many cloud providers are already choosing Platform Equinix to help enable greater connectivity. In fact, the top six cloud providers currently operate more than 190 cloud edge nodes in Equinix IBX® facilities. This is three times as many private on-ramps as the next-largest competitor. With the combined footprint of our integrated network service providers, Equinix Fabric enables direct, private interconnection to those nodes from every major metro across the world.
Cloud providers can also take advantage of the Equinix Fabric APIs to automate the creation and management of virtual connections. This reduces operating expenses by nearly removing the need for manual human intervention. Equinix Fabric is also designed to support high-availability cloud architectures through geo-redundancy enabled by multiple physical and virtual connections.
By providing reliable, high-performance interconnection across our global footprint, Equinix Fabric can help cloud providers tackle use cases across digital core, edge and ecosystem locations.
Connecting customers to cloud at the digital core
Equinix Fabric helps cloud providers establish private connectivity between their own cloud regions and customer endpoints. It acts as the gateway connection that allows customers to move application workloads and data into the cloud quickly and securely, from wherever they are. This contributes to faster application processing and data access, and a better overall customer experience. From the cloud provider perspective, the value of Equinix Fabric is simple: the easier it is for customers to exchange workloads and data, the more cloud services they’re likely to consume.
The main goal for cloud providers when building out their digital infrastructure is to deploy on-ramps close to as many customers as possible. Our footprint of more than 240 Equinix IBX data centers across six continents gives them the global reach they need to achieve that goal. This is one reason Equinix is home to more cloud on-ramps than any competitor.
Providers of all sizes can benefit from Equinix Fabric, but it could be particularly helpful for those with a smaller geographic footprint. Using Equinix Fabric, these providers can enable customers to connect directly to their services without having to be located near one of their cloud on-ramps. Since Equinix Fabric allows customers to connect to cloud services remotely, smaller cloud providers can dramatically increase the size of their potential customer base. Rather than limiting themselves to customers only in specific markets, they can draw in customers from all over the world.
Customer case study: Deploying Google Cloud at Navarik’s digital core for global access
Equinix is the leading interconnection partner for Google Cloud. Together, we provide better results and greater flexibility for our joint customers. Navarik, a real-time commodities data insights company, uses Equinix Fabric and Google Cloud Interconnect (GCI) to ensure dedicated, redundant connectivity to fundamental Google Cloud resources such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and BigQuery. These resources help Navarik’s developers streamline application migration and development in the cloud.
Navarik’s Streaming Data Platform Integration with Google Cloud on Platform Equinix
Enabling hybrid cloud use cases at the digital edge
In spite of the many benefits customers can gain from cloud services, they still need to maintain some workloads in on-premises environments. This could be because they need to comply with data residency regulations, satisfy application requirements, or provide extra security and control for certain key workloads. Regardless of the reason, cloud providers need to think about how their services can fit alongside on-premises workloads in a hybrid cloud architecture. Once again, Equinix Fabric can help.
The density of Equinix Fabric locations worldwide and our unmatched concentration of cloud on-ramps gives our customers ample options to run their on-premises workloads where it makes the most sense for them. Deploying their on-premises workloads at Equinix colocation facilities helps ensure those workloads are proximate to cloud on-ramps; we call this a cloud-adjacent approach. This gives customers the flexibility to pair on-premises workloads with low-latency cloud services on demand.
Customer case study: AWS and Nasdaq build the capital markets infrastructure of the future
AWS partnered with Equinix to establish its first-ever industry-specific Private Local Zone for capital markets, on behalf of our joint customer Nasdaq. The new local zone, deployed at the Equinix NY11 data center in Carteret, New Jersey, enables Nasdaq to deploy low-latency applications supporting the full trade lifecycle. Those applications can then use Equinix Fabric and AWS Direct Connect for direct interconnection to at least 37 AWS markets worldwide.
Platform Equinix Offers More AWS Markets Than Any Other Data Center Provider
Supporting multicloud use cases via the Equinix digital ecosystem
In addition to the major cloud providers, the Equinix Fabric digital ecosystem includes more than 350 other public service providers, including smaller cloud providers, network service providers, SaaS IT service providers, and more. This is why Equinix Fabric is the ideal choice for customers looking to take a multicloud approach to digital infrastructure.
These customers can leverage Equinix Fabric to get the connectivity they need to migrate data between different cloud providers easily, build redundant architectures for backup and disaster recovery, and extend application reach via distributed workload and data processing. Many cloud providers have recognized that multicloud is here to stay. By partnering with Equinix Fabric to ensure their standard architecture model is multicloud-ready, these providers can support customers in ways they wouldn’t be able to otherwise.
Customer case study: Dojo builds hybrid multicloud infrastructure with Oracle® Cloud
Equinix and Oracle Cloud have partnered to make it easier for our joint customers to run Oracle database services as part of a streamlined, interoperable multicloud architecture. Dojo, a digital payment processing services provider, leveraged Equinix Fabric and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) FastConnect™ to build a high-performance hybrid multicloud infrastructure on Platform Equinix. The company is now able to draw services from Oracle Cloud, AWS and Google Cloud to speed digital payment processing and authorization to its customers.
Equinix Fabric Empowers a Multicloud Approach to Oracle Databases
Start expanding your cloud services today
Equinix Fabric is the solution that makes it easier for customers to take advantage of cloud services in more places. In turn, it helps cloud providers extend their footprint beyond their core cloud regions, reaching more customers at the digital core, edge and ecosystems. To learn more about how Equinix Fabric can help cloud providers deliver better results, read the Equinix Fabric for Service Providers data sheet today.
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