Today’s business leaders recognize that having agile and scalable digital infrastructure is a competitive advantage. By running the right workloads in the right places, enterprises can fully leverage demanding solutions like AI, meet customer expectations, and keep pace with an increasingly complex cybersecurity and regulatory landscape.
Large enterprises have unique business and workload requirements concerning compliance, data sovereignty, performance and latency. They continue to invest in the modernization of critical workloads with specific and stringent needs. However, not all critical workloads are suitable for or ready to be moved to the public cloud. Enterprise customers are driven to move away from data center management and simplify the hardware consumption process (i.e., shifting from CAPEX to OPEX), while still maintaining strict control and governance over their private cloud infrastructure.
This is where VMware Cloud Foundation on Equinix Metal® can help.
A leading private cloud platform on a global scale
This latest innovation coming out of the partnership between Broadcom and Equinix is designed to provide everything enterprises need to overcome the digital transformation gaps.
Customers have long trusted VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) to help them take advantage of everything hybrid and multicloud environments have to offer: the agility of the public cloud with the control of the private cloud. VMware Cloud Foundation on Equinix Metal extends VMware’s private cloud platform to distributed endpoints, addressing the demands of latency-sensitive applications where data locality and data residency are crucial. With VCF running on Equinix Metal, located near prime business centers, customers can extend their private cloud reach to distributed metro locations, meet business-critical performance demands with a low-latency solution, and continue to comply with security and regulatory requirements.
The platform-native nature of the Equinix Metal offering, along with the ability to consume it in small-scale increments, opens new architectural possibilities for customers seeking to run smaller clusters in more locations to better meet their business needs. At the core of the solution is VCF software, Equinix Metal hardware, and Equinix Fabric® for connectivity to all hyperscaler cloud native services.
This solution offers:
- High performance: Equinix Metal servers are available in 31 high-density metros worldwide. As a result, customers can get the proximity they need to ensure latency of <20 milliseconds for critical applications with maximum performance requirements.
- Scalability and efficiency: With a global footprint of 260+ vendor-neutral Equinix IBX® colocation data centers, customers can access distributed infrastructure capacity in a flexible manner. In addition, Equinix is the global leader in low-latency cloud on-ramps, which means customers can easily integrate all major hyperscalers into their hybrid multicloud environment.
- Assured compliance: Equinix Metal is a single-tenant solution that offers all the capabilities necessary to feel confident that workflows and data are protected. This includes end-to-end encryption, access rights, and lifecycle management. Since VCF can be deployed on Equinix Metal servers in many locations worldwide—with the same operational consistency as a cloud environment—customers can also ensure they’re meeting the data residency requirements of their private cloud deployments.
- Greater control over data storage: Rather than storing data in the cloud, cloud adjacent storage solutions allow customers to take advantage of Storage as a Service without sacrificing control over data. To enable cloud adjacent storage, Equinix Metal offers integration with hardware from leading storage vendors.
- Managed Solutions in strategic locations: Equinix further extends its portfolio with a managed private cloud solution through Equinix Managed Solutions, ideally suited for those customers with minimal IT staff and skills that are looking to outsource the management of their infrastructure stack. In turn, customers will be able to reduce costs and streamline IT operations.
What can businesses achieve with VMware Cloud Foundation on Equinix Metal?
VMware Cloud Foundation on Equinix Metal is well-suited to support a wide variety of enterprise customer use cases, including:
- Optimizing for low-latency applications: VMware Cloud Foundation on Equinix Metal excels in handling latency-sensitive workloads at the edge, delivering <20 millisecond latency for applications where immediate data processing is crucial. Ideal use cases include video analytics in retail and manufacturing, high-performance VDI for industries like gaming and design, online trading applications requiring latency fairness, and smooth streaming services. Also, the solution can help organizations get the infrastructure and resources they need to pursue a private AI strategy.
- Data locality for regulated workloads: Many enterprise customers in critical industries are seeking an efficient alternative for workloads requiring data locality due to government, industry or corporate regulations. This is particularly relevant in the EU under the NIS2 Directive and in EMEA and US markets with data sovereignty concerns and corporate policies. VMware Cloud Foundation on Equinix Metal provides a compliant solution for these sensitive data scenarios.
- Simplified data center expansion and modernization: For enterprises and MSPs looking to optimize their on-premises footprint, VMware Cloud Foundation on Equinix Metal offers an efficient alternative for data center expansion and modernization. This flexibility allows customers to enhance their data centers while preserving existing on-premises investments.
- Business continuity and app modernization: VMware Cloud Foundation on Equinix Metal is ideal for legacy and custom workloads that traditional IaaS/SaaS models or cloud native services don’t support. By modernizing these applications on the VMware Cloud Foundation solution, enterprises can continue to drive business continuity by lowering operational costs and total cost of ownership compared to on-premises deployments.
About the Broadcom and Equinix Partnership
At Equinix, we view our partnership with Broadcom as much more than just integrating our respective technologies. We believe it’s about executing our shared vision to reshape the hybrid cloud landscape, making it easier for our mutual customers to get the flexibility and control they need from their hybrid multicloud platform.
Equinix is proud to be a VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) Pinnacle tier partner in the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program. We look forward to helping our mutual customers to innovate by adopting VMware Cloud Foundation as their private cloud infrastructure. Equinix delivers new managed VMware Cloud Foundation private cloud services, including sovereign cloud services that support data residency and other jurisdictional controls.
Pinnacle is the highest program level in the Broadcom Advantage Partner program. Pinnacle partners are Broadcom’s most invested and strategic partners, boasting extensive certifications, a track record of significant sales and service achievements, and broad international coverage.
Digital transformation with platform-native flexibility
Thanks to the partnership between Equinix and Broadcom, enterprises are now empowered to lead the way in their digital transformation journey. Our joint solution redefines what they can accomplish with private cloud infrastructure by limiting potential cloud drawbacks around control, compliance and choice.
To learn more about how VMware Cloud Foundation on Equinix Metal can help meet your hybrid infrastructure requirements, read the solution brief today.
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