Equinix: Upholding Interconnection

Samuel Lee, President, Asia-Pacific

As digital business transformation increasingly becomes a mandate for survival in the digital era, interconnection plays a role as a critical building block for success - it scaled the Internet, the web, and thriving digital ecosystems. According to McKinsey, interconnection enabled cross-border data flows that added US$2.8 trillion to the world’s GDP in 2014, and now it is enabling the rapid growth of multicloud, giving rise to new ecosystems like the Internet of Things and propelling digital business to outgrow the overall economy by threefold.

Recently announced by the global data center and interconnection giant - Equinix, the Global Interconnection Index predicts the capacity for private data exchange between businesses is outpacing the public Internet, growing at nearly twice the rate and comprising nearly six times the volume of global IP traffic by 2020. The Asia- Pacific region is also expected to see more than fourfold growth in Interconnection Bandwidth to reach 1,120 Tbps by 2020, outpacing the US and EMEA regions.

"Platform Equinix, The Combination Of Equinix’s Interconnection Offerings, The Established Business Ecosystems And The Global Footprint Of Our Reliable Data Centers – 190 Carrier-Neutral And Network- Dense Data Centers, Out Of Which 30 Of Them In Asia-Pacific, Is The Global Platform For Digital Business"

Samuel Lee, President, Equinix Asia- Pacific, acknowledges the acute situation that the industry is in. “Thanks to the rising demand for interconnection, Equinix's business has continued to progress at high speed and undergone rapid expansion, seeing our 59th consecutive quarter of revenue growth as of the third quarter this year. And in our region, our interconnection revenue grew 32 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, significantly outpacing the growth of colocation revenue.”

So what is interconnection? What exactly does it mean and what functionality does it serve in the world of enterprise architecture?

Well for starters, interconnection is private data exchange between businesses. A more detailed definition of interconnection is the deployment of IT traffic exchange points that integrate direct, private connections between counterparties, hosted in carrier-neutral data center campuses, with distributed IT components co-located. Lee further explains, “Think of the data center like an airport. Today’s airports allow passengers to transit to other airlines so they can get to any destination around the world. Our data centers are the concept of changing and interconnecting bits of information.

Lee iterates, “Platform Equinix – the combination of Equinix’s interconnection offerings, established business ecosystems and global footprint of our reliable data centers – 190 carrier-neutral and network-dense data centers, out of which 30 are in Asia-Pacific – is the global platform for digital business.” This California-based company connects the world’s businesses to their customers, employees, and partners inside the most interconnected data centers in 48 markets across five continents.

“On Platform Equinix, you’ll reach everywhere, interconnect everyone and integrate everything. To compete in the digital economy means becoming a business technology company first, letting go of old IT constraints, and developing an infrastructure built for distributed scale and security,” Lee adds. Platform Equinix hosts an advanced portfolio of digital services and ecosystems that allows companies to securely scale their digital infrastructure wherever opportunity leads.

Equinix With Their Interconnection Oriented Architecture (Ioa) Delivers What Is Required, Creating The Conditions For An Exceptional Customer Experience

In an age when reams of information race around the world with the click of a finger and massive transactions routinely occur several times faster than the blink of an eye, interconnection powers digital business, helping businesses to embrace digital transformation. Just as PCs, networking gear, and web apps revolutionized previous digital eras, innovations in connectivity are fostering new forms of interaction and interconnection is this era’s game-changer.

The interconnected era has changed the rules for various sectors, including FSI, content streaming, shopping experience, healthcare and more, and presents with amazing opportunities as well. In today’s workplace, customers, employees, and partners are dispersed over diverse geographic locations, processing more data, using a multitude of devices, and expecting more than ever. Ravi Ravishankar, Vice President of Marketing, Equinix Asia-Pacific says, “Equinix operates a global interconnection platform, which enables the interconnected enterprise to directly connect its employees, partners, and customers to what they need, in the right context, using the devices, channels, and services they prefer, wherever they may be.” And this approach has proven to show ‘extraordinary experiences for customers, high engagement for employees, top value for shareholders, and exponential growth for business.’ Interconnection is fast becoming a necessary construct for how an enterprise architects its digital infrastructure.

Ravishankar further elucidates, “Equinix offers a unique value preposition as carrier-neutral data center and interconnection service provider, which allows for private data exchange between customers, cloud providers, multiple telecommunication carriers, and/or network providers. From industry-leading data centers and collocation services, to network connectivity and the interconnected cloud, Equinix provides a range of services for enterprises across a range of industries.”

Ravi Ravishankar, VP - Marketing, Asia-Pacific

Equinix’s repertoire of solutions include Performance Hub, Data Hub, IBX SmartView, Interconnection and Connectivity, as well as 190 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers. All serve different purposes for the end user. In 2015, it also embraced Interconnection Oriented Architecture (IOA), which shifts fundamental IT delivery architecture from siloed and centralized to interconnected and distributed and puts IT as close to the consumer as possible, creating the conditions for an exceptional customer experience and financial benefits for businesses.

All of the mentioned services combined help in safeguarding mission-critical data, achieving transformative levels of IT flexibility, efficiency, and performance acceleration, and build an optimized platform to give users a seamless window into their operating environment. Its other services include Equinix professional services and customer support, which as the name suggests, provide guidance and technical expertise to optimize and power growth, along with onsite and logistical support 24/7.

“We differentiate ourselves with our ability to help enterprises embrace the Digital Edge.

This enables them to accommodate the emerging characteristics of the digital era, by pushing out selected applications and data to the network edge in proximity to the users around the world as a result of Equinix’s extensive global footprint,” Ravishankar exclaims.

The company, to its credit, has developed a global reputation for helping businesses deploy and optimize their IT infrastructure and cloud solutions. With its Global Solutions Architect (GSA) team, Equinix helps evaluate IT, networking, and cloud solutions that best match a customer’s application workload and business budget. The team focuses on bridging together next-generation data center, network, and cloud/ IT infrastructures, while giving customers the greatest return on their investment and providing virtual CTO/CIO capabilities. It helps enterprises to develop the agility they need to scale their businesses, and the performance they need to stay ahead of the competition - all while managing costs. GSAs also work hand-in-hand with customers in solutions workshops to lay out requirements and objectives, ensuring they arrive at a comprehensive set of deployment recommendations.

An instance worth mentioning is the success story of Aofei, a leading Chinese integrated communications operator. One of the company’s main lines of business is pushing out original “Putonghua” content to burgeoning overseas Chinese communities and growing local audiences in international markets. As Aofei works with a number of international service providers, the only viable way to ensure high service delivery was to bring its IT infrastructure closer to these providers and their customers. That is when it turned to Equinix, which by providing its Cloud Exchange and Internet Exchange offerings, solved Aofei’s connectivity issues by seamlessly interconnecting these providers and others within the network of data centers. As a result, Aofei has been able to push content to the edge of the network, where it is closest to its audiences, subsequently helping build its presence across places like Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt.

Besides Equinix solutions and services, the team at Equinix has helped it to garner the reputation and attain the position that it is in today. All thanks to the culture that exists within the company and the founding fathers who inculcated it. As Lee puts it, “We focus a lot on engaging, empowering and rewarding our employees. It is important to recognize their efforts and contributions in order to motivate and inspire our people. We believe in maintaining an exceptional work-life balance and at Equinix, work is considered a process rather than a place.” The company, since stepping up its Asia-Pacific operations in 2002, has grown its business at a rapid rate. The company is now the leading data center and interconnection company in the Asia-Pacific region with extensive footprints in key metros across Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan and Singapore.

Lee comments, “Despite the tremendous success we have achieved over the years, we are not going to stop here as we are proud of what we are today.” Equinix has recently created a Strategy, Services, and Innovation group to drive the company’s next phase of growth by optimizing its position as a key enabler of cloud services and a driving force to help customers embrace digital transformation via Platform Equinix. Lee adds, “We aim to build upon our 20 years of success to strategically plan our steps in the years to come to drive business growth and sharpen Equinix’s competitive edge.”

Lee also shares the history and meaning of the Equinix’s logo, "The Fortress logo is an iconic mark that reinforces the vital role we play in the protection and exchange of global information. Its design symbolizes a stronghold where assets are safeguarded, while the interconnection we provide is represented by the continuous line that interlinks all elements on Platform Equinix.”

- Vikesh Seth
December 21, 2017