Australian enterprises helping Equinix drive global growth

Enterprises, in particular Australian enterprises, are driving the growth for Equinix, according to Equinix global CIO Brian Lillie.

He said while the company has seen growth from the content, financial, and cloud ecosystem, the enterprise sector is starting to grow exponentially, making up 11 percent of total revenue for Equinix.

"Our fastest vertical is enterprises, and Australia is doing extremely well because [Australian businesses are] looking at multi-site deployment at Equinix," he said.

Specifically, enterprise customers globally make up 28 percent of the company's business, while in Australia it's 43 percent, Lillie said.

"Australian CIOs are getting that if we put it here we get a lot of benefits, and Australia is a good exporter of business with very strong businesses in the US, the UK, and Singapore," he said.

Equinix Australia managing director Jeremy Deutsch agreed saying: "In Australia a lot of CIOs are very cloud-forward and are looking to leverage the cloud, and that is part of the driving force to consider this type of architecture. I think Australian CIOs are pretty advanced in getting that, particularly as they are importing and exporting their business."

The company said one example that highlights how eager Australian businesses are about being part of the Equinix ecosystem is the newly announced partnership with Australian-based payments and security service provider EP2, which has chosen to move its infrastructure inside Equinix.

Deutsch said the company was looking to take advantage of the instant on-ramp access they would have to Equinix's cloud environment to scale their own architecture how they want.

"The reason they've chosen Equinix is because they need all the [security] certification ... [and] they're looking to take advantage of that financial ecosystem that largely sits with Equinix," he said.

Despite this, Lillie confirmed that cloud still remains the company's biggest growing ecosystem. He added there are now 1,100 carriers that are part of the global Equinix network.

Looking ahead, Lillie said there are some nascent ecosystems such as the Internet of Things and digital payments where "pockets" of small communities currently exist, and believes they will grow to "full blown" ecosystems down the track.

Recently, Equinix announced in addition to its acquisition of Telecity, the company will be investing more than $4.5 billion in acquisitions and organic growth during 2016, including opening four new International Business Exchange datacentres in Tokyo, Dallas, Sao Paulo, and Sydney.

The Sydney datacentre alone will see Equinix pour more than AU$97 million. Labelled SY4, the Sydney datacentre will be the company's fifth in Australia and fourth in the city, and will be located in close proximity to Equinix's SY1, SY2, and SY3 facilities.