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Equinix eyes opportunity to help enterprises scale globally without friction

It comes as Equinix opens its 16th International Business Exchange data centre in Australia.
Written by Aimee Chanthadavong, Contributor
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Image: Supplied/Equinix

As more enterprises look to expand their businesses globally, Equinix is determined to ensure from an infrastructure perspective that the process can be happen as seamlessly as possible, according to Asia-Pacific president Jeremy Deutsch.

"As we've got these organisations digitally transforming in one market, they're seeing that their services need to operate in numerous markets around the world. But the amount of delay and friction that is required to operate and launch in all these new markets is quite high," he told ZDNet.

"But if you can virtualise that to a point where it's a click … [and] we can get you into those new markets much more quickly and reduce the friction, it increases the innovation of your business, increase your ability to support your end-users … and you can replicate your architecture far more simply."

He added that global expansion -- for medium to large businesses -- is being underpinned by the trending shift towards hybrid cloud architectures.

"[It's] where everybody is heading to today," he said.

"I have some of my own on-premise environments from my critical infrastructure, but I need to plug into cloud services be it infrastructure-as-a-service, data analytics, or software-as-a-service platforms that is going to augment my business. I need to make that very seamless, very consistent, and I need to make it repeatable."

See also: Hybrid cloud setup offers relief to some companies while others are still fearful (TechRepublic)

Deutsch's remarks come as Equinix announced the opening of SY5, the company's 16th International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in Australia and its eighth in Sydney.

Pinned as the company's largest facility in Australia, the SY5 is a AU$224 million investment for Equinix, which has been set up adjacent to the company's existing SY4 IBX data centre in Alexandria.

The company boasts the new facility has an initial capacity 1,825 cabinets and 9,225 cabinets at full build within a total usable floor space of approximately 25,000 square metres.

Servers Australia and AnyCast Networks have been named as initial customers of the SY5 data centre, which features an ecosystem of 160 network service providers, 280 cloud and IT service providers, more than 75 financial services companies, and over 60 content and digital media organisations.

According to Deutsch, the latest IBX data centre is part of Equinix's aggressive expansion plans, both through acquisitions and organically, to support the demand of customers. Equinix's other projects have been in Hong Kong, Melbourne, Perth, Osaka, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.

"This year we've announced we'll open 12 new IBX locations across the world and 23 expansions in existing sites. We're going to spend this calendar year between AU$2.5 and AU$2.7 billion in capital expansion across the globe," he said.

Last year, the company acquired Metronode, for just over AU$1 billion, which Deutsch said was one of more than 20 acquisitions the company has made in the past.  

 "We do it because our customers ask us to be in these locations," he said.

"If we look back at the acquisition we did on Metronode, we're in a position where we were located primarily in Sydney and Melbourne, and our customers were asking for solutions in Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, and Adelaide, so the ability to have that national footprint was very attractive to us.

"Also, those locations geographically match up for nicely given us a secondary location Sydney and Melbourne for customers who want two deployments in those cities."

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