Equinix launches "Time-as-a-Service" for latency-sensitive businesses
A wide range of industries and cloud services rely on precise, reliable and secure time synchronization: For instsnce, e-sports and online gaming sites need it to track the chronological order of play in multiplayer games. Financial firms rely on it to track the sequence of transactions. Media companies need it to accurately sync audio and video feeds.
To assist enterprises in these scenarios, the digital infrastructure company Equinix is launching Equinix Precision Time -- an edge service delivered over Equinix Fabric. By offering "time as a service," Equinix says it can help customers avoid the challenges that come with reliance on the public internet or GPS antennas for time synchronization.
Traditional, antenna-based GPS timing infrastructure solutions can be hard to install and introduce security vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, sourcing time from the internet comes with its own cybersecurity risks.
Equinix Precision Time, which is globally available on Platform Equinix, can be deployed within minutes, Equinix says. To deliver the service, Equinix manages and maintains a redundant stack of GPS Antennas, time servers with atomic clock holdover and grandmaster clocks. The new service supports network timing protocols such as NTP and PTP and is designed to be secure and reliable.
Equinix Precision Time offers an SLA of 50 microseconds. Additionally, it's in compliance with the time synchronization accuracy requirements of FINRA and MiFID II, which have SLA requirements of 100 microseconds for timestamping of applications. It is also compliant with the time synchronization accuracy requirements of SMPTE 2110 requirements.
Meanwhile, the new service's integration with Equinix Fabric enables customers to seamlessly connect with other physical or virtual services available on the Equinix platform.