Equinix (EQIX) has announced a major expansion of its worldwide data center footprint, opening five new data centers and expanding 14 existing IBX data centers in 2017 as part of a $1 billion expansion plan.
The first location in São Paulo, Brazil opened in March. New data centers in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, San Jose and Washington D.C. are scheduled to open in the second and third quarters.
The expansion builds on significant growth in 2016 for Equinix, a global network and cloud interconnection company based in Redwood City, California. The company opened new data centers in several key economic hubs, including Dallas, Sydney and Tokyo.
Also in 2016, Equinix announced plans to acquire 29 data centers across 24 sites from Verizon Communications for $3.6 billion in cash, propelling its cloud interconnection strategy forward while freeing Verizon to focus on network services. The deal is expected to close by mid-2017, and it will add some 900 customers to the Equinix portfolio.
By providing additional capacity in 2017, Equinix said it continues to play an important role in helping companies to extend their IT operations to the digital edge through the interconnection of people, locations, clouds and data.
"The transformative impact of the shift to digital is touching every company and requiring and IT infrastructure that can accommodate this new reality,” Equinix CEO Steve Smith (pictured above) said. “The globally consistent footprint of Equinix, combined with its ability to facilitate the critical interconnection between companies, is enabling this shift.”
Global Interconnection
Global data flows have increased 45 times over in the last decade, according to research from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). Over the next five years, cross-border bandwidth usage is expected to grow ninefold.
"The world is more interconnected than ever. For the first time in history, emerging economies are counterparts on more than half of global trade flows,” MGI said.
This digitally interconnected global economy demands greater digital collaboration and productivity platforms, and interconnection solutions to support them, Equinix Vice President of Global Enterprise Vertical Strategy and Marketing Tony Bishop noted in his blog.
This requires businesses to transform and evolve their legacy network infrastructures with an interconnection-first strategy that enables greater collaboration, productivity and value, he said.
Equinix Expansion Details
The five new locations will add more than 900,000 square feet of data center space in 2017. Additionally, expansions to 14 existing data centers will take place in 13 cities: Amsterdam, Dallas, Dubai, Dublin, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Hong Kong, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Toronto and Zurich.
Equinix has also announced the purchase of land in Ashburn, Virginia to further expand the company’s data center there; the acquisition of a London data center from IO UK; and the acquisition of a Zurich data center from ICT-Center AG.
Today, Equinix operates 150 IBX data centers in 21 countries and 41 metropolitan areas. The company has more than 8,500 customers, including one-third of the Fortune 500.
Equinix’s ecosystem allows customers to access more than 1,400 networks and 2,700 cloud and IT service providers.
Growing Channel Program
Equinix formalized its partner program in May 2015, hiring Rackspace veteran Christopher Rajiah to build and drive the program at the time. Rajiah has since exited the company, ChannelE2E has heard, but the channel momentum has continued.
By late last year, channel bookings accounted for about 15 percent of total bookings – with two-thirds of that activity from resellers who are amplifying the company’s market reach.
