Scaling Platforms With Interconnection-Oriented Architecture
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- May 05, 2021
Not so long ago, enterprises would have offices where employees worked daily and housed the data center and IT infrastructure in an adjacent part of the building.
Today, however, many of these same offices sit empty — many employees are working at home – while the data center has moved offsite and is managed elsewhere by a service provider.
These are not the only changes, says Jeremy Deutsch, president of Equinix in the Asia Pacific.
While their old offices might be emptier, the enterprises are more agile and able to manage rapid change.
“A lot of traditional enterprise customers in sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, law, and financial services are all seeing that digital has to be front and center of what they are doing,” says Deutsch.
Interconnection becomes an enabler
Cloud and interconnection technologies are enabling enterprises to connect to best-of-breed service providers and leverage global capabilities.
“Today, you are going to go to multiple different providers and where we really see this coming out in the technology landscape is in the hybrid multicloud,” says Deutsch.
“So, enterprises need to connect quickly and securely at a robust level with these service providers, and they need to go to a location where they can pick up multiple providers.”
Equinix delivers this connection capability through Platform Equinix, an “interconnection-oriented architecture” where enterprises can connect to artificial intelligence, video conference, customer relationship software, and billing systems.
“Changing to an interconnection-oriented architecture is enabling these organizations to leverage these new capabilities, and we are seeing real benefits,” says Deutsch.
“This enables them to launch new services faster, deliver a stronger customer experience, and drive efficiencies and reduce costs. If you are leveraging a multicloud environment, your ability to even do simple things like spin up or spin down servers is far simpler. But I think where the advantage comes is in the software capabilities that some of the service provider partners will bring.”
Deutsch says that even enterprises considered “digital laggards” have really stepped up and embraced digital transformation due to the pandemic disruptions.
Hybrid cloud adoption soars
Hybrid cloud use is also proliferating. Today, a traditional organization might use four different clouds, on average, but at the leading edge, some Equinix customers were using up to 15 cloud or systems integration partners.
“They might start in one location like Singapore, but when they are expanding to Hong Kong or London or Amsterdam, they would want to replicate the exact same partners and configure that into their platform,” says Deutsch.
“Then they want to make sure they can network these deployments together, and everything is seamless. This is absolutely what the Equinix platform enables.”
Equinix plans to open three new locations in Singapore, Osaka, and Perth this year to support its growing Asia Pacific customer base.
The company also announced an acquisition in India in 2020, which will bring on two interconnected facilities, enabling an extension of the platform in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets.
Future is about sustainability
Sustainability is also a focus, and Equinix has gone from using 30% renewable energy across its data centers in 2015 to more than 90% today.
This was important, says Deutsch, not just for Equinix itself but also for customers for whom sustainability is a key focus.
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and HR&DigitalTrends, and the editor of NextGen Connectivity. His fascination is with how businesses are reinventing themselves through digital technology and collaborate with others to become completely new organizations. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/metamorworks