Equinix Launches Multi Cloud Exchange
Equinix, one of the largest datacenter colocation and hosting operators, is rolling out an exchange that will link its facilities to multiple cloud service providers.
The new Equinix Cloud Exchange, launched Wednesday, aspires to create a global cloud interconnection network much like Cisco recently announced with its $1 billion Intercloud effort. Just like Cisco, the Equinix Cloud Exchange is initially available in selected areas. The selection Equinix is starting with, nevertheless, is not trivial.
It initially connects to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in 13 markets worldwide including Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., New York, Toronto, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. Six additional locations will be added to the network by the end of this year.
Connections to Amazon and Azure are currently limited to Silicon Valley, Washington, D.C. and London with the rest going online later in the year. The company indicated other cloud services will be added in the future. Through a portal and a set of APIs, customers can move workloads among multiple cloud environments. The portal and APIs let administrators allocate, monitor and provision virtual circuits in near real time, Equinix said.
Equinix already has offered Amazon customers connections via its AWS Direct Connect offering and it added Microsoft to the roster last week saying it would make Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute available in 16 markets worldwide.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 05/01/2014 at 10:48 AM