Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric delivers inter-metro connectivity between parties

Equinix announced the direct physical and virtual connection of its International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers around the world, enabling customers to connect on demand to any other customer from any Equinix location.

The new inter-metro connectivity will be delivered through the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric), which was previously called the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX). The idea is to use the SDN capabilities in the exchange to enable any customer to dynamically connect its own infrastructure across Equinix locations or connect to any other customer on the Equinix global platform, regardless of location.

Equinix said these new capabilities enable any customer to more efficiently interconnect and request connections to any of the more than 1,000 participants including some of the world’s largest enterprises, cloud service providers (Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud) and SaaS providers (including Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow, among others).

The new ECX Fabric capabilities are immediately available in all ECX locations in North America and the EMEA region, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, New York, Paris, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Stockholm, Toronto, Washington, D.C. and Zurich.

In Q4 2017 and early 2018, ECX Fabric is rolling out to seven new metros in the Americas and EMEA regions (Denver, Düsseldorf, Geneva, Helsinki, Miami, Milan and Munich). Equinix will extend connectivity to São Paulo within the Americas region, and between APAC region ECX Fabric metro locations (Hong Kong, Melbourne, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo), in 2018.

John Nishimoto, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing, Windstream, stated: “The integration of the Equinix global platform expands Windstream’s addressable footprint, increasing the availability of high-transport solutions—including our recently launched Software Defined Network Orchestrated Waves (SDNow)—for our customers. Equinix has a robust aggregation of enterprise businesses, cloud service providers and traditional network operators, all of whom are customers of Windstream’s Cloud & Connectivity business unit. We look forward to participating in this fully integrated global platform.”

Separately, Equinix announced the expansion of its Internet Exchange into nine new metros in the EMEA and Americas regions in Q4 2017 and early 2018, including Amsterdam, Denver, Dublin, Frankfurt, Houston, London, Manchester, Milan and Stockholm.

In addition, Equinix announced that it intends to offer, subject to market and other conditions, €1.0 billion in aggregate principal amount of its senior notes due 2028.