Equinix Says Cloud Will Help It Reach Customers It Hasn't Reached Before

As the big cloud providers continue to expand their global reach through Equinix data centers – Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and Cisco are now in its data centers across 17 markets around the world on average – the colocation provider and its partners are knocking on the doors of enterprise IT execs it hasn’t gone after in the past.

There is more than a dozen industry verticals outside of Equinix’s traditional five core ones the company hopes will find its data centers more attractive now, as they look for ways to leverage cloud services.

On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday, CEO Stephen Smith said the opportunity’s size was “hundreds of thousands” of new prospects. “We are knocking on their door now via the channel or via the direct sales engine to talk to them about helping them … get to the multi-cloud and get to the hybrid cloud environment.”

Many other major data center service providers have been positioning themselves this way too, including CoreSite, Digital Realty, and Interxion, all hoping to capitalize on the anticipated great migration of enterprise applications out of on-premise data centers and into the cloud.

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Equinix’s five core verticals are networks and mobile, content and digital media, financial services, cloud and IT services, and enterprise. The prospects in those untapped verticals are enterprise users the company hasn’t reeled in yet.

Today, enterprises contribute 12 percent to Equinix’s total revenue mix. The biggest chunk of its revenue comes from cloud and IT services companies, which contribute 27 percent, followed by network operators (26 percent).

More details here, courtesy of Equinix:

Equinix has seen deals with cloud providers and enterprise customers accelerate substantially over the last two years or so, Charles Meyers, the company’s chief operating officer, said on the earnings call. The company is positioning its data centers as places where enterprises can have private access to public clouds and expects this cloud enablement angle to grow its total addressable market.

Read more: Equinix CEO Unveils Aggressive Plan to Court Enterprises

More new enterprise customers took space with Equinix in the fourth and third quarter of last year than customers in any other category, Smith said. The company saw particularly strong traction in manufacturing and professional services.

New customer wins last quarter were the clothing brand Polo Ralph Laurent, S&P 500 civil construction giant Granite Construction, and Swedish cosmetics maker Oriflame Cosmetics.

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