Equinix Rolls Out Global Channel Partner Program

Equinix has launched a new global channel partner program to capture more revenue in the enterprise hybrid cloud market. In addition to a formalization of partnership activities, the company has expanded the types of partnership engagements it makes and increased the amount of resources behind its partnership initiatives. The program extends across the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific.

Equinix is increasing staff in support of the program 10-fold. It is expanding its global solutions architect team and will do more joint selling engagements with partners. Managed service providers, network service providers, system integrators and solution providers can combine with Equinix to design and deploy cloud and IT solutions for enterprise customers. These cloud channel partners can act as resellers, referral agents, or cloud technology platform partners.

“What we are trying to do is enable customers and partners to get to the cloud,” said Pete Hayes, chief sales officer at Equinix. “This is high-level engagement around enterprise customer engagements.”

The company's increased focus on cloud channel partnerships is in response to growing enterprise need for IT infrastructure evolution to hybrid cloud. Customers require more than just colocation or cloud; they often require a mix as well as guidance. To help with that evolution, data center providers have been building their own diverse services, buying companies that already provide them, or partner with existing servce providers. Equinix's approach has always been to take the partnership route.

“In our data centers, network service providers and cloud service providers are going to be the motivating factors to get the enterprise customers to move workloads out of the basement,” said Hayes.

Equinix has several partnerships already in place, but the program changes the dynamic of these partnerships.

“In the past, Equinix had more referral types of partners,” said Christopher Rajiah, vice president of Worldwide Channel Sales and Alliances. “This expands to support different sales motions, resale, or technology partnerships. We’re taking different ways to partner and taking it to a global level. Channel is a key strategy going forward.”

Partnering allows service providers to add "next-generation" cloud interconnection solutions to their existing product offerings. Channel partners can also tap into Equinix’s established ecosystems and products, such as Cloud Exchange and Performance Hub.

The Cloud Exchange provides direct access to multiple clouds and multiple networks from a single port.

Channel partners can also create new recurring revenue streams by implementing the Equinix Performance Hub, a solution that distributes a company’s data center infrastructure across multiple locations to accelerate application delivery to employees, customers, and partners worldwide.

“Enterprise customers are trying to serve different communities and running into complications in globally supporting a dispersed customer base," said Hayes. “There’s an enterprise need to deliver mission critical applications in cloud. This [program] is high-level engagement around enterprise customer engagements.”

A similar rationale of enterprise IT evolution was behind the acquisition of cloud professional services firm Nimbo. It’s no longer a matter of enterprises wanting to move into an Equinix facility, but a matter of how.

One hundred companies – enterprises, networks and cloud service providers – have joined Equinix Cloud Exchange. Along with top cloud platform providers, other service providers that have recently joined the Equinix Channel Partner Program include Carpathia, Datalink, Datapipe, Dimension Data, and Unitas Global.

“Leveraging the AWS platform and the Equinix global data center network has allowed us to expand the range and reach of our managed enterprise hybrid IT solutions”, John Landy, Datapipe CTO, said via email. "The partnership with Equinix has been invaluable as we grow and expand the suite of managed services and geographic locations through which we provide services to our customers, and we look forward to continuing to work together to help our clients future proof their IT.”