Equinix Unveils Virtual Network Services on Platform Equinix

Equinix, Inc., the global interconnection and data center company, has announced the next phase in the evolution of Platform Equinix with the unveiling of Network Edge services, a new product innovation enabling companies to modernize networks virtually, within minutes, by deploying network functions virtualization (NFV) from multiple vendors to connect their digital supply chains at Equinix.

Designed to accelerate digital transformation for global businesses, Network Edge offers enterprises a new way to deploy network services on Equinix's global interconnection platform, without a physical data center deployment or hardware requirements.

As an additional option within Equinix's broad portfolio of physical and virtual interconnection services, Network Edge enables enterprises to reduce capital expenses and scale IT and network services globally by virtually deploying a digital-ready infrastructure.

Offered as a broad suite of vendor-neutral, virtual network services, Network Edge allows customers to select, configure and connect network and security devices in real time and from a choice of industry-leading vendors including Cisco, Juniper Networks and Palo Alto Networks.

By bringing seamless, ultra-low latency network services closer to end users, clouds and valuable ecosystems in more locations, Network Edge can dramatically improve network optimization efforts in an economical way.

Network Edge also includes built-in integration to Equinix's global on-demand, SDN-enabled interconnection service, Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric™ (ECX Fabric™). By combining Network Edge with ECX Fabric, customers can deploy virtual edge devices and interconnect them to clouds and network providers located in new global markets, extending their reach to potentially thousands of new business partners around the world. This empowers companies to be everywhere they need to be to interconnect everyone and integrate everything that matters to their businesses.

Network Edge is ideal for specific digital business uses cases, such as:

Cloud-to-cloud routing—As cloud adoption continues to grow, many applications now span multiple clouds. To maximize data moving from one cloud to another, virtual routers deployed using Network Edge can seamlessly route data with ultra-low latency between two clouds.

Migrating from one cloud to another—Deploying a virtual router with Network Edge can create a private connection between two clouds, allowing for more efficient data transfers when moving large amounts of data from one cloud to another for backups, migrations or analytics.

Hybrid cloud firewall—To help protect networks with public-facing endpoints created when public-facing applications are hosted on public clouds, Network Edge can be used to deploy virtual cloud firewalls within minutes. Network Edge can also deploy a virtual firewall in conjunction with physical firewalls.

Branch-to-cloud SD-WAN—To accelerate the transformation of branch offices, Network Edge will soon offer the ability to quickly build interconnection hubs at Equinix and optimize connectivity between branch locations, cloud providers, SaaS providers and thousands of potential business partners via ECX Fabric.

Sachin Gupta, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Enterprise Networking Business, Cisco, said, "As the consumption of applications from multiple clouds continue to grow, enterprise networks are tasked with delivering a fast and secure application experience for their users, wherever they are. Working with Equinix's Network Edge services allows our enterprise customers to achieve proximity to SaaS and cloud providers for their global locations. The service will also provide the ability to automatically deploy and manage Cisco SD-WAN services to ensure an optimal application experience."

Mike Taylor, Chief Technology Officer, World Wide Technology, explained, "Our customers' legacy network designs were built to provide connectivity to their centralized private data centers. Today, applications are rapidly moving to the cloud, and those legacy architectures struggle to scale and address the performance demands of their users. The need for a low-latency, interconnected architecture is driving cloud-edge designs that bring end users and business-critical apps closer together, helping them achieve a faster time to market with a network that can match the agility, pace and reach of cloud-native infrastructures. We believe by using Equinix's new Network Edge services, we can quickly build distributed multicloud infrastructures that help our customers realize the full value of their cloud-based applications."

Bill Long, Vice President, Interconnection Services, Equinix, said, "As we continue evolving the Equinix global interconnection platform, we are introducing new product innovations to help enterprises transform their global businesses at the digital edge. With Network Edge, we're providing both an extraordinary suite of virtual network services, and a compelling value proposition to help enterprises scale globally by deploying digital-ready infrastructures at the edge, within a matter of minutes. By seamlessly integrating Network Edge with our ECX Fabric service, customers can also tap into the world's largest interconnection ecosystem, virtually, and unlock enormous business value through our platform."