Interconnections – The Equinix Blog

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) Anywhere Accelerates Digital Business

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 12:00:52 +0000

More and more companies are basing a large part or all of their applications on containerization. For example, Google, Spotify and Netflix have announced that their platforms have evolved in recent years to a container-based model. Given the large volume of containers they handle, it is crucial to have an orchestrator that can control the management and operational tasks on a day-to-day basis. Some of these companies, such as Google, have been pioneers and have invented and evolved solutions such as Kubernetes. But not everything ends with Kubernetes. Netflix chose to create its own development solution, Titus. Titus is based on…

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3 Scenarios for Handling Multiple SD-WAN Deployments

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 12:00:32 +0000

SD-WAN accelerates digital transformation with agile, programmable wide area networking. It speeds and simplifies deploying distributed networks at the edge to quickly migrate applications to the cloud, consume cloud/SaaS capabilities and deliver a greater user experience. SD-WAN accomplishes these things faster than legacy WANs with less cost and complexity and greater performance, security and scalability. SD-WAN architectures are fundamental building blocks for agile and elastic digital infrastructure. It is the life-line to edge computing, connecting distributed infrastructure, cloud providers and users using more cost-effective programmable networks.

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Digital Infrastructure Use Cases: Distributed Security

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 12:00:31 +0000

Since the beginning of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the cyberattack field has greatly expanded at the edge. One of the key factors in this increase was the large number of companies that had to quickly build network capacity to cater to increasing volumes of remote worker data traffic. And with that rise came many more insecure access points at the edge, such as “bring your own device” home computers, laptops or other mobile devices that were not sanitized for corporate use. Most breaches tend to originate with employees inadvertently making their corporate passwords accessible. In addition, remote workers accessing…

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Cutting Through the Complexity of Customers, Clouds, and Connectivity

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:00:55 +0000

When enterprise customers transition to cloud computing, they expect it to be seamless, reliable, and secure. However, the reality is that enterprise cloud environments are becoming increasingly complex. Customers need guidance on how to establish or transform their IT architecture. They want their IT strategy to impact their bottom line, and they need to see a clear return on investment. According to Global Interconnection Index Volume 4 (GXI Vol.4), a market study by Equinix, enterprises and service providers are building new value and participating in ecosystems, using interconnection to support evolving business models. Service providers show the highest growth rate…

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Equinix and Unitas Global Make On-Demand Network Access Even Easier

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 12:00:46 +0000

A lot has changed in the past decade or so when it comes to IT infrastructure. The emergence of virtualized environments such as cloud, software-defined networks (SDN) and virtual network functions (VNF) have made infrastructure on-demand possible. This is a game changer for today’s service providers and enterprises who need to collaborate with partners and make things easier, faster and more convenient for end users. Even so, putting it all together in a distributed digital infrastructure capable of supporting multiple locations, applications, data sources, clouds and users can be a challenge. Many of our customers and partners have achieved this…

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How to Unlock Digital Possibilities in the Era of Data

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 00:00:46 +0000

In the last decade or so, we entered an era where massive amounts of data, infrastructure and cloud computing are all coalescing into one connected world. According to the World Economic Forum, 463 exabytes of data will be created daily, globally, by 2025 – the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day. Underlined by the recent radical shift in working habits caused by COVID-19, this phenomenon is even expected to accelerate. Due to the staggering amounts of data generated on an hourly basis, businesses are gradually migrating to the cloud––be it public or private––to efficiently and cost-effectively manage information and navigate…

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3 Hybrid Multicloud Scenarios

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 12:00:53 +0000

Cloud has changed the way businesses build, deploy, manage, and collect data. This shift means enterprises need to put cloud resources closer to the user to address latency issues and security requirements without compromising end-to-end high performance. Deploying traditional hardware-based data centers is expensive, time-consuming, and proves insufficient in terms of the scope and reach demands of today’s digital world. The need for hybrid and/or multicloud solutions is evident across global enterprises. According to a recent report from Flexera, 92% of enterprises have a multicloud strategy and 82% of those businesses are deploying hybrid cloud. Of course, not all enterprises approach…

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How Interconnection is Powering the Third Wave of Cloud Adoption

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 12:00:49 +0000

Digital transformation is moving businesses to adopt public clouds for their applications and IT services. With this decision, IT organizations are realizing higher demands for fast and secure interconnectivity to public clouds for mission-critical applications and business continuity services. With a progression of many companies into the third wave of cloud adoption, they are facing an increased need for dependable and private interconnection with their cloud service partners. Wave 1: In the first wave of cloud adoption, traditional businesses were consuming compute and storage services for application development and testing, which did not require a lot of performance or security…

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Future-Proof Your Mission With SDN-enabled Network as a Service

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 12:00:58 +0000

There’s no doubt that federal IT modernization sped up over the past year. In a recent survey of 300 federal IT executives and mission owners, 85% said the COVID-19 pandemic was a watershed moment for government modernization. – and had to scale for remote access. For example, the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) had to manage an additional 100,000 employees who worked remotely in the first few months of the pandemic.i

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Digital Transformation Is Accelerating Colocation and Hyperscale Demand

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 07:00:15 +0000

In 2020, European retail and wholesale data center providers were impaired by supply chain delays and site lock-downs across Europe due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The latest CBRE Q4 Europe Data Centre report showed a total 175 MW of new supply was added in 2020, down 145 MW compared with 2019, despite more optimistic projections from last year’s CBRE Europe report. The impact of the pandemic resulted in a shortfall in new capacity supply – 61 megawatts (MW) less was added across Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris (FLAP) than was projected (234 MW) in January 2020. But today…

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Network, PoP and Infrastructure as a Service

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 12:00:10 +0000

Network service providers (NSPs), which include telecommunications/mobile operators, are going through a renaissance as the acceptance of software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) infrastructures have finally come into their own. Pretty much all of the major global NSPs and telecom operators, such as AT&T, British Telecom, Cisco, Nokia, and Verizon have SDN and/or NFV offerings. This opens the way for modern network-as-a-service (NaaS) solutions that are required for today’s business and personal users, where a more agile and cost-effective access and consumption model is needed. NaaS is based on an on-demand software licensing and delivery model rather than…

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Digital Corridors: Why the Middle East Is A Growing Hotspot for Digital Exchange

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 07:00:17 +0000

Our first “Digital Corridors” post explored how interconnection links Latin America business ecosystems to the world via U.S. hubs. In a similar manner, European metros, particularly the FLAP markets (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris/Marseille) are a gateway for digital traffic from the Middle East. In fact, 83% of the Middle East’s internet bandwidth is still connected to Europe according to TeleGeography. The submarine cable map below highlights this reliance on European destinations for traffic exchange. Middle East traffic is “tromboning” to servers, content origins and Internet Exchanges in Europe, with European and Global Tier 1 network service providers (NSPs) acting…

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The Continued Fight for Racial and Social Injustice

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 22:45:59 +0000

*Below is an internal message from Equinix CEO, Charles Meyers, that was shared with all Equinix global employees on April 20, 2021. The message below has been slightly edited for posting on the Equinix Blog. We are at a pivotal moment in the continued fight for racial and social justice. The news that former Minnesota police officer, Derek Chauvin, was found guilty on all counts in the murder of George Floyd will surely be felt by people all over the world for some time to come. It is a moment for pause and reflection in what will continue to be a…

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5 Ways Edge Computing Will Help Protect the Environment

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 01:00:10 +0000

The theme for this year’s Earth Day is “Restore Our Earth” which is about reducing and reversing our environmental impact on the planet. To see what this impact has been over the past 40 years, NASA’s Climate Time Machine and Google’s Timelapse in Google Earth provide excellent visual perspectives of humanity’s adverse effect on the earth.

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Remote Data Center Infrastructure Management Simplified

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 11:45:39 +0000

Prior to the global COVID-19 pandemic, remote data center management services were already a key component of many businesses’ operations. However, throughout 2020, as lock-downs of companies’ on-premises and colocation data centers spread worldwide, fast and easy access to onsite technical resources to perform mission critical work on their colocation infrastructure was required. These services can include either on-site personnel, such as Equinix Smart Hands®, remote management software, such as Equinix IBX SmartView™, or a simpler way to enter and track orders and service requests online.

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Equinix Recognizes 2020 Partner Award Winners

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 12:00:39 +0000

During the past year, the global pandemic caused businesses to transform their operations almost overnight, catalyzing a period of unprecedented demand for digital infrastructure and connectivity. Organizations that made digital infrastructure mission-critical to their operations maintained business continuity and gained a competitive edge during one of the most disruptive periods in modern times. Despite the need to adapt to the pandemic’s lockdown constraints and record numbers of remote workers, Equinix customers were not only able to adapt and survive but thrive. In large measure, their success was due to the pioneering efforts, resourcefulness and deep expertise of our channel partners….

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Interconnecting the Digital Arteries for Healthcare Organizations of the Future

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 00:00:38 +0000

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to stretch the healthcare sector in unprecedented ways, as it shows no signs of abating any time soon. Strides may have been made in terms of vaccine development, testing, and roll-out programs, but the ripple effect of the global crisis looks set to impact the sector for many years to come. According to Global Interconnection Index Volume 4, a recent market study announced by Equinix, Healthcare & Life Sciences in Asia-Pacific shows accelerating growth with a 48% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2019 and 2023. As providers strive to meet the emerging requirements for telemedicine and…

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DDoS Extortion Attacks Are Driving Security Risks in 2021

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 12:00:35 +0000

In May of 2020, Akamai and Equinix launched a jointly developed cloud-based, interconnected DDoS detection and mitigation solution that helps organizations quickly and easily connect to Akamai’s Prolexic global DDoS service via Equinix Fabric™, enabling businesses to thwart DDoS attacks in real-time. Almost a year later, we’ve seen increased adoption of our joint solution, mainly as a result of DDoS extortion attack trends and activity. DDoS attack campaigns are once again a classic threat actor motivator and are still making headlines and disrupting organizations globally – well into 2021.

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Seattle: A City at the Crossroads of the Americas and Asia-Pacific

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 12:00:02 +0000

Why go to Seattle to build and grow your digital business? As a graduate of the University of Southern California, I am a big Pete Carroll fan and have adopted the Seahawks as one of my favorite NFL teams. And as part of the tech industry for over 20-years, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in Seattle and fell in love with the city. Seattle has many similarities to where I grew up in San Francisco, with its feel and beauty…and great seafood! This is what Seattle means to me, but more importantly, here is what Seattle can…

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Networking for Nerds: Network-as-Code

Mon, 03 May 2021 12:00:57 +0000

During the past decade, the terms cloud, software-defined and DevOps have been taking more and more space in our daily conversations and guiding the decisions that most organizations are making. In a cloud-first world there are different layers of digital infrastructure that make up the overall solution of our systems. Some of these layers have evolved significantly to adapt to the new changes demanded by the market, especially those where the compute and storage reside. Other aspects of digital infrastructure, such as connectivity, have at times been less transcendental in their design and their impact more evident, as their use…

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The Equinix 2020 Sustainability Report

Tue, 04 May 2021 17:00:09 +0000

In a year of unprecedented change from the COVID-19 global pandemic, there’s no doubt that digital technologies are playing an integral part in keeping our society going by enabling remote work, online learning, connecting with our families and friends, and more. At the same time, the pandemic brought our connectedness to the foreground. No one organization, government or community can solve a global issue, like the pandemic, alone. And that’s true about many of the challenges we face today – from climate change and its associated risks to depletion of natural resources to social injustice and inequality.

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Equinix Speeds SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure

Wed, 05 May 2021 12:00:02 +0000

It has been over a year since SAP CEO Christian Klein announced his plans for customers’ to migrate their on-premises SAP applications to the cloud, just prior to the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the economic fallout of the pandemic, 39% of companies in the SAP User Group (DSAG) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland are increasing their IT budgets in 2021 according to the recent DSAG Investment Report.

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Why You Need A Neutral Aggregator for Your Network Modernization

Thu, 06 May 2021 12:00:57 +0000

The benefits of “as a service” (aaS) are generally well-understood –commoditized technology resources that can be spun up or down as needed and billed accordingly are faster to provision and less costly. However, with many providers claiming to offer aaS, the differences and associated value may be less clear. For example, if a network service provider (NSP) has a portal where their customers can request provisioning of an MPLS circuit, is that network as a service (NaaS)? Probably not, especially if it feeds into a manual provisioning process that can take months to complete. But what if the portal…

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Dell Technologies APEX at Equinix Delivers Hybrid Infrastructure-as-a-Service

Fri, 07 May 2021 12:00:23 +0000

The adoption of flexible consumption business models is not stopping with the cloud. Today’s digital leaders are looking toward OPEX-based as-a-service offerings to help them cope with the massive volumes of data that are accumulating at the edge. IT organizations are building infrastructure and hybrid multi-cloud architectures at the edge to deal with this data explosion, putting workloads and data protection where they work best: close to data sources. We recently announced an agreement for Dell Technologies to offer Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers as an option for customers acquiring Dell Technologies APEX Data Storage Services. This gives…

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Keep Your Data Center Systems Operational and Reduce Fire Risk

Mon, 10 May 2021 12:00:02 +0000

With the last year’s “lockdowns” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping data center systems operational to support increasing numbers of remote workers, supply chain partners and critical customers has been the top priority for every business around the world. From healthcare providers to financial services firms to content and media providers, our customers on Platform Equinix® have relied on us to help them serve their users around the clock across the globe, without disruption. Over the last year, we have leveraged some tried and true best practices, especially in the area of fire prevention and suppression to increase the operational…

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Global Tech Trends Survey Shows Digitization Accelerating Worldwide

Tue, 11 May 2021 08:01:18 +0000

Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus once said, “The only thing that is constant is change.” That is certainly an apt description of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in sweeping changes across every industry and community. Organizations around the world had to fast-track their digital transformation to adapt to what has become known as the “new normal.” And while digital technologies enabled us to quickly adjust to new ways of working, learning, connecting with family and friends and more, the pace of change shows no signs of slowing down. In the midst of this rapidly changing landscape, it’s…

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Pesquisa Global Tech Trends mostra aceleração da digitalização em todo o mundo

Tue, 11 May 2021 12:59:23 +0000

O antigo filósofo grego Heráclito de Éfeso disse uma vez: “A única coisa que é constante é a mudança”. Essa é certamente uma descrição adequada de 2020, quando a pandemia da COVID-19 introduziu mudanças radicais em todas os setores e comunidades. Organizações em todo o mundo tiveram que acelerar sua transformação digital para se adaptar ao que ficou conhecido como o “novo normal”. E embora as tecnologias digitais tenham nos possibilitado nos adaptar rapidamente às novas formas de trabalho, aprendizagem, conexão com a família e amigos e muito mais, o ritmo da mudança não mostra sinais de desaceleração. Em…

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Building an AI-ready Infrastructure to Fully Deliver the Value of Data

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:58:56 +0000

AI is poised to unleash the next wave of business transformation, particularly amid the current pandemic. Impacted by supply chain disruptions and continuing social distancing measures, businesses have been accelerating AI development since the outbreak of COVID-19 to help mitigate risks and maintain business continuity. In fact, the AI market is expected to generate total revenues of US$554.3 billion by 2024, with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.5%, according to the IDC. Although AI and Machine Learning (“ML”) provide businesses with opportunities to capitalize on the vast potential of big data, they also pose urgent challenges in…

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The Future of Robots, Cobots and Interconnection

Thu, 13 May 2021 12:00:55 +0000

The term cobot describes collaborative robots; the robots’ cousins built for safe human-robot interaction. In contrast to industrial robots which are isolated from human contact, cobots are made from lightweight materials, with soft edges, gentle movements and equipped with many sensors to avoid collisions. As such they’re perfectly suitable to work alongside humans as “co-workers” without fences or plexiglass barriers. And cobots often receive instructions, or “marching orders”(no pun intended), from a stack of applications with which they are interconnected.

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Los Angeles: Expanding Businesses from the U.S. to APAC… and Beyond

Mon, 17 May 2021 12:00:35 +0000

Why do digital businesses go to Los Angeles to get connected? I’ll always remember watching the Rose Bowl being played on TV in the Los Angeles area from my childhood home in Ohio. I’d soak in that sunswept stadium on the screen, then look at the snow outside our living room window and think, “I’m going to live in LA someday.” So, when my first job offer out of college came from there, I packed up my car and started driving. Today, my family and I live in a small LA-area beach town with a strong sense of community….

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Pure Storage on Equinix Metal: Compute and Storage at the Edge

Tue, 18 May 2021 12:00:11 +0000

Digital transformation is necessitating IT applications and data to be moved from centralized to distributed deployments. The astronomical growth and adoption of public cloud has only accentuated this need. For years, digital leaders at top-tier enterprises and providers have leveraged Equinix’s global platform to deploy and interconnect their foundational infrastructure to build scalable hybrid and multicloud architectures. Equinix Metal™ has enabled customers to more easily take advantage of Equinix’s global reach and rich ecosystems by making automated interconnected bare metal available at software speed worldwide.

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How Equinix and Check Point Are Solving Cloud Security Challenges

Wed, 19 May 2021 16:49:34 +0000

It goes without saying that the cloud has changed the way businesses build, deploy, manage, and collect data. The shift toward the cloud means enterprises need to put resources closer to users and clouds to address latency issues and address security requirements without compromising performance. As IT services are located closer to clouds, enterprises are increasingly considering multicloud architectures to deploy their workloads. According to a recent report from Flexera, 92% of enterprises have a multicloud strategy. These strategies are turning into real-world deployments, as more businesses are adopting this architecture and interconnecting to multiple clouds to better migrate and…

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AWS and Equinix: Collaborations in Hybrid Multicloud Infrastructure

Thu, 20 May 2021 12:00:07 +0000

The evolving landscape of interconnected, hybrid multicloud infrastructures is spawning an ever-expanding marketplace of services, features and cloud deployment options. Service providers are launching capabilities and solutions tailored to the evolving needs of customers, whether those are private enterprises or public agencies. The strategies for solving data-intensive storage, compute and communications requirements at scale are becoming increasingly tuned to specific deployment situations shaped by traffic type, geographic location and throughput requirements. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Equinix have developed multiple strategies and collaborative solutions to meet this evolving environment. This blog summarizes some of the key ongoing joint initiatives and new…

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Silicon Valley: The Hub of Western North America

Mon, 24 May 2021 16:38:45 +0000

Digital corridors, where data traffic flows between major metros or across countries, are creating new revenue opportunities for both regional and multinational businesses. These digital corridors between metros around the world are creating an extended form of conurbation, extending the reach of metro areas across terrestrial and subsea routes that span neighboring countries and continents. And just as the urban sprawl of many countries started along major transportation routes — riverways, railways and highways — we are now seeing this same type of urbanization along major metro area digital exchange routes, such as Silicon Valley in the Western U.S.,…

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How to Build Your Digital Enterprise Resiliency with Equinix and Microsoft

Wed, 26 May 2021 00:00:44 +0000

Over the past few decades, the world has witnessed a major digital transformation at a rapid pace never seen before. With businesses becoming increasingly software enabled, success in the current market depends largely on the resiliency, security, and flexibility of the infrastructure supporting dynamic software and applications. However, traditional approaches struggle to integrate business resiliency with new digital realities. This was especially true during the pandemic, when CIOs and decision makers needed to step up to enable a trusted environment with agility and resilience in case of contingencies. The growing focus on future-proofing infrastructure is also reflected in businesses’ digital…

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Irish Enterprises Are Accelerating Digital Transformation Amidst The Pandemic

Wed, 26 May 2021 09:00:07 +0000

In just a few months, COVID-19 brought about monumental changes in the way people conduct business. A 2021 IDC Technology Spotlight report sponsored by Equinix, observed an accelerated adoption of cloud, both on-premises private cloud and public cloud, to help enterprises in Ireland capture maximum value and modernize their applications and data. Given the high stakes, the case for wide scale deployment of robust digital infrastructure couldn’t be more pronounced. The good news is that, across Europe, 62% of organizations plan to increase or sustain their spend on public and private cloud services. Moreover, 72% of organizations plan to increase…

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Accelerating Digital Transformation in Healthcare and Life Sciences

Wed, 26 May 2021 16:54:57 +0000

In 2020, IT groups in healthcare and life sciences organizations advanced their digital transformation initiatives. The COVID-19 pandemic was an accelerant for digitalization at many healthcare and life sciences organizations and, as a result, projects planned for one year or longer were suddenly fast-tracked.

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Equinix Internet Exchange® Traffic Sustains Growth Across Regions

Thu, 27 May 2021 07:00:57 +0000

Pandemic drives internet exchange traffic gains across globe As 2021 rolls on, it’s worth taking stock of how the past year’s unusual global circumstances have affected the world of internet exchange (IX) data-traffic services. In short, this has been a period of significant growth. The elevated levels of traffic coursing through Equinix Internet Exchange platforms illustrate clearly how IP traffic has grown and what kinds of data are transiting IX hubs across disparate geographies and cultures. From South America to the U.S., to Europe, to Asia, we’ve seen an expansion of traffic through Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) facilities. At its…

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Scaling Your Business the Easy Way—with SD-WAN as a Service

Fri, 28 May 2021 12:00:39 +0000

SD-WANs are a critical component of digital transformation. Using software-defined networking (SDN) and virtual network functions (VNF) concepts to build and manage a wide area network (WAN) helps businesses successfully transition their infrastructure to the cloud by securely connecting hybrid multicloud architectures. But SD-WANs can do more than just facilitate a transition to the cloud —they make it faster and less expensive to expand your business.

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EU Green Week: Moving Toward Zero Pollution and Carbon Neutrality

Mon, 31 May 2021 07:00:27 +0000

This year’s EU Green Week 2021 is focusing on how the world can address the persistent threats that climate change and pollution pose across our planet today. The recent European Union (EU) Action Plan toward “Zero Pollution for Air, Water and Soil” is targeted at building a “Healthy Planet for All.” This is part of the European Green Deal calling for the EU to better monitor, report, prevent and remedy air, water, soil and consumer products pollution, among other things.

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Digital Infrastructure Use Cases: Distributed Data

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 12:00:35 +0000

For most organizations the IT architecture has flipped. The most important data for their business is not in the headquarters or even the branch office; it lives and evolves at the edge in mobile cell towers, utility substations, remote kiosks or monitoring devices — sometimes continents away from headquarters. The edge pumps out data that inspires innovation, drives revenue, provides insights for sound decisions, and ultimately, delivers greater business value.

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Equinix Ranks on FORTUNE 500 List for the First Time

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 11:03:55 +0000

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10 Photos of New IBX® Data Center in Silicon Valley

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 12:01:08 +0000

Some say Silicon Valley is no longer a location, it’s a state of mind. That may be true in many respects, but when it comes to digital infrastructure, it’s most definitely a location and a very important one at that. Silicon Valley is the third largest colocation metro in the Americas and serves as the business hub for more than 700 Equinix customers. With Digital Transformation accelerating at an unprecedented pace, we’re empowering our enterprise partners and customers by opening a new International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center that delivers unrivaled power and efficiency in the epicenter of technology. SV11 is…

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Enterprises “All In” on Public Cloud? Not so fast!

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 12:00:35 +0000

As businesses digitally transform, the enterprise is making significant investments in the public cloud for initiatives and use cases, which include application portfolio migration and modernization, distributed services and security, elastic capacity and highly available data. These are just a handful of the enterprise investments in public cloud. As enterprises traverse cloud adoption, there are common challenges they encounter. Flexera’s 2021 State of the Cloud Report ranks those challenges between enterprises and SMBs, which are amplified for larger organizations.

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Harness Your Government Hybrid Digital Infrastructure Ecosystems

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 16:29:58 +0000

In the last installment of our network-as-a-service (NaaS) series for the Federal Government, Don Wiggins talked about a state of nirvana, where a “service-chained” digital ecosystem of providers integrate and enable their services on a carrier-neutral platform. This is where all the right partners are to connect to everything you need to succeed. It is where agencies can leverage a “neutral aggregator” to find, procure and deploy local, regional or global digital infrastructure in minutes versus months. This is the type of business model that we’ve curated on Platform Equinix® for Government agencies who just want to cut through the…

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LGBTQ+ at Equinix: Charting Our Journey One Step at a Time

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 07:05:48 +0000

As we come into June, widely recognized as “Pride Month,” I have been reflecting on the power of the word PRIDE…openness, boldness, vibrance and celebration—sentiments that history has denied LGBTQ+ people for centuries and, in many cases, continues to. Pride Month offers us a pause to consider the journey we have been on, celebrate the progress made, and prepare for the work still needed to be done. I have also been reflecting on Equinix’s own journey. In 2019, we launched PrideConnect, an Equinix employee connection network (EECN) focused on creating a supportive, positive space for dialogue, learning and allyship for…

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How to Accelerate AI with a Future-Proof Digital Infrastructure

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 00:00:59 +0000

Benefiting from its robust network infrastructure and geographical proximity to mainland China, Hong Kong has been rapidly emerging as a regional tech hub. Over the past decade, the HKSAR government has been ramping up its efforts to accelerate technology and innovation advancement. In the last three years alone, it has allocated over HK$100 billion to support key innovations and technology areas to propel the city into a smart future – with Artificial Intelligence (AI) being a dominant focus. According to a KPMG report, 78% of businesses in Hong Kong believe in the benefits of AI, particularly in improving quality…

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Why the Future is Hybrid

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 12:00:31 +0000

The term hybrid conjures up many images—from hybrid plant species to hybrid cars and, a bit closer to home, hybrid digital-infrastructure architectures. The word evokes the blending of one thing into another. Maybe it’s genetics, or fuel types, or in the case of IT, a foundational element of architectural design. The result is often an in-between state—not necessarily one thing, nor the other, but something new. Think about the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) for a moment. Hybrid cars are powered by both conventional fossil fuels via internal combustion engines and by battery-based electric motors. There are both potential benefits…

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Network Edge Opens a Path for New Business in Latin America

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 12:00:38 +0000

We are excited to announce that Equinix recently launched Network Edge services in the São Paulo metro area, addressing the growing opportunities in this increasingly important market. Network Edge from Equinix will smooth the path for the growing number of multinational companies who want to establish a presence in Brazil.

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Enhance Enterprise Internet Access Agility and Resilience

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 07:00:33 +0000

When I speak to customers, I hear how the pandemic has changed the way we all work. Working from home (WFH) is the new norm. While this new normal poses many challenges, it is imperative that enterprise IT managers ensure that the right infrastructure and connectivity are available to meet an evolving business landscape. Another prominent feature of the recent past is the increasing adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS)-styled applications—largely due to inherent benefits of SaaS that help make enterprises more agile and that facilitate the process of digital transformation. In a recent press release, Gartner analysts suggest that software as a…

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Atlanta: Prepared to Meet A New Era of Digital Business Demands

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 12:00:09 +0000

Why is Atlanta a hot spot for digital business? Working in the technology industry has given us the opportunity to live and work in some of the country’s great metropolitan areas. Given the chance to expand Equinix’s business profile in Atlanta, we’ve been charmed by a city that exceeded our expectations as both an extremely business-friendly and diverse environment with a huge array of entertainment options. Its vibrant music scene, wide choice of restaurants and museums, and the closeness of the beautiful North Georgia Mountains, makes Atlanta a cultural center for its business community and residents.

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Helping NSPs Deliver Services Faster, in More Locations

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 12:00:29 +0000

Just when the telecommunications industry and its customers were progressing on their digital transformation journeys, the global COVID-19 pandemic increased the pressure on telecommunications carriers and other network service providers (NSPs) to deliver more services faster, everywhere. Luckily, these two driving forces complement each other. By leveraging software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) infrastructures, NSPs and major telcos, as part of the NSP ecosystem, gain the ability to deliver access to traditional telco services (e.g., MPLS networks) and a whole new set of virtual network services (e.g., SD-WAN, virtual cloud routing). And with programmable software delivery, they…

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Hyperscale Data Center Expansion Goes into Hyperdrive

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 06:01:16 +0000

Digital transformation is driving unprecedented enterprise adoption of hyperscale clouds, and as the world’s digital infrastructure company, we are accelerating our xScale™ data center growth to meet the demand. Over the past two years, Equinix has launched the development and operation of xScale data centers worldwide, representing an investment of $3 billion, and we have even more ambitious plans into the future.

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How to Solve for Virtual Connection Migration

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 12:00:23 +0000

There are many reasons for upping your network capacity. For example, increases in remote user traffic, such as experienced during the global pandemic, or an increase in streaming video binge watching that generates high-capacity, latency-sensitive workloads. Or maybe your objective is to reduce your network bandwidth capacity during a development project that is just coming to an end. Whatever the compelling network optimization reason is, migrating to a different virtual connection speed doesn’t have to be a big deal.

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Equinix Fabric Ushers in Global Expansion to Canada

Wed, 16 Jun 2021 12:00:51 +0000

When you think of Canada, what immediately comes to mind for many are breath-taking landscapes, abundant natural resources and world-class ice hockey. However, what some may not realize is that Canada is home to a growing economy—ranked #10 by the World Population Review—with a $1.71 trillion GDP. The Conference Board of Canada estimates that Canada’s economy will expand by 5.8% this year and 4.0% in 2022, thanks to the rollout of vaccines, which has led to a gradual reopening of the economy and boosted confidence. The business outlook for Canada is full of possibilities and Equinix is working to help…

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Equinix® and Cloudflare Deliver Secure Digital Infrastructure Interconnection

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 12:00:42 +0000

Enterprises are rapidly responding to the opportunities and challenges presented by hybrid and multicloud architectures. Organizations successfully making this transition are implementing an edge strategy that places strategic security control points closer to users, clouds and networks. Evolving enterprise architectures toward the edge requires effective security and privacy safeguards at the front doors of both the internet and the enterprise. Organizations must also secure their applications and data and conform with both company-mandated and governmental compliance regulations. To ensure security and privacy safeguards, enterprises must replicate equivalent controls to those traditionally implemented onsite (or within a private domain)—but do so in…

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Working Toward a Brighter Future

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 12:00:23 +0000

It is impossible to look forward without recognizing the events of the past 18 months and the lasting impact they have made around the world. The global COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed the way we live and work. During this challenging time, one of the things that has grounded me and, I believe Equinix as a company, has been our corporate commitment to be “In Service To” each other, to our customers, partners, shareholders, and to the communities in which we live and operate. In particular, our dedication to put the interests and wellbeing of our employees and customers…

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One Decade. One Billion.

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 12:00:16 +0000

“The LATAM market” is a generalized phrase we hear a lot in business meetings and earnings calls. But the truth is, Latin America is not a market. It’s many markets. Each in their own phase of maturity and growth, especially when it comes to technology adoption, cloud adoption and most importantly, Digital Transformation. Brazil, the biggest economy in Latin America and the 12th largest in the world Mexico…

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Building Towards Global Climate Neutrality

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 12:00:09 +0000

At Equinix we are strongly committed to sustainability in how we think about many aspects of the work we do. So it was with great anticipation for those most engaged in this work that Equinix recently announced its commitment to reach global climate neutrality by 2030 and achieve science-based targets that align with the goals of the Paris Agreement – “limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.” Based on those targets, we are focused on how much and how quickly we need to reduce our company’s greenhouse gas (GHG)…

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Modernizing Your Infrastructure Can Change the World

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 15:00:19 +0000

When I tell my teenage boys to “clean up your room,” they don’t exactly listen right away. It isn’t until there have been real consequences—losing their allowance debit card in the mess or running out of clean shirts for their first coed party—that they’ve begun to understand the value of some purposeful structure amid the chaos. A friend recently turned me on to Admiral McRaven’s now famous 2014 commencement speech to the graduates at the University of Texas and suggested his book as an “inspirational primer” for my kids. The Admiral’s promise is that making one’s bed can ostensibly…

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Equinix and NVIDIA AI LaunchPad Accelerate AI from Hybrid Cloud to Edge

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 12:00:25 +0000

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become mainstream. According to IDC, “By 2025, at least 90% of new enterprise apps will embed AI; by 2024, over 50% of user interface interactions will use AI-enabled computer vision, speech, natural language processing, and AR/VR.” Service bots, fraud detection, retail checkouts and recommenders for online shopping are just a few of the innovations coming out of AI technology to automate repetitive actions. This is why we are excited that Equinix® will be the first digital infrastructure company to offer the NVIDIA AI LaunchPad’s “instant AI infrastructure” in our more than 220 interconnected data centers worldwide.

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Revolutionizing Healthcare Through Digital Transformation

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 01:46:21 +0000

The healthcare ecosystem has had multiple setbacks since 2020, from the initial spread of COVID-19 to the recent emergence of highly contagious variants. Adapting to the new way of work, by itself, was a concern that every industry had to deal with. But the healthcare industry faced additional pressing concerns like planning the logistics for COVID-19 testing and vaccination. Because of these disruptions, many of the healthcare companies that did not have a digital-first ecosystem in place were compelled to adapt to a new era. Transforming healthcare At a recent digital roundtable hosted by Equinix and organized by Jicara Media, leaders…

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Meeting the Challenges and Opportunities of NaaS, PaaS and IaaS

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 12:00:38 +0000

In a recent Fierce Telecom Webinar, I had the pleasure to participate in a panel titled “NAAS, PAAS, IAAS: Challenges and Opportunities” and talk about how we see network service providers (NSPs) helping our customers deploy digital infrastructure today, in particular, hybrid cloud architectures. We can all agree that everyone wants everything as a service to be easy. They want to be able to access and integrate their choice of NaaS, PaaS, IaaS, collaboration, network and business platforms using APIs-driven tools and pay for these services as they consume them. So there lies the real challenge: How do you interconnect…

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The Future of Logistics and Transportation

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 07:00:00 +0000

Industry 4.0 focuses on the industrial automation of system and process digitalization and data exchange. Smarter factories and interconnected supply chains enable manufacturers, logistics and transportation companies, and their supply chain partners to reduce lead time, better respond to customer demand, improve efficiency, and prepare for unforeseen events. Digital technologies such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) wearables, drones/robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), AI/ML, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, AR/ VR headsets, and edge and cloud computing are driving Industry 4.0 digital transformation within the logistics and transportation industries. But more specifically, they are empowering industry service providers to deliver greater employee productivity and…

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A Better Way to Ensure Accurate Time Synchronization

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 12:00:00 +0000

Time synchronization may be a “nice to have” for some applications, but for many vertical market applications, accurate time synchronization is absolutely critical. Before Time as-a-Service, options for time synchronization ranged from unreliable to quite expensive. Equinix has come up with a better “as-a-service” model for customers to ensure accurate time synchronization is possible at a reasonable price – Equinix Precision Time™. Finance is one industry where an accurate log of the timing and order of transactions such as withdrawals, deposits, or trades is important. Manufacturing factory floors require a precisely timed series of operations, in a particular order, to…

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Powering Digital Transformation with Network Modernization

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 07:00:20 +0000

The disruption sparked by the global COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented in every aspect of our daily lives — touching our work, education, healthcare, social interactions and many of the staples that we depend on within a delicate global supply chain. As a result, IT organizations in every industry worldwide were forced to accelerate their digital transformation strategies. The Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS) reported on 2,600 tech leaders’ impressions of the impact of COVID-19 on their digital infrastructure plans worldwide. According to the results, six in 10 leaders said that they are revising their IT strategies as a result…

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Denver: Driving Sustainability for a New Approach Digital Business

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 13:00:24 +0000

Why is Denver a hot spot for digital business? When I think of Denver, I see stunning mountain views, a dizzying array of professional and recreational sports options, a thriving restaurant and arts scene, and a community of health-conscious people who have moved there to enjoy a more active, outdoor lifestyle. I also see Denver as a metro area that is flourishing as home to 11 Fortune 500 companies, a top U.S. tech hub supporting more than 4,000 organizations, and a region that was named number two by Inc. for highest rate of entrepreneurship.

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IDC MarketScape Names Equinix a Data Center Colocation and Interconnection Services Leader

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 11:59:40 +0000

Just before the pandemic arrived, in February 2020, IDC published its inaugural IDC MarketScape Worldwide Colocation and Interconnection Services 2019-2020 Vendor Assessment. The world changed drastically immediately thereafter, and the digital transformation journey accelerated for a majority of enterprise businesses as services went online and large numbers of employees moved almost overnight to working remotely. Colocation, infrastructure and interconnection services became more important than ever during this shift. In its second assessment of the colocation and interconnection services market for 2021, IDC again recognizes the even more crucial role colocation and interconnection service providers play in supporting digital transformation. This…

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Fast-tracking our journey for a sustainable, inclusive and caring future

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 00:00:04 +0000

Technological innovations and breakthroughs have brought us closer together, even at a time when many of us are socially distancing. We now live and work in a hyper-connected world where geographical boundaries are blurred. It’s easier than ever to bring people together, collaborate, and form communities to bring about positive change. Even a single small action can make a major impact, allowing us all to play our part in building a more inclusive and caring future. I personally believe it is critical to create a better future for the next generation, and am grateful to work for a company that…

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How to Converse in Cloud: Cloud Adjacent Infrastructure

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 12:00:44 +0000

Many companies are still deciding whether to migrate their workloads to the cloud or keep them on-premises. Fortunately, it is no longer about staying on one side of the spectrum. Instead, companies can take advantage of the on-demand infrastructure and services from a cloud provider while keeping all their data on-premises, perhaps for data sovereignty or compliance reasons. When companies decide to work with infrastructure that is adjacent to the cloud, the possibilities of integrating with other products and services could be countless. For instance, a company might choose to host their databases on-premises and interconnect with AWS and other…

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6 Key Digital Payments and Banking Trends Changing Global Banking

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 07:00:11 +0000

The global financial services sector faces significant pressure from rapidly changing consumer expectations, evolving regulations, increased competition and the financial impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, new customer payment preferences are bringing acute forces to bear on financial institutions and the entire world of transaction management. Recently released survey findings from Juniper Research suggest that over 50% of households are considering a move away from bricks and mortar-style financial institutions. While that survey focuses on U.S. consumers, the same influences are bearing on European communities and financial institutions with the momentum for digital transformation gaining increased global traction.

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NetApp Keystone at Equinix Delivers Storage-as-a-Service

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 12:00:06 +0000

As technology continues to write the business playbook, enterprise data centers are rapidly becoming essential to implementing effective hybrid and multicloud operational models and integrating into public cloud services. Several years ago, NetApp and Equinix initially developed one of the first enterprise hybrid cloud solutions to address this migration—an initiative that featured the sharing of data with NetApp Private Storage (NPS) on Platform Equinix®. That collaboration enabled customers to securely retain data on private NetApp storage platforms located “next to” rather than “in” the public cloud. Now, as enterprises continue their cloud journey, we are expanding our collaboration with NetApp…

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How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek: Digital Ecosystems

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 12:00:59 +0000

Today, success for the enterprise means investing in digital technologies to enter new markets, engage customers in unprecedented ways, and explore new business approaches. This actually involves inverting the traditional enterprise model—transforming from being siloed and fixed to one that is integrated and dynamic. Now, new forms of digital business engagement and exchange (direct peering) are possible thanks to advanced digital ecosystems that enable all-new levels of growth and ROI. For in the digital age, the leaders that control the market have the best virtual integration, where they assemble and manage the largest network of product and service providers.

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Leveraging Automated Bare Metal for Digital Transformation

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 12:00:35 +0000

In 2020, organizations were faced with sudden large-scale deployments of remote work to provide seamless, secure access to applications, systems and data, increasing demand for digital infrastructure while ensuring business continuity. These factors drove organizations to accelerate digital transformation initiatives regarding DevOps, hybrid multicloud architecture, security and expanding digital infrastructures to the edge. With such diverse areas of focus, it’s clear that digital transformation efforts can increase IT complexity. Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) reported that nearly two-thirds of respondents indicated the complexity of their environments were either “more complex than two years ago’’ or “significantly more complex than two years…

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Equinix Employees at the Games

Fri, 09 Jul 2021 15:53:28 +0000

If you are anything like me, you are excited about the upcoming summer games. And, while I was disappointed that the 2020 games were postponed due to the pandemic, I appreciate that the wellbeing of our global athletes took precedent over the events themselves. It showed that this year’s theme, “stay healthy, stay strong, stay active” was more than just a tagline – it was a truth. The games represent a perfect combination of healthy competition and the pursuit of excellence – two things I greatly value. As a point guard and First Team All American in college, I understand…

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Why Now is the Right Time to Operationalize the Promise of AI

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 12:00:52 +0000

For some time, government agencies have been testing the waters to leverage the promise and capabilities of AI in sandbox environments. In fact, 45% of the largest 142 U.S. Federal agencies have expressly manifested interest in AI/ML by planning, piloting or implementing such techniques. If that percentage includes your agency, you may have even hired several hundred data scientists to innovate and incubate your projects, which led to promising results. Then what’s stopping you from advancing out of the testing phase and moving swiftly to operationalize your AI mission? It’s not likely there’s a lack of funding. As mentioned in a…

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A Better, Faster Way for Retailers to Connect with Customers

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 12:00:51 +0000

The pandemic changed everything for brick-and-mortar retail businesses. Retailers had to immediately embrace digital transformation, or risk failing. Initially, moving to the cloud was appealing to some businesses because of the cost savings on hardware. However, they quickly realized that they needed to better manage the total costs of moving to the cloud. These costs could include consuming cloud infrastructure (compute, storage, apps), deploying virtual networking and VPN devices in multiple clouds, and data egress charges, just to name a few. The good news is there is an efficient, cost-effective and secure migration path to the cloud. Virtualizing the network…

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Getting the Value Out of an Application Exchange

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 12:00:50 +0000

When it comes down to it, application responsiveness and the user experience are what really matter. If you don’t have the best possible performance when exchanging application workloads among clouds, partners and users, then you’ll either be faced with a lot of customer service calls or worse, lost business. By building out and interconnecting digital infrastructure at strategic exchange points with dense concentrations of ecosystem participants, you’ll be able to deliver high transaction rates, real-time processing and efficient application exchange.

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How to Leverage a Platform Strategy to Fuel Your Growth

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 00:00:59 +0000

Before 2020, probably no one could have imagined that the New York Stock Exchange would have to close its historic trading floor for two months and move its operations fully online due to a global pandemic. As COVID-19 continues to dramatically impact the way we work and live, businesses have been challenged to respond and adapt to a new world. Our latest Global Tech Trends Survey conducted with 2,600 IT decision makers indicates that 64% of global digital leaders expect long-term changes to working arrangements, making digital transformation no longer a faraway goal, but a reality long overdue. Although many…

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Melbourne or Sydney? It’s the wrong question for the best financial services

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:10:12 +0000

From a financial services perspective, Sydney has traditionally been home to Australia’s stock exchanges and regulatory bodies, but Melbourne is an increasingly attractive destination for new players. Melbourne now ranks 10th for banking in the Global Financial Centres Index – three places higher than Sydney – as this momentum builds. Fast-growing industry disrupters including Afterpay, Airwallex and Marqeta have all recently set up or expanded their presence in Melbourne. Swiss fintech Tradeplus24 advised other startups to do the same after landing here two years ago. Whether you’re a big bank or a challenger brand, or a fintech or a payments service…

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Get Better Visibility into Your Data Center Operations

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 12:00:40 +0000

Knowledge is power. At Equinix, we empower our customers to make data-driven decisions based on what is happening with their equipment inside our International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers. IBX SmartView™ is a standalone, single-pane-of-glass, fully integrated Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software platform that provides near real-time environmental and operating information about our customers’ colocation footprint at Equinix IBX locations. Customers can access it via an independent portal application, through the Equinix Customer Portal, or through IBX SmartView streaming APIs. Source: Equinix IBX SmartView provides data that is specific to a deployment at the local zone, cage and cabinet levels,…

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Taking the Right Approach to Cloud Migration

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 12:00:23 +0000

Cloud migration is a journey with rewards and risks. To take full advantage, plan for this journey by establishing your cloud maturity model, setting goals and milestones, developing a cloud strategy, and then running it like an ongoing project. There will always be more applications to modernize and new requirements with the continuous evolution of the business. Next, establish a framework for planning, process prioritization and achieving early returns and use it as a baseline for designing and executing your future migration activities that, more than likely, will include establishing a hybrid multicloud digital infrastructure. Securing connectivity to multicloud Most enterprises have…

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Getting to know our new VP of Asia Pacific Partner Sales – Sophie Ben Sadia

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:00:56 +0000

Equinix recently announced the creation of a new Global Channel Organization to better align our partner objectives and bring our partner ecosystem together across all regions. Under the leadership of Jules Johnston, our Senior VP of Global Channel, we have welcomed three new vice presidents of channel sales: Sophie Ben Sadia (Asia Pacific), Kevin Thames (AMER) and Orla Ni Chorcora (EMEA) In this Q&A series, Sophie Ben Sadia talks with Cindy Liu, Director of Partner Marketing in Asia Pacific, about the importance of joining forces with partners to leverage our powerful platform and trailblaze innovative solutions that create value added…

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Getting to know our new VP of Americas Channel Sales – Kevin Thames

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:00:25 +0000

Equinix recently announced the creation of a new Global Channel Organization to better align our partner objectives and bring our partner ecosystem together across all regions. Under the leadership of Jules Johnston, our Senior VP of Global Channel, we have recently welcomed three new vice presidents of channel sales: Kevin Thames (AMER), Orla Ni Chorcora (EMEA) and Sophie Ben Sadia (Asia Pacific). In this Q&A series, Kevin Thames – in conversation with Deirdre Crossan, Senior Director of Americas Partner Marketing– gives us an insight into how he embedded the Power of 3 approach to accelerate channel growth across the region…

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Getting to know our new VP of EMEA Channel Sales – Orla Ni Chorcora

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:00:24 +0000

Equinix recently announced the creation of a new Global Channel Organization to better align our partner objectives and bring our partner ecosystem together across all regions. Under the leadership of Jules Johnston, our Senior VP of Global Channel, we have welcomed three new vice presidents of channel sales: Orla Ni Chorcora (EMEA), Sophie Ben Sadia (Asia Pacific) and Kevin Thames (AMER). In this Q&A series, Orla Ni Chorcora – in conversation with Simon Downham, Director of Partner Marketing EMEA – gives us an insight into her plans for building an Equinix channel for success in EMEA, and how go-to-market partnerships…

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Positioning the Equinix Channel for Success

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:00:23 +0000

In a way that mirrors the evolving nature of our digital landscape, we are evolving our business at Equinix to meet changing customer and partner needs. With these changes, we are aggressively activating our channel, accelerating our vision and goals and inspiring a partner-first mindset at Equinix, with cross-functional, global channel alignment and accountability. As the world’s digital infrastructure company, we provide a globally consistent platform of vendor neutral data centers with physical and virtual offers that are interconnected via our secure, software-defined Equinix Fabric™ which enables technology and industry ecosystems to blossom and scale. We have the most dynamic,…

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Embracing a Flexible Future of Digital Transformation

Thu, 22 Jul 2021 00:00:14 +0000

Now, more than ever, technology plays a fundamental role in powering the future of business. According to the latest release of Worldwide ICT Spending Guide Industry and Company Size, IDC forecasts Asia/Pacific* ICT Spending to grow by over 7.1%, to reach $950 billion in 2021 and expected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2025. Due to the acceleration of digital journeys and the need for faster technology adoption by businesses in the region, demand has risen exponentially for more varieties of digital infrastructure offerings. To meet these businesses’ needs, Equinix has recently launched several new edge services, namely Network Edge and…

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The Future of Augmented and Virtual Reality

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 12:00:33 +0000

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) offer paths to experiences that, while not exactly “real,” access alternative and blended experiential domains that can enhance everyday life. The travel industry, spectator sports and, of course, digital gaming are arenas ripe with abundant opportunities on the cusp of genuinely universal accessibility. But leisure and entertainment applications are far from the only ways that AR and VR will become pervasive in our digitally dominated world. Here, I touch on three industrial applications of AR and VR being explored by digital leaders around the globe —where lives are being saved, manual tasks…

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Virtual Networks Keep You Agile in a Rapidly Changing Environment

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 12:00:04 +0000

When the pandemic started, physical offices closed almost overnight and forced IT infrastructure to move to the edge. Now, not everyone is going back to the office. According to the Equinix 2020-21 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 64% of IT leaders today are planning for long-term changes to where and how people work. At the same time as workers were moving to home offices, businesses were experiencing another repercussion of the pandemic — disrupted supply chains. Most businesses can’t afford to wait the six to nine months it now takes to get physical equipment like chips. In this context, it’s…

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Delivering Intelligent Infrastructure Experiences

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 12:00:37 +0000

At Equinix, we are always thinking about the future, and how to evolve our organizational infrastructure to meet our business goals and continue to thrive. As we move into the second phase of our digital transformation, we are well positioned to leverage the digital infrastructure that we set up in phase one to execute on improving business outcomes by delivering personalized intelligent experiences – interactions with technology that use data to help us execute tasks faster and more efficiently. In their 2020 Accenture Research and Oxford Economics Intelligent Operations Survey, Accenture defines “future-ready” organizations as those rooted in AI and…

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Smart Manufacturing: How Data Sharing Can Unlock Business Value

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 07:00:11 +0000

The manufacturing industry is facing major challenges driven by rising customer expectations, the need to keep up with technological evolution, fierce competition and, most recently, the global pandemic. Producers both large and small are being forced to respond to changes faster. The ability to quickly collect and analyze data and then make decisions based on the result is fundamental. Although manufacturers are on the right track, there is still work to be done in the area of digitization. How can manufacturers make the most out of digital innovations like industrial internet of things (IIoT)? How can they profit from…

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Equinix, Google Cloud Leverage Seattle Metro Hub for IoT

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 12:00:03 +0000

Business connectivity is all about efficient data transit. For every enterprise with local, regional and global elements, establishing and sustaining secure, highly available interconnectivity is essential. When I talk with customers and partners, I hear concerns about which elements to migrate to cloud services, or how to best access content providers, or uncertainty about the ideal strategy for balancing functions that must remain on-premises, such as databases, versus those that roll out to cloud applications. Situated in 63 key metros worldwide, Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers provide the foundation for secure, reliable and highly available interconnection to essential IT…

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The Clouds are Gathering in Melbourne: It’s a Good Thing

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 23:00:39 +0000

With digital hitting overdrive as enterprises continue to make digital transformation a top priority, Melbourne is in the middle of a cloud service provider capacity boom as titans like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google and Oracle rapidly build out cloud regions across the city. Whilst Sydney has enjoyed significant growth in data centre capacity and benefited from hyperscale cloud service provider regions for some years, ranking the city alongside major global markets like Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong, attention is now shifting to Melbourne. This is due to rising demand from data-centric digital leaders in industries such as financial…

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Physical Infrastructure at Software Speed

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 07:00:33 +0000

This blog was originally published on Data Center Dynamics One of the great things about working at Equinix is the enormous variety of backgrounds —educationally, professionally and personally — that we discover in our colleagues. But sometimes we also find that we have things in common, including, among the authors, a childhood hobby for LEGO® bricks. And we’re not alone in that fascination. For thousands of years, humans have used the brick as a fundamental building block for their civilizations, such as the ancient Egyptians who used bricks to great effect in developing wonders as the Great Pyramids. Today Equinix is…

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Safeguarding Your Industry 4.0 Journey with Equinix and Honeywell

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 00:00:36 +0000

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Industry 4.0, is breaking new ground, interconnecting cyber and physical systems for greater data sharing, and offering a springboard for businesses looking for greater agility, business visibility and productivity. While this convergence has enhanced connectivity and interoperability, it has also opened up new cyberattack vulnerabilities and altered risk models. In a recent study by Ponemon Institute, the inability to control security, safety and privacy is seen as a barrier to operational technology (OT) or information technology (IT) convergence by 47% of respondents.1 As cyberattacks on OT environments gain pace across all sectors, 56% of IT and…

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4 NSP Best Practices for Successful 5G Deployments

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 12:00:25 +0000

5G poses both opportunities and challenges for how telcos, network service providers (NSPs) and enterprises evolve their respective mobility services and connectivity solutions. The potential enhanced bandwidth and reduced latency gains are unequivocal, but the challenge of scaling 5G infrastructure is not trivial. As 5G technology deployment starts to more fully develop, it’s useful to understand how IT decision makers across a spectrum of industries and global regions view the relevance of 5G in their planning. We recently released the results of our 2020-21 Tech Trends Survey , which includes insights into how IT leaders around the globe see 5G…

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The Colocation Advantage: Seamlessly Connecting to the Cloud

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 12:00:05 +0000

Turns out, HOW you connect to cloud services matters. Nearly all cloud service providers make it easy to connect, yet cloud services present a complex web of decision making which needs to be anchored in sound architectural choices. To better understand the technology trends affecting businesses, Equinix captured insights from 2,600 IT decision makers from diverse enterprises across 26 countries in the Americas, Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions. Let’s take a closer look at some of the top priorities and challenges that these digital leaders reported and use the lens of colocation to better understand how connecting with cloud services…

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Data Replication – No Longer Just for Disaster Recovery

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 12:00:12 +0000

If you turn the clock back ten years or more, you’ll find that the most common use of big network pipes back then was for data replication, usually for disaster recovery. Businesses used those pipes for near-constant replication of terabytes of data from a company’s primary data center to a secondary. These were the days when ALL of your applications ran in one place and served your users and customers from there. Today applications run everywhere. Digital transformers are heavily leveraging hybrid multicloud environments and digital leaders are taking greater advantage of the edge, which brings with it the benefits…

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Cloud vs. Edge

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 12:00:25 +0000

The amount of data generated at the edge by both machines, businesses and humans is increasing at an exponential pace. Hence, data has gravity, and for cost, performance, and privacy reasons, it is increasingly untenable to move massive datasets to a centralized location for processing. We are entering the world of computing where instead of moving data to a centralized location where compute is plentiful, it is desirable and possible to move the compute close to where the data is generated. This phenomenon is accelerating the era of edge computing. Edge computing fuels the Fourth Industrial Revolution and massive opportunities According…

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How to Converse in Cloud: Precipitation vs. Repatriation

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 12:00:11 +0000

Recent personal engagements with analysts and my reading of a future-looking study got me ruminating about some often-cloudy weather I encountered in my way-back rainy days of college. For some reason, I found myself dwelling on Ernestine, a long-time cashier at the university student cafeteria. Ernestine brought the positivity of Ted Lasso to brighten the spirits of every student standing in her checkout queue. When it rained (and it rained a lot in my college town) Ernestine would always say “rain is just liquid sunshine, baby.” That stuck with me all these years and just recently bubbled up to the…

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Virtualization and Sustainability: Trends Driving EMEA IT Leaders

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 07:00:05 +0000

In 2020, industry leaders demonstrated the ability to adapt to the new normal of constant change as they responded to the abrupt disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no shortage of reports covering how companies fast tracked their digital transformation initiatives to thrive and/or survive. The pandemic drove many to revisit their IT strategies and invest in technology to make their organizations more agile. To gain an understanding of trends that are driving businesses forward, Equinix reached out to 2,600 IT decision-makers working for enterprises across industries that varied in size and type across 26 countries in the Americas,…

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How Network Automation Delivers Tangible Benefits

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 12:00:20 +0000

Today’s digital world has become incredibly complex, placing huge demands on enterprise networks and overwhelming network operation teams as many legacy systems require significant human intervention. The solution is network automation — the process of using software to automate network provisioning and management to continuously maximize network efficiency and functionality. Network automation offers a host of benefits to the enterprise: Faster network and service rollouts Easier network changes Standardized processes that automate repeated tasks More stable and reliable networks Better network visibility Faster issue resolution Minimized risk, which significantly lowers overall operational costs These advantages help mitigate, if not eliminate, one of the largest causes of network outages…

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4 Data-related Priorities for Companies Doing Business in Brazil

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 12:00:09 +0000

For three years now, the Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS) has interviewed IT decision-makers around the world to understand the priorities and expectations of industry leaders. In 2021, 100 of the IT leaders interviewed were from Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America and one of the countries where the digital transformation is more intense. Those leaders talked about the main priorities and challenges for the year, in addition to answering specific questions related to the arrival of 5G in the country and the impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses, providing valuable insights for other companies doing—or…

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9 Photos That Peek Inside Osaka, Melbourne & Seoul

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 12:00:04 +0000

Kicking off Monday with a look inside three of our favorite data centers in the Asia-Pacific region. Take advantage of direct low-latency connections to the large Kansai user community while you’re at OS1 in Osaka, Japan. Get connected to a diverse local economy including manufacturing, global financial and multinational firms, scientific services, and technology companies at ME1 & ME2 in Melbourne, Australia. Connect to partners and customers in the fourth largest metropolitan economy globally at SL1 in Seoul, South Korea. Have a peek inside Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in Osaka, Melbourne, and Seoul. The front entrance to ME1 in…

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Equinix Interconnects CELSA to Improve Performance + Lower Costs

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 08:00:10 +0000

While digital transformation is making an impact on every industry, the impact on the manufacturing industry is more significant than most. For manufacturing companies who embrace a digital-first business strategy, the benefits are tangible – like reduced networking infrastructure costs and delivering faster network performance. In an industry where customer demands are high, supply chains have been disrupted and real time process insights are critical, many more manufacturing businesses are making the leap to digital today. Equinix recently helped manufacturer CELSA Group™ transition to a modernized distributed digital infrastructure and they are already reaping the benefits. One of the leading…

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Equinix and NetApp Partner to Enable Data Center Transformation

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 13:00:02 +0000

As enterprises prepare to compete in a digital-first world, they need access to innovative technologies, quickly and in all the right places. This means that having an effective cloud strategy has never been more important than it is now. In fact, research from IDC found that total worldwide cloud spending—including cloud services, the hardware and software components underpinning the cloud supply chain, and the professional and managed services opportunities around cloud services—will surpass $1.3 trillion in 2025, a compound annual growth rate of 16.9%. While enterprises are clearly making cloud a priority, getting the most value out of their cloud…

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Can Retail Banks Withstand The Advance Of Fintech Companies?

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 09:00:02 +0000

There’s nothing new about the need for retail banks to digitally transform. What is new is the speed with which digitally-driven market entrants are grabbing market share. More agile, faster to innovate, and better at addressing evolving customer expectations, fintechs are a clear and present danger to the survival of traditional retail banks. The 3 forces driving change It’s a perfect storm. Three unstoppable forces are converging on retail banking to drive the sector’s digital revolution.

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Three Cities Living on the Edge

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 13:00:52 +0000

This is the tale of three cities. It’s a story of digital expansion and how companies are thriving at the edge. Atlanta, Los Angeles and Seattle are huge metro areas with dominating industries such as financial, manufacturing, entertainment and information technology. And big brands, such as Home Depot, Disney and Microsoft have landed their headquarters in these rich commercial centers. So, why are we talking about these three mega metro areas as digital edge locations? Consider what interacting at the digital edge means from the fifth annual volume of the Global Interconnection Index (GXI), a market study published by Equinix: Companies…

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Honoring Veterans Day with VetConnect

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 13:00:19 +0000

On this Veterans Day in the United States, we pause to mark the occasion and recognize all those who served, including all Equinix veterans and their families, here in the U.S. and across the globe. This time last year, VetConnect, an Equinix Employee Connection Network (EECN) was formed to bring together veterans, military family members and their allies. On the one-year anniversary of its founding, we hear from members of the VetConnect community. Our EECNs are one of the many ways that help ensure diversity, inclusion, and belonging remains a core tenet of Equinix’s culture and helps all employees be…

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Digital-First Strategies are Driving Partner Ecosystem Expansion

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 13:00:49 +0000

Connecting to strategic ecosystem partners via dedicated, private connectivity that bypasses the public internet, has been identified as a critical component for success as businesses build out their digital-first strategies. According to the Equinix 2020-2021 Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 57% of digital leaders agree that interconnection is a key facilitator of digital transformation. Interconnection is the direct and private traffic exchange between two or more parties, inside a carrier-neutral colocation data center. The opportunities are vast for Service Providers and partners that have made the leap to digital-first, according to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5 report, an annual…

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Equinix Speeds Distributed AI Infrastructure Applications with NVIDIA

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 09:35:29 +0000

As the amount of data generated at the edge increases, it is prudent to process it at the source – instead of moving massive datasets to a remote centralized location for cost, latency and privacy reasons. In addition, most AI applications need to access multiple external sources of data that are spread across public clouds, private data centers, data brokers and from internet of things (IoT) devices at the edge. So, it makes sense to host the artificial intelligence (AI) stack at an interconnection hub for greater performance and secure access to these numerous data sources. AI and data gravity…

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The New Digital Silk Road Runs Across These European Markets

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 08:00:20 +0000

The Silk Road refers to a network of routes used by traders to exchange goods and ideas among diverse cultures for more than 1,500 years — from when the Han dynasty of China opened trade in 130 B.C.E. until the Ottoman Empire ended trade with the West in 1453 C.E. The Silk Road extended 6,437 kilometers (4,000 miles) across Eurasia, from the Black Sea to the Himalayas. Towns along the route grew into multicultural cities and the exchange of information gave rise to new technologies and innovations that would change the world. Regional digital corridors are creating today’s digital silk…

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Making the Case for Using APIs to Connect and Automate—Seamlessly

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 12:00:59 +0000

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are solving a multitude of challenges for businesses today. For those unfamiliar, APIs serve as critical stitching that links company and partner resources together. Without APIs, businesses remain stagnant. With APIs, businesses can capitalize on opportunities to scale, improve efficiency, increase profitability, and perhaps even deliver a better work-life-balance for all. Some of the most perplexing challenges businesses face today center around finding ways to automate workflows across all aspects of their operations. Questions that need answers include: How do we scale and improve operational efficiency? Is there an opportunity to create new revenue streams through automation and…

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New Equinix App Offers a Streamlined Azure ExpressRoute Experience

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 12:00:52 +0000

Recent research indicates that B2B companies are increasingly turning to digital marketplaces to help fulfill their business goals. According to Forrester, “Online marketplaces offer a lower-cost route to market for many sellers and a more convenient way for buyers to find, compare, and purchase products and services.” With both buyers and sellers recognizing the opportunities that digital marketplaces present, it’s no wonder there are now more than 200 funded B2B marketplace operators across various sectors. Microsoft is one example of a company that has recognized the benefits of using digital marketplaces and a co-selling approach to make their offerings more…

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How to Converse in Cloud: Accessing Cloud On-Ramps

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 13:00:38 +0000

Enterprises are increasingly relying on hybrid multicloud architectures to optimize performance, costs, security and efficiency across different workloads. According to the Flexera 2021 State of Cloud Report, 92% of enterprises currently have a multicloud strategy in place. While the benefits may be obvious, hybrid multicloud can also create additional problems for organizations to solve. For example, enterprises may have difficulty identifying the best way to move data to and from cloud providers. This can be particularly challenging when working with multiple cloud partners simultaneously. For businesses just getting started with hybrid multicloud, using internet access to connect to cloud partners may…

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Equinix Announces 2020 Australia Partner Awards Winners

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 23:00:02 +0000

To adopt the “new normal” associated with the ongoing global pandemic, organisations across Australia are seeking an entirely new operating model to sustain their companies and explore new business opportunities. It’s increasingly evident that robust and reliable digital infrastructure is key to the revival of the Australian economy, including our partners who are in lockstep with Equinix to build enduring digital ecosystems to benefit multiple industries around Australia and the world The latest Global Interconnection Index (GXI Vol. 5) reveals that digitally mature businesses in Australia are expanding their digital infrastructure 4x faster than at pre-pandemic levels. Sydney is forecast…

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Equinix Announces 2020 Asia-Pacific Partner Award Winners

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 00:00:38 +0000

In the past two years, economies across the globe have never been more challenging. Our partners worldwide have had to make extra effort to seize all potential business opportunities inherent in the digital transformation journey, ensuring their existing digital infrastructures are always ready and fully capable of meeting their customers’ ever-evolving business needs. According to the latest Global Interconnection Index (GXI Vol. 5), digitally mature businesses in Asia-Pacific are expected to expand their digital infrastructure 4x faster than at pre-pandemic levels. Also, the accelerated pace of digital transformation is predicted to fuel APAC interconnection bandwidth towards a 46% compound annual…

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6 Ways Equinix Fabric Helps Tackle Business Challenges

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 13:00:24 +0000

The challenge facing businesses around digital transformation is clear: adapt quickly or get left behind. According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5, 64% of leaders said their organizations needed to build new digital business models by 2023 to remain economically viable. However, recognizing the need for digital transformation isn’t enough; organizations need an optimized digital infrastructure to help them execute their transformation strategies. Equinix Fabric™ can play a key role in that optimization. Growing numbers of enterprise and service provider customers on Platform Equinix® are using Equinix Fabric to connect digital infrastructure and services on demand at software…

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3 Keys to Simplify and Speed Digital Infrastructure Deployments

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 13:00:11 +0000

So you’ve decided to move your IT infrastructure to a global retail colocation provider to reduce your IT overhead, only to find far more complexity than you expected. You were promised a fast, straightforward and repeatable process, only to be faced with a myriad of choices in power, cooling and physical form-factor requirements that have snowballed into a multi-factor decision-matrix. And once you’ve settled on a configuration that will support the lift-and-shift, what about the future? Will you be able to further consolidate equipment to this location, and will this new deployment scale to meet your workload growth?

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How NSPs Prepare to Thrive in the 5G Era

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 13:00:23 +0000

In my last blog in this series, we looked at the present state of 5G. Although it’s still early and it’s impossible to fully comprehend the potential impact of 5G use cases that haven’t been built yet, opportunities to monetize 5G with little additional investment are out there for network service providers (NSPs) who know where to look. Now, it’s time to look toward the future. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that 5G technology will be revolutionary across many industry use cases, but I’m not sure everyone understands just how revolutionary, and how quickly it will go down. According…

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Know Thy API

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 13:00:21 +0000

As part of our digital transformation at Equinix, we provide web portal interfaces for our customer interactions with our products and services. As with many modern platform service providers, we now have re-built our products with modern microservice architectures running as workloads on resilient Kubernetes infrastructures. These microservices expose their portion of the application functionality as individual endpoints (think URLs), providing application programming interface (API) interactions. This architecture allows for more agile development, where different application components can be developed and improved by different teams much faster and more reliably, using continuous integration and continuous development lifecycle (CI/CD) principles…

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Bare Metal and Storage as a Service Modernize Physical Infrastructure

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Digital-first strategies are driving companies to adopt hybrid multicloud architectures as their foundation for competitive advantage as they scale their digital core, leverage cloud, SaaS or partner digital ecosystems and expand to the digital edge. Incorporating Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) and Bare-Metal-as-a-Service (BMaaS) physical infrastructure can help accelerate seamless migrations to a hybrid multicloud architecture. According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5 report, there has been a 3x increase in the multicloud, multiregion adoption rate over the last two years as business scale the digital core. This annual market study also reports that digital leaders have doubled their rate of…

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Interconnection Bandwidth is Growing at the Edge

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 08:00:24 +0000

As businesses continue their digital transformation initiatives across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), it’s leading to new and noteworthy growth patterns in some places you might not expect. Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris are well-established as the core metros of the EMEA digital corridor, but the places where real growth is happening are the edge metros like Madrid, Stockholm, Milan and Zurich. That’s one of the key takeaways from the Global Interconnection Index Volume 5. This report offers data and insights on the growth of interconnection bandwidth across the globe, and how its direct correlation to digital transformation…

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How Federal Agencies Can Solve the Hybrid Multicloud Puzzle

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 13:00:08 +0000

Federal agencies are increasingly looking to the cloud to support their IT modernization efforts, thanks in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many agencies were forced into remote-work arrangements with little advanced warning. At the same time, their missions shifted, and their workloads skyrocketed. For example, as part of the pandemic recovery efforts, the Small Business Administration processed more than $1 trillion in loans; in a normal year, they would typically process between $25 billion and $35 billion. Faced with many of the same challenges, private enterprises are relying on hybrid multicloud to set themselves up for success in a post-pandemic…

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3 Key Components of Digital Infrastructure That Foster Innovation

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 13:00:23 +0000

During the past two years, companies have been in two camps: either they were the disruptors, or they were one of the disrupted. A key component of success for those who disrupted was deploying a digital infrastructure with an edge-to-cloud consumption model that was automated and flexible. These innovative and fast-moving companies realized that traditional infrastructure was not designed to support their digital-first strategies. According to the Equinix 2020-2021 Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 80% of digital leaders reported digitizing IT infrastructure as a top priority, a 16% increase over the prior year. To drive a successful digital-first strategy, digital infrastructure must be…

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4 Digital Infrastructure Predictions Defining the Next Decade

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 08:00:45 +0000

Today’s CIOs—from all types of companies—are on an accelerated digital transformation journey. They realize their ability to dynamically deploy and consume the right digital infrastructure, securely and sustainably, will be the primary basis of competitive advantage in the future. According to IDC, by 2023, digital infrastructure will be the underlying platform for all IT and business automation initiatives anywhere and everywhere. Such a platform needs to enable the frictionless exchange of data and operations across ecosystems from edge to core. As we collaborate with our more than 10,000 enterprise customers and partners around the globe to drive their digital infrastructure strategies, we see trends unfolding that will render the bespoke nature of…

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Digital Healthcare and the Path to Living with an Endemic Covid-19

Tue, 07 Dec 2021 01:00:58 +0000

Singapore and the rest of the world are starting to embrace living with an endemic Covid-19, and are gradually opening their economies. The pandemic has truly shone a spotlight on the importance of our healthcare systems and the ways in which they will need to evolve to support a world still figuring out the long-term implications of this crisis. In a recent conversation with Shehaan Fernando, Regional Director, Virtual Care at Philips, we discussed how healthcare will continue to shape the ‘living with an endemic Covid-19’ approach in Singapore, the region and the world – highlighting emerging trends and healthcare technology…

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5 Trends Driving Virtual Network Services in 2022

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 13:00:36 +0000

A year ago, networking looked very different. The COVID-19 pandemic caused enterprises to pivot hard toward deploying virtual network functions (VNF)—SD-WAN gateways, firewalls, VPNs and routers—to meet the rising need for fast and secure remote worker connectivity and quickly optimize hybrid multicloud networking to accelerate enterprise digital transformation. VNF devices also compensated for the hold and shortages on network hardware deliveries to businesses around the world during the pandemic. Last year’s outlook for the trends driving virtual network services focused on the transition from an emerging virtual networking market to one that is coming into its own. IDC’s forecast of…

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A Look Inside Equinix’s Third Perth Data Center

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 21:30:03 +0000

The past 12 months has seen Equinix announce the launch of xScaleTM program in addition to organic expansions in Australia, so it is fitting that before we close out the year, we announce the opening of our third International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center in Perth, named PE3. This new facility is our 18th IBX in Australia and strengthens Perth’s position as the digital gateway between Australia, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

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3 Digital Infrastructure Predictions Defining the Future of Government

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 13:00:03 +0000

If 2020 seemed chaotic for national governments, with agencies pivoting quickly due to a once-in-a-lifetime disruption, 2021 has been about a more strategic, structured approach to digital transformation. This means dealing with the ongoing impact of the global pandemic, but also preparing to thrive in a post-pandemic future with greater agility, efficiency and responsiveness. During 2021, government agencies undertook many transformation initiatives, including accelerating hybrid multicloud adoption, modernizing networks with Network as a Service (NaaS), and implementing artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) for advanced cybersecurity and other use cases. As we move into 2022, the need for this kind of transformation…

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Networking for Nerds: The Virtual Network Marketplace

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 13:00:57 +0000

As many companies have experienced during the global COVID-19 pandemic, chip shortages and massive disruptions in every supply chain—from manufacturing to transportation—have put an extended hold on the delivery of physical IT products. This has accelerated the demand for network virtualization and Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) solutions. Choice in physical networking providers enables more competitive pricing, network redundancy/availability and a variety of network services options. Choice in virtual networking devices from multiple providers is even better because it offers all those things and is faster and more cost-effective than waiting for physical hardware to be available. As the world’s digital infrastructure company™,…

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How Virtual Networking is Keeping Manufacturers Online and On Time

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 13:00:53 +0000

We’ve focused many of our Interconnections articles on manufacturing over the last year, and for good reason. The sector has been one of the hardest hit industries by the global pandemic, impacting millions of jobs, disrupting global supply chains and spurring manufacturers to accelerate digital transformation worldwide by leveraging interconnection. According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5, global manufacturing interconnection bandwidth capacity is estimated to increase at a 41% CAGR by 2024. On the upside, manufacturing companies are among those digital leaders that have truly innovated their way through a very difficult time and continue to raise the…

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How to Cultivate a Flourishing Digital Ecosystem with Equinix Marketplace

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 01:00:39 +0000

With digital driving fundamental changes in every aspect of our lives and businesses, it is not surprising that in 2022 more than half the global economy is expected to be based on or influenced by digital. As we are increasingly moving to a digital world, leaders are all rethinking the way they connect and interact with partners and customers. This transformation process has led to the emergence of digital ecosystems and keeps raising the bar for business. The latest volume of the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) predicts that by 2025, 75% of leading organizations will leverage on digital platforms and…

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It’s a Wonderful Internet: An End-of-Year Reflection

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 13:00:17 +0000

The end of the year is almost upon us. It’s a time of celebration for many, but also a time to pause and reflect. If you’re like me, you probably get so caught up in your day-to-day responsibilities at work and home that you rarely stop to think about the things that make our everyday lives possible. With 2021 wrapping up and 2022 still a couple weeks off, right now feels like the perfect time to stop and change that. One thing we all take for granted these days is internet access. You don’t even have to be all that…

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Advancing 5G with cloud-native networking and intelligent infrastructure

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 13:00:23 +0000

The success of 5G technology is a function of both the infrastructure that supports it and the ecosystems that enable it. Today, the definitive focus in the 5G space is on enterprise use cases, ranging from dedicated private 5G networks to accessing edge compute infrastructure and public or private clouds from the public 5G network. As a result, vendor-neutral multitenant data center providers and their rich interconnection capabilities are pivotal in helping make 5G a reality. This is true both in terms of the physical infrastructure needed to support 5G and the ability to effectively connect enterprises to 5G. Industry…

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How Equinix Executed Our Own Hybrid Multicloud Migration

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 13:00:59 +0000

It’s no secret that a hybrid multicloud architecture can offer tremendous business benefits, including greater performance, flexibility, efficiency and security. However, migrating to hybrid multicloud isn’t always straightforward: it’s often unclear which enterprise systems and applications can or should be moved to the cloud. According to Gartner®: “We are approaching a trinity where one-third of workloads run in the cloud already, one-third can migrate or move to the cloud with increased complexity, and one-third will not run in the cloud due to complexity, performance, economics or regulatory constraints.” At Equinix, we started evaluating cloud migration strategies to enable faster provisioning…

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Looking Back: How Trust is the Key Platform to Build Our Future

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 08:00:54 +0000

We have come to the end of another year of this global pandemic, which has been a weight on all our shoulders. For many of us, it has created unique situations that we’ve had to deal with for the first time in our lives. At the same time, through all these challenges, we have continued to keep our local economies and institutions running. As we look back over 2021, I must admit that there have been moments that I have felt overwhelmed. The lack of in-person interaction, due to pandemic restrictions, made it challenging to develop meaningful connections; not only…

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Who Says the Hard Part is Not Fun?

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:50:05 +0000

“Adversity is the mother of invention” – I’m not exactly who said this phrase but I am sure when they said it they didn’t have the Covid-19 pandemic in mind. But these words certainly ring true today and in our current circumstances. From the unprecedented rapid development of lifesaving vaccines to new collective behaviors, to the evolution in new implementations of technology, we have quickly learned new ways to survive and to progress. 2021 has not been easy but it has also been exciting and rewarding in many ways. Given the ever-increasing importance of digitalization, the demand for digital infrastructure…

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Who Says the Hard Part is Not Fun?

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:50:05 +0000

“Adversity is the mother of invention” – I’m not sure exactly who said this phrase but I am sure when they said it they didn’t have the Covid-19 pandemic in mind. But these words certainly ring true today and in our current circumstances. From the unprecedented rapid development of lifesaving vaccines to new collective behaviors, to the evolution in new implementations of technology, we have quickly learned new ways to survive and to progress. 2021 has not been easy but it has also been exciting and rewarding in many ways. Given the ever-increasing importance of digitalization, the demand for digital…

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Half empty, half full, or just too big?

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 13:00:55 +0000

There’s an old joke that goes… The pessimist sees the glass as half empty. The optimist sees the glass as half full. The engineer sees the glass as twice as big as it needs to be. I’m a proud optimist. I believe it creates positive energy, and sharing that energy can lead to positive outcomes. But through my optimism, the engineer in me is always wondering how we can make things better. 2020 was one of the most challenging years on record. In my 2020 year-end blog, I ask “do bad times have a scientific value?” I surmised they can, but only if we…

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Enabling A Bolder and Brighter Future Together

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 13:00:54 +0000

As the year winds down, I reflect on the incredible amount of change that has washed across our world, reshaping entire industries and forever altering the way we experience life. And I marvel at how businesses, families and communities have responded to and embraced this change, with a level of resilience and innovation never seen before. The unprecedented rates at which data is being created, moved, analyzed, and stored during these past two years has only further accelerated the pace of innovation. For many people and businesses, it felt as though we woke up to a new reality almost…

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3 Reasons Why You Should Consider Running Containers on Bare Metal

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 13:01:57 +0000

Making the decision to use containers to run your applications is the first step. Now what? While the choice of the technology is crucial, the deployment model for containers is equally important. Containers can be run directly on a physical or virtual machine. In this article, we’ll explore why running containers on bare metal servers can be a better option than using virtual machines. While containers virtualize the operating system, virtual machines (using the hypervisor) do the same with the hardware of a physical server. To learn more about the similarities and the differences between these concepts, check out the…

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Architecting High-Availability Solutions with Equinix Fabric

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 13:01:16 +0000

The COVID-19 pandemic drove home some sobering truths. For example, after making the shift to remote work, many organizations were forced to reckon with the fact that they weren’t as prepared for serious network disruptions as they once thought. On the other hand, businesses that built resiliency into their digital infrastructures were less impacted by network disruptions. According to IDC, “Organizations that were best able to use advanced and integrated digital processes and technologies proved to be more resilient and, therefore, more successful while those without were at much greater risk.” As we look into the future, enterprises must establish…

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3 Components of Digital Infrastructure in Financial Services

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 13:01:21 +0000

In the future, businesses that adopt digital infrastructure quickly and use it to its full potential will be in the best position to thrive. This is one of the key lessons of the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5. The GXI report provides data about the growth of interconnection bandwidth across the world and applies that data to uncover insights about the state of digital transformation among Enterprises and Service Providers. According to the GXI, the financial services industry is by far the largest driver of interconnection bandwidth for Enterprises; in fact, it accounts for a staggering 18% of all…

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How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek: Virtual Cloud Routing

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 13:00:39 +0000

What if I said you could connect all your cloud network services and share applications and data between them from the comfort of your living room recliner? Then, what if I told you this can be done instantly – without needing to deploy new hardware? This is exactly what a virtual cloud router allows you to do. So, what is virtual routing? A virtual router (also generically called a vRouter) is a virtual network functions (VNF) device that can be part of a legacy physical network, or an agile network functions virtualization (NFV) infrastructure. Software-based VNF devices deliver traditional hardware…

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Development Continues on Cross-Border, Multi-Currency Payment Platform

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 08:00:58 +0000

Recently, Equinix sponsored the NextGen Nordics Webinar, where a panel of payments experts discussed the continuing development of the highly anticipated P27 Nordic Payments Platform, an initiative by six of the largest banks in the Nordics. P27 will establish the first integrated regional platform that allows participating banks, fintech companies and payment processors in the Nordics to transact domestic and cross-border, multi-currency payments instantly, seamlessly and securely. Consumer expectations for what’s possible with digital payments are on the rise. According to the Mastercard New Payments Index, 84% of consumers expect to buy what they want, when and how they want….

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How Commercial Data Center Colocation Supports Government Sustainability Efforts

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 13:00:04 +0000

Governments are renewing climate action efforts, both in the U.S. and abroad. COP26, the most recent edition of the UN Climate Change Conference, drove home a sobering truth: more than five years out from the Paris Agreement, countries still need to get much more aggressive about their climate goals to bring about meaningful change. Under the current administration, the U.S. federal government has signaled it will once again take a leading role by returning to the Paris Agreement and pledging to cut emissions by at least 50% by 2030. While government officials often call on private businesses to reduce emissions,…

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3 Use Cases for Deploying Distributed AI Infrastructure and Applications

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 13:00:05 +0000

In our last blog on artificial intelligence (AI), titled “Equinix Speeds Distributed AI Infrastructure Applications with NVIDIA,” we highlighted how industry trends are pushing the hosting of AI stacks to the edge, closer to data sources. Compliance regulations that mandate keeping AI data processing and analysis within the country of origin are also providing further justification for placing and interconnecting AI stacks in multiple countries. In this article, we’ll be discussing three use cases that follow this model, where enterprises are leveraging NVIDIA AI on Platform Equinix® to implement AI solutions addressing development to deployment.

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New Low-Latency Subsea Cable Routes Speed Global Internet Traffic

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 13:00:05 +0000

It is estimated that subsea cables carry 99% of all international communications traffic, including voice, data, videos and online gaming. So, it’s no wonder that the demand for new global subsea cable routes keeps accelerating around the world to deliver the low-latency interconnectivity required for accessing skyrocketing volumes of internet traffic. According to TeleGeography, as of early 2021, there are approximately 426 subsea cables in service around the world. And many of them are landing on Equinix’s global platform. Subsea cable momentum is connecting continents The subsea cable momentum on Platform Equinix® is accelerating worldwide as digital transformation is increasing…

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Enabling Better Digital Experiences, One API at a Time

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 13:00:38 +0000

In today’s digital landscape, customers are consuming products and services faster than ever. To keep up, organizations are adopting multichannel strategies to expand the reach of their product offerings, enhance user experiences or optimize processes to cut costs and increase bottom-line revenue. The different channels could include an enterprise web portal for procurement, a mobile app to view content, and APIs to help monitor data and automate processes. When organizations use portals from several different partners and vendors, getting a consistent user experience across services is nearly impossible, as each portal will have its own unique user journey. At Equinix,…

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Melbourne: A Fast Growing and Dynamic Destination for Digital Business

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 21:40:23 +0000

The Australian state of Victoria is home to at least 11 “unicorns” (privately held start-up companies valued at $1Bn or greater) with a combined market capitalization of more than $30 billion. These include A Cloud Guru, Culture Amp and Airwallex, amongst others. Victoria’s capital city, Melbourne, is the regional headquarters for many global technology leaders, including Zendesk, Amazon, and Square, and is also home to some of the world’s largest companies in banking, healthcare, and professional services. According to the State’s government, Victoria is regarded as Australia’s technology hub, while digital technology and innovation is a driving force for economic…

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How Network Virtualization and Bare Metal Simplify Multi-Region WANs

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 13:00:15 +0000

Multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) has powered enterprise-wide area networks (WANs) for decades but there’s a more agile and lower-cost contender in the market: SD-WAN. Not willing to totally dismantle legacy MPLS networks, many enterprises are phasing in SD-WAN architectures that incorporate lower cost network access options such as broadband internet when connecting remote branch sites to existing MPLS backbones to gain greater flexibility and lower CAPEX. This can all be done via software by leveraging agile, cost-effective virtual network functions (VNF) devices. Since SD-WANs route all kinds of traffic—like multiple MPLS providers and internet —it is the perfect complementary solution…

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Dell APEX Now Available at Equinix

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 18:00:50 +0000

Digital leaders are re-architecting IT by placing components of their infrastructure in Equinix locations and interconnecting a dynamic combination of physical and virtual environments, bringing together users, clouds, networks and digital ecosystems. This proximity enables them to optimize security, performance and control for their overall IT environment while also providing the choice and agility to scale their business up and down as required. As a result, digital leaders achieve better business outcomes by locating their data privately at the intersection of this dynamic environment. For them, cloud adjacency is becoming a critical part of their IT strategy and a…

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The Future of Quantum Computing

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 13:00:07 +0000

Since we first described the state of the art in quantum computing in 2018, there have been significant advancements to align this progressive field of computing with today’s problems. In this article, we provide an update on the key developments in quantum computing to help solve complex problems. Even with these advances, quantum computing will continue to work alongside classical computing to get most jobs done.

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Driving Innovation in 2022 and Beyond

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 16:28:06 +0000

As we kick off a new year, we at Equinix find ourselves looking back and forward at the same time, much like the Greek god Janus for which the month of January is named. We’re excited to recap the key advancements we’ve made in 2021, and we’re also looking ahead to what new innovations will mean for our customers in 2022 and in the years to come. As the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5 shows, we are living in a world defined by digital. The digital leaders that have optimized every aspect of their infrastructure—across the digital core, edge…

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Multiaccess Edge Compute is Driving the Future of Mobility

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 08:00:15 +0000

The mobility industry is changing rapidly. According to the recently released Equinix Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5, transportation is one of the sectors experiencing the fastest digital infrastructure growth as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As mobility players look for opportunities to rebound from the pandemic, many of them are rethinking their entire business—and the digital infrastructure that supports that business. In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic is merely reinforcing mobility industry trends that have been underway for years now: customers expect innovation, and enterprises are investing massive amounts of money to give them what they expect. Businesses…

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The Chip Shortage Breakdown: How Can a Connected Digital Infrastructure Help?

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 00:00:47 +0000

As the global semiconductor challenge extends into 2022, businesses continue to feel supply chain disruptions as they wait for chips to be available. As foundry companies specialize in production exclusively, their manufacturing capacity has limitations, and currently, they are not able to meet the demand from global and fabless companies. Furthermore, integrated device manufacturers (IDM) are decreasing their manufacturing capacity due to their dependency on foundry companies. On the other hand, a number of fabless companies, such as Apple, Google and NVIDIA, are expected to grow due to the diversification of semiconductors. The shortage that started in 2019 and…

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Equinix Takes Pride in Scoring 100 on Corporate Equality Index

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 18:22:47 +0000

When Equinix set the goal of becoming a leading employer for the LGBTQ+ community, we knew it would require being open, listening to our employees and external constituents, getting feedback and making changes. Our Equinix Employee Connection Networks (EECN), are created around an identity or community that is underrepresented at Equinix, has faced historical discrimination or share unique challenges. They are led by committed volunteer employees who are instrumental in providing advocacy, guidance, and accountability and we are profoundly grateful for the leadership they provide and the work they accomplish.  It is through the contributions of our EECN volunteer leaders that…

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How to Solve for Digital Infrastructure in the IoT Era

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 13:01:40 +0000

At the CES 2022 event in Las Vegas earlier this month, we saw how the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution is in full swing, across both consumer and industry use cases. Whether it’s smart home solutions like connected security cameras, video doorbells and smart lighting However, if we had to summarize…

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Why You Need to Move to Digital Now

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 13:01:09 +0000

I recently participated in a webinar by 451 Research, a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, discussing why and how organizations are making the leap from traditional infrastructure to digital-first. What motivates an organization to move toward a digital strategy? Why should they transition from conventional infrastructures to a digital infrastructure model that is a hybrid of both physical and virtual environments? And how does Equinix play a role in this transition with a set of steps and tools—making it considerably easier for organizations to make these digital moves? These are some of the questions that my colleague at Equinix,…

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Why Cloud Adjacency Is the New On-Premises Strategy

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 13:01:10 +0000

The impetus for greater hybrid multicloud adoption is clear: organizations must have the flexibility to place their workloads wherever they can be scaled and managed most efficiently. Many organizations are migrating some workloads to the public cloud to take advantage of clear performance and agility benefits, while leaving other workloads on-premises for security or data privacy reasons. However, digital leaders are rethinking the on-premises portion of this equation. According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5, businesses are interconnecting their digital core to remove the limitations of legacy siloed IT systems. Essentially, they are reimaging their traditional on-premises systems…

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Melbourne an Attractive Location for IT Geo-redundancy

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 05:24:15 +0000

Enterprises in Sydney and other Australian metropolitan locations are opting to use Melbourne-based IT infrastructure for disaster recovery operations, thanks to the cloud infrastructure boom in the southern capital. The city continues to attract strong cloud investment and is on track to become the next major cloud hub. The reasons for this are twofold. Melbourne’s population continues to grow, expanding by more than 80,000 in the 2019-20 financial year alone, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The Centre for Population predicts Melbourne’s population will overtake Sydney by 2026. It has also become a natural target for a second round of…

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Hidden in Plain Sight: A Personal Reflection During Black History Month

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 13:05:34 +0000

With Black History Month upon us, “Hidden in plain sight,” is a perfect way to describe and honor the many contributions and innovations created by members of the Black community. It is common that the technical innovations, entrepreneurialism, hard work, and overall achievements that people of color make to society, business, politics, technology, and just about every industry in every country are unknown. There is an all-too-common practice of denying these pivotal contributions, even today. I got to thinking about other Black scientists and artists and entrepreneurs, so many of them going unseen. And then I considered my own moments of…

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Deploying Repeatable Infrastructure with Terraform and Equinix Fabric

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 13:02:57 +0000

Many of our customers have had success deploying Equinix Fabric™ to empower software-defined interconnection across their digital infrastructure. For these customers, the next logical step is to build on that success by making it repeatable. APIs are one way to do this; developers can set up Equinix Fabric environments using APIs, and then quickly and easily redeploy them in the aftermath of a disaster or reconfiguration. However, many people don’t have time to manage multiple APIs from all their vendors, particularly since those APIs may be changing constantly. For these people, an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) wrapper such as Terraform…

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Equinix Enables Rapid Proofs of Concept in Live Environments

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 08:00:11 +0000

In recent years, it’s become clear that a cloud-first strategy isn’t necessarily a cure-all for IT challenges. Despite the clear benefits the public cloud can offer in some situations, many digital leaders now recognize that it isn’t right for all workloads. For reasons such as data security, application compatibility and cost, organizations are starting to transition from cloud-first to digital-first, seeking out hybrid multicloud architectures that can run each workload where it’s best suited. This could mean a cloud-adjacent infrastructure—on-premises systems positioned in proximity to cloud on-ramps, allowing quick and easy access to services as needed—or “same stack” private…

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Digital Corridors: The Africa Connection

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 13:00:16 +0000

The Digital Corridors blog series explores the rapidly expanding interconnection between major metros in and across regions. Digital corridors provide the interconnectivity necessary to turn tremendous opportunities into reality–which is exactly what’s happening now in and around the continent of Africa. As the second largest and second most populous continent worldwide, Africa is experiencing significant growth in internet demand and content consumption through the fast-expanding use of mobile technologies such as LTE/5G and with the alternative of low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications in development. Supporting this growth are digital corridors that run along the East and West coasts, North…

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Equinix and Cisco® Deliver End-to-End Virtual Firewall Security

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 13:00:54 +0000

Applications and remote environments give rise to the need for flexible and agile security. A virtual firewall is a network security solution designed for cloud environments or where deploying hardware firewalls is either difficult or costly, or both. This can include delivering firewall security to public and private cloud architectures or software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN). Virtual firewalls allow or deny network access to traffic flows between trusted and untrusted zones like traditional hardware firewalls. However, since they are deployed via software, virtual firewalls are perfect for securing virtual environments such as hybrid and multicloud architectures. Their agility and ease…

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Creating data centers of the future in Singapore

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 02:10:35 +0000

(A version of this post was originally published in GovInsider.) Using a front-loading washing machine can save the equivalent of 50 bathtubs of water, compared to a top-loaded machine. Clothes pass through water at the bottom of the drum, making it water efficient, explained The New York Times. Simple changes in a product’s design can make big differences to their environmental impact. This same concept could drastically reduce the environmental impact of data centers. Singapore put a pause on the building of new data centers in 2019, as they were deemed not sustainable enough, reported CNA.

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How Equinix and Oracle are Powering Hybrid Multicloud Architectures

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 13:01:06 +0000

Triggered by the global COVID-19 pandemic, facility lockdowns and the shift to remote working, companies in every industry around the globe turned to the cloud to scale their IT infrastructures and provide new approaches to deploy and access databases and applications. As businesses recover from the challenges of the pandemic and find their new normal, hybrid multicloud architectures have become increasingly prominent in their digital infrastructure strategies, according to the Equinix 2020-2021 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS). Equinix and Oracle are helping businesses simplify the complexity of migrating database and application workloads to hybrid multicloud architectures. With Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer…

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How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek: Core vs. Edge

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 13:00:26 +0000

Whether it’s the metaverse, self-driving cars or quantum computing, technologies that once seemed like science fiction are now happening in front of our eyes. Businesses need a strong digital strategy to truly capitalize on these technologies. This means building a distributed digital infrastructure that can scale in the right places, connect to the right partners, and unlock the right possibilities. The Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5 uses interconnection bandwidth data to show how Enterprises and Service Providers across the world are doing just that. According to the GXI, companies that have optimized their digital infrastructure are now using it…

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Empowering Remote Data Center Management Through Self-Service

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 13:00:25 +0000

The past two years of travel restrictions, logistics delays and equipment shortages have dramatically increased the need for enterprises to rely on on-site support for their colocated IT infrastructure. As a result, Equinix saw a 30% increase in the usage of Equinix Smart Hands®, our 24/7 on-site operational support service. Additionally, we found that more of our customers learned that they could, in fact, operate very effectively by leveraging Smart Hands for remote management, installation and troubleshooting of their data center equipment. The increased reliance on our local teams for support drove Equinix to accelerate change as well. To provide greater…

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3 Key Factors for an Enterprise Sovereign Hybrid Multicloud Architecture

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:28:01 +0000

In today’s world, business outcomes are increasingly tied to business agility–the speed to reach the market and the ability to adapt to market changes. This leads to the growing adoption of technologies, and among all options, many enterprises turn to public clouds to improve operational reliability and scalability. However, as the saying goes, “every coin has two sides”, and as more data and applications move through the cloud, we also see it give rise to several concerns around data gravity and data sovereignty. To address these concerns and stay ahead of the curve, digital leaders have advanced from a cloud-first strategy to a digital-first strategy, bringing together core, ecosystem…

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Making the Metaverse: The Digital Infrastructure Opportunity

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 13:00:47 +0000

The concept of the metaverse goes back decades, but the excitement around it has never been higher than it is now. Facebook got the ball rolling when it announced its new Meta branding It’s easy to get excited about the possibilities of the metaverse: Automotive engineers can perform virtual crash tests (no dummies needed). Big box retailers are…

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How to Ensure Network Resilience in Uncertain Times

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 13:00:05 +0000

Whether it’s cybersecurity attacks, the stability of enterprise networks is under constant threat. No one can say for certain what’s going to happen next, which is why enterprises need to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. A network resilience/disaster recovery strategy is like an insurance policy: you hope you never need it, but the time to invest in one is before you need it. No one enjoys paying for redundant systems and infrastructure they may never need to use, but the risk of failing to create a backup plan is so…

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Getting to Know our Asia-Pacific Leader – Desmond Chen

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:30:19 +0000

On the Chinese zodiac calendar, 2022 marks the Year of the Tiger. And as we look to the future of our business in China, the confident and adventurous spirit of the tiger reflects in our approach to success. Our ambitions continue to grow as we work to meet the market’s opportunity with agility, and strengthen the value we bring to our customers in their transformation journeys. At the start of the year, I talked to Desmond Chen, our new Managing Director of China, on the evolution of the technology landscape in the market and his customer-centric approach to driving success. Jeremy…

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Connecting the Under Connected

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 13:01:18 +0000

When the pandemic abruptly pushed classroom instruction, healthcare, and the workplace for many online, the digital divide across the United States was exacerbated and those without high-speed internet were unable to participate. While some had home computers or laptops and ready access to broadband connectivity, others rapidly fell behind. In our increasingly connected society, lack of access to high-speed, low latency internet—let alone broadband connectivity—continues to widen the gap between the connected and the under connected. The digital divide manifests itself in multiple ways across the country including in rural, urban, and inner-city areas, whether it’s: lack of critical infrastructure for…

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Sovereign Cloud Services Require Collaboration and Innovation

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 08:00:34 +0000

Across Europe, businesses are shifting to the cloud the gain the flexibility, performance and cost efficiency benefits they need to compete in the modern digital economy. For easier access to cloud services, they’re moving away from traditional on-premises data centers, in favor of colocation facilities that provide quick and easy “on-ramps” to cloud providers. This shift has created a delicate balancing act around cloud sovereignty and data privacy in Europe. Government agencies need to ensure cloud services are delivered in a secure, transparent manner that’s in line with local laws and customs. This gets more complicated when you consider that…

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3 Financial Services Metros Growing at the Edge

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 13:00:39 +0000

Financial institutions across the world are working to make their digital infrastructures more flexible and distributed. That’s why the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) found that edge metros—locations used primarily to connect with end users, devices and local marketplaces—are growing interconnection bandwidth faster than core metros—locations used primarily to provision capacity between networks, clouds, XaaS providers and enterprises. According to the GXI, Mexico City, Montreal and Toronto—three edge metros with strong ties to the financial services industry—are experiencing the fastest interconnection bandwidth growth of all metros in the Americas. Mexico City is forecast to grow 57% CAGR by 2024, while Montreal…

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Conversations with Our Customers – A Look at Digital Transformation

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 13:01:48 +0000

Journey. Transformation. Evolution. These words are quite meaningful to me. I mean aren’t we all – personally and professionally – on some sort of journey to evolve and transform? And in this increasingly digital world, companies are forced to do the same. And while many of them have a digital transformation plan on their roadmap how can we help them progress so they can offer their customers a more meaningful experience? How can digital leaders connect and learn from each other to evolve and meet their organizational goals? It was during the pandemic, when companies were forced overnight to accelerate…

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Evolving Your Business Future with Digital-First Architectures

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:28:21 +0000

Organizations have progressively adopted new digital business models for the past two years and transformed to meet their customers’ increasing demands readily. As a result, this technological boom has created a significant digital divide for businesses still operating with traditional digital infrastructure. Fast forward to 2022, these businesses may encounter agility, speed, and security challenges that prevent them from delivering a world-class digital product or services to meet their customers’ evolving needs. Inevitably, these challenges will likely be even more significant when faced with issues such as growing numbers of distributed users, tightened operating budgets and physical constraints of…

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Hybrid Work Is Here to Stay, and Peering Can Help Support It

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:00:48 +0000

If we needed a lesson on the importance of business agility, we certainly got it over the past two years. The COVID-19 pandemic forced enterprises to scrap existing business models and improvise to come up with something new. We can now see how businesses that prioritized digital-first strategies before the pandemic were best positioned to successfully navigate the disruption. According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5, digital leaders moved 4.5x farther ahead while traditional business was still getting its bearings. Now that businesses are tentatively planning for a post-pandemic world, it’s clear that remote and hybrid work are…

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Cloud Repatriation vs. Hybrid Infrastructure

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 13:00:54 +0000

The use of private and public cloud is maturing; with that maturity, companies are evolving how they decide where to place workloads, which can include cloud repatriation. When the practice of cloud repatriation began, it referred to the concept of moving workloads—otherwise known as applications—out of the public cloud to a private cloud alternative, including on-premises. With the introduction of industry concepts such as cloud-first and cloud-native, many companies may not be doing cloud repatriation in the true sense of the term but aiming for something in the middle. According to a 451 Alliance Datacenters 2021 survey, 48% of over 600…

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Celebrating International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 01:01:42 +0000

March is Women’s History Month and for many women, it represents a time to reflect and celebrate the contributions that women have played in forging gender equality. It is also a time to recognize the many achievements women have made over the course of history. But we realize that our work is not done, and we have a commitment to continue the efforts made by so many to help make a positive difference for so many others. To support these efforts, we are excited to kick off Women’s History Month through our daylong celebration of International Women’s Day on…

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Creating a High-Availability Strategy for a Hybrid World

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 13:00:47 +0000

In my last article on network resilience and disaster recovery, I wrote about the importance of hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Enterprises need to have the same mentality when it comes to high availability and redundancy planning. It seems like every time you turn on the news there’s a new threat emerging that could take enterprise IT infrastructure offline. Given the shift to remote work we’ve seen over the past few years—with employees needing uninterrupted access to enterprise systems and collaboration/productivity apps—it’s safe to say the costs of falling victim to an outage have never…

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Equinix Statement on Ukraine

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 13:00:21 +0000

Equinix stands with the people of Ukraine and fully condemns the actions by the Russian government. We are committed to supporting the sanctions intended for a peaceful resolution while working to do our part in maintaining the global digital infrastructure that supports free and open communication, aids in humanitarian relief and limits unintended consequences to countries and citizens impacted by this conflict. Aligned with and subject to these objectives, our actions and commitments are: While we do not have operations in Russia, we will not make direct or indirect investment in the country until this conflict ends and a government is…

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How Satellite Trends Impact Digital Infrastructure on Earth

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:00:29 +0000

Excerpts from this blog originally appeared in the January 2022 issue of Submarine Telecoms Forum magazine. You don’t need to be a space nerd like me to get excited about what’s happening in the private satellite industry. Although they don’t get as much mainstream attention as some of the manned space missions of the past, satellites promise to be far more transformational back on Earth. It’s no surprise Morgan Stanley predicted the global space industry will be valued at more than $1 trillion by 2040, with satellite communications accounting for almost 40% of that total. Whether it’s enabling connectivity in places…

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Advancing Genomic Sequencing and Public Health with Digital Infrastructures

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 23:59:20 +0000

The future of healthcare is advancing rapidly across different medical fields. In just one year, and right before our eyes, we’ve witnessed first-hand the development of the COVID-19 vaccine from when the virus was first identified. An enormous achievement in an otherwise lengthy task that previously took, on average, 10-15 years. This was all thanks to the advancement of genomic sequencing, where researchers understand the entire genetic makeup of an organism. However, it didn’t come without its own challenges. One of which includes the massive data volume generated from the research. A single human genome sequence alone takes up 200…

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3 Ways to Extend Cybersecurity Infrastructure to the Edge

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 12:00:24 +0000

For over a decade, IT services have been proliferating at the digital edge. Global, carrier-neutral interconnection platforms such as Equinix play a critical role in supporting these distributed digital services, helping private sector companies maximize revenue and public sector organizations maximize efficiency. However, expanding at the digital edge could expose valuable assets (including sensitive and/or classified information) to cyberattacks. Organizations must extend their cybersecurity perimeter to the edge to account for this new level of risk. There are three main steps they can take to help do that: Implement a zero-trust framework for more effective user access protections. Apply artificial intelligence and…

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AI/ML: Overrated or Underutilized?

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 12:00:13 +0000

During a recent virtual leadership offsite, we were discussing whether artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) is overused. The overwhelming opinion was “yes, it’s overused.” That response sparked a curiosity in me about whether we realize how pervasive the use of AI/ML already is in our digital lives. Working in data science, I am immersed in the use of AI/ML and believe it will continue to accelerate the advancement of many disciplines. While some of my colleagues may believe AI/ML is overused, ESG research shows that 45% of organizations currently have AI projects in production using specialized infrastructure, with…

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3 New Equinix Fabric Capabilities to Simplify Digital Infrastructure

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 12:00:22 +0000

Enterprises have more options than ever before when it comes to designing and deploying IT infrastructure. Whether it’s traditional on-premises data centers, physical infrastructure residing in colocation facilities, public clouds, XaaS offerings, or virtual network services, the infrastructure options enterprises can choose from to meet their diverse business needs can be arranged into a practically endless number of different configurations. While the benefits of hybrid infrastructure are undeniable, so too is the additional complexity that hybrid infrastructure helps create. All of the different elements named above need to be integrated into something that can function as a cohesive whole, and…

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Paris: Where Digital Acceleration and Sustainable Business Intersect

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 07:00:47 +0000

Whether it’s art, fashion, sport, cuisine or architecture, Paris occupies the imaginations of so many across the world for so many reasons. For lifelong residents and first-time visitors alike, Paris is as much an idea as it is a city. With “Paris the idea” looming so large in our minds, it’s easy to forget what “Paris the city” really is: it’s one of the economic powerhouses of Europe, and headquarters to 29 corporations from the Fortune Global 500. It’s the largest metropolitan area in the European Union, with a population that’s growing more diverse and multicultural every day. It’s a…

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Why Career Opportunities Abound in the Data Center Industry

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 00:00:10 +0000

It’s International Data Center Day, which makes it the perfect time to celebrate all the Equinix data center Operations workers across the globe who demonstrate their commitment to ensuring all systems are up and running 24/7, whatever the circumstances. Before and during the dark days of the pandemic, working from home was not an option for them. Instead, they showed up on-site day-after-day in each of our IBX® data centers to manage, maintain and update our customers’ equipment, and enabled those who wanted to enter data centers to do so safely. We sincerely thank you for your unwavering dedication…

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5 Key Technology Trends Driving Australia’s Digital Innovation Outlook in 2022

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 07:13:07 +0000

According to a Gartner® forecast. This is the mindset, technologies and operational capabilities enabling organisations to innovate and acclimatise quickly in today’s shifting landscape. Further, Gartner suggests investments in artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud and security technologies will continue to accelerate as they are seen to be critical solutions to supporting business composability. In today’s fast-paced digital world, business leaders must prioritise agility and…

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Getting to Know our Asia-Pacific Leader – Manoj Paul

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 02:00:31 +0000

India’s digital economy is anticipated to be worth US$2 trillion by 2030. As the government continues to advance digital technology adoption, including the upcoming rollout of 5G, opportunities to accelerate digital transformation in the country are more exciting than ever. For this latest installment of our “Getting to Know” series, I sat down with Manoj Paul, Managing Director at Equinix India, to learn more about his background and journey to Equinix and discuss the dynamic digital landscape in India. Jeremy Deutsch (JD); Manoj Paul (MP) JD: You’ve now been with Equinix for about six months. What has been your top takeaway from…

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How to Solve for Peering Progression

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 12:00:21 +0000

In the digital era, being able to exchange data with partners quickly, reliably and securely is key to collaboration, innovation and business success. This is essentially the problem the internet was created to solve. Many people think of “the internet” as the websites and applications they interact with, but it’s really nothing more than the underlying network of networks that exchanges traffic to make those websites and applications accessible to users.

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The Building Blocks of Digital Infrastructure

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 12:00:52 +0000

The internet is a huge milestone in the history of the civilized world, and has brought enormous benefits for both business and society in general. While celebrating this, especially in C2C, B2C interactions and IoT, we must be cognizant of the unsuitability of the internet for evolving enterprise IT requirements and digital infrastructure. In particular, access to public cloud data repositories, processing, software applications, and mission-critical network services require different levels of performance, trust, security and availability that can be difficult or even impossible to guarantee over the internet. The Equinix answer to these challenges has long been the…

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How Equinix Precision Time Mitigates Jamming and Spoofing Threats

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 12:00:15 +0000

In today’s world, there are daily instances of attacks to Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, which include Global Positioning System (GPS), Galileo and other satellite-based radionavigation constellations. Government agencies, critical infrastructure, and enterprises typically use GNSS receivers to perform mission critical operations including geo-location and time synchronization for a variety of applications in our daily lives. GNSS systems are vulnerable to intentional or unintentional attacks, which are primarily jamming and spoofing that can disrupt the mission critical operations. In response to these threats, Equinix has integrated industry leading hardware and software anti-jamming and spoofing technologies into the Equinix Precision…

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Time to Rethink Your VPN: A Gateway for Vulnerabilities

Tue, 29 Mar 2022 23:00:58 +0000

With remote working on the rise, cybercriminals have revved up their antics. Enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region experienced a 168% year-on-year increase in cyberattacks in May 2021.1 Foreign bad actors routinely exploited unpatched Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). This is alarming, as VPN was not among the top 10 common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) from 2016-2019.2 While the IT arena may be more attuned to remote working, it’s a different story for the Operational Technology (OT) industry, which often requires personnel on-site to safeguard Industrial…

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Financial Services SaaS Provider Optimizes Customer Experience

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 12:00:44 +0000

A national financial services provider wanted to improve the overall customer experience for its Software as a Service (SaaS) solution by taking a different approach with its existing private connections. The first step was to deploy its services on Platform Equinix® to optimize onboarding new customers. This involved setting up a test environment where its customers would use Network Edge and Equinix Fabric™ to connect to the company’s SaaS solution directly and securely. Testing its services on Platform Equinix gave the company a better understanding of how it could more effectively support customers and reduce network setup and connectivity costs…

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Equinix Launches MV1, the World’s First Metaverse Data Center

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 12:00:45 +0000

What if I told you that there was a new way to deploy the digital infrastructure your business needs, without ever leaving your couch? And what if it could help you get closer to end users while also taking advantage of a trillion-dollar yearly opportunity? Do you want to know what it is? Namely, it’s Equinix MV1, the very first data center in the metaverse. Here at Equinix, we’re always looking for new ways to help our customers meet their digital infrastructure needs, even when it takes us to some unexpected places. It’s that spirit of exploration and innovation that led…

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Equinix Extends Carrier-Neutral Digital Infrastructure to Africa

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 08:01:45 +0000

In December of last year, Equinix announced our intent to acquire MainOne, a leading data center and connectivity solutions provider in West Africa. Today, we are proud to announce that acquisition is complete and are taking a moment to celebrate this important milestone for both our companies. This acquisition is the first step in Equinix’s long-term strategy to extend our carrier-neutral digital infrastructure platform and global connectivity to Africa, all playing a vital part in accelerating digital maturity and reducing the digital divide across the continent.

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Private vs. Public Connectivity to the Cloud: What to Choose

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 12:00:04 +0000

When do you use private connectivity versus the public internet when going to the cloud? That question is still top of mind for many IT professionals who are using one or more clouds to serve internal users or external customers and partners. You need to consider both security and performance when moving data and workloads between cloud services and the people and applications that require them. Let’s look at how private and public connectivity models address both of these requirements.

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Are Social Media Companies Getting into the Data Center Business?

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 12:00:04 +0000

In the 2021 Data Center Real Estate Review from North American Data Centers, some interesting patterns emerged. Three social media companies—Meta, TikTok and Twitter—account for the 11 largest wholesale multitenant data center leases signed in 2021. This is particularly noteworthy when you consider social media companies have also been building private hyperscale data centers at a remarkable rate: Meta is currently constructing more than 7 million square feet of data center space in the U.S. alone. Similar growth is happening in other parts of the world: TikTok’s first data center in Europe is scheduled to go live in late…

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The Evolution of “as a Service” Digital Infrastructure

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 13:00:05 +0000

Just about every technology player is moving as a service, and as the world’s digital infrastructure company™, we’re focused on helping to make them successful. For example, read more about today’s introduction of a series of trusted solutions from Dell Technologies. Our role? To make Dell’s unique technologies the star of our customers’ show by handling the stuff that makes it all “go”—anywhere in the world.

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How Can Distributed Businesses Get Closer to Customers Everywhere?

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 12:00:07 +0000

Most industries are facing digital transformation imperatives, but perhaps none of them are as pressing or complex as that of travel and transportation. To say the least, the past two years have been chaotic for the industry, starting with a near-total shutdown in early 2020 and continuing through a promising yet uneven recovery in 2021. Even today, business and international travel have a long way to go to normalize: a Deloitte Corporate Travel Survey found that only 54% of companies expect their business travel spending to return to 2019 levels by the end of 2022. Industry leaders can’t control fluctuating…

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Powering Hyperscale Growth in Asia-Pacific for New Digital Opportunities

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 00:30:22 +0000

It’s undeniable that the world is increasingly digital. Over the past few years, we have witnessed significant developments in new and emerging technologies such as augmented reality, auto-driving, the metaverse, and many more, which has led to the rising reliance on cloud and digital infrastructures. In Asia-Pacific, the appetite for digital is only growing thanks to increasing smartphone adoption, online business penetration, and rising government initiatives to digitize economies. For example, in 2021, the Australian government unveiled an AU$1.2 billion scheme to boost the country’s digital future. South Korea also has plans to invest KRW 9 trillion (around US$7.51 billion) this year to foster…

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Equinix Recognizes 2021 Global and Regional Partner Award Winners

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 12:00:33 +0000

As the pandemic continued through unpredictable ups and downs in 2021, business leaders faced the new normal: a constant state of flux. Many companies were immersed in applying and refining their digital-first strategies for competitive advantage in the digital economy. Simultaneously, we saw partners in the Equinix ecosystem continue to step up their support to help customers advance their journeys to digital leadership. Enterprises are finding there is strength in numbers, and they are rightly convinced there’s not a single company equipped to meet the broad range of challenges in the digital economy on their own. Nor is relying on…

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Hybrid Infrastructure from Edge to Cloud

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 14:00:02 +0000

According to IDC, ‘cloud is now firmly established as an essential element of a digital-first strategy and will become the primary accelerator of innovation’. The increased pace of digital transformation across many industries, triggered by the global pandemic, has indeed stimulated public cloud adoption. As a result, organisations continue to rely less on traditional on-premises infrastructure and consider exiting their privately owned datacentres. But one cloud won’t fit all. The IT strategy must carefully consider the ‘best fit’ infrastructure for each individual workload. Cost is only one factor in this decision-making process. Business agility gained from advanced platform services like artificial intelligence…

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How to Converse in Cloud: Optimize Hybrid Via Software-Defined Cloud Networking

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 12:00:04 +0000

Hybrid multicloud architectures are essential to enterprises working to gain tenacity on digital acceleration and maximize agility in our dynamically changing world. Whether it’s the onset of COVID-19, geopolitical conflict, or simply unexpected changes in the market, there are endless reasons why it’s crucial for enterprises to be able to adapt their digital infrastructures quickly. Furthermore, most enterprises have recognized by now that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to cloud is unlikely to deliver the best results. While some workloads are well suited to reap the performance and flexibility benefits of a public cloud, others might require the security and data privacy…

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Top 5 Cyberthreats to Your Digital Infrastructure

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 12:00:29 +0000

Picture data center security. Got it? One could think of robust physical security: high-grade, multilevel security everywhere, hundreds of cameras and biometric readers strategically located throughout, and staffed 24/7/365. (Obviously, we’re picturing our IBX® data centers.) However, data center security isn’t just about the physical security of the building itself; much of it comprises the employees as well as digital systems. Like other digital infrastructures, data centers are only as strong as their weak points. All these networked servers and devices that process and store precious data (cue: Gollum) are protected from all kinds of threats through the combination of…

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3 Key Concepts Defining Digital Transformation Success

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 12:00:57 +0000

While digital transformation is vital for success in the digital age, you shouldn’t consider it just another box to check. We’d all love to be able to order a “digital transformation” online and then deploy it instantly, but things just aren’t that easy in the real world. True transformation is about adopting highly efficient digital processes, introducing revolutionary competencies in your workforce, and implementing new business models. As the word “transformation” implies, it requires a completely different approach from what you’ve done in the past. By deploying new strategies and gaining data-driven insights, you can advance agility, spark innovation, and…

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Equinix and euNetworks Power Digital Transformation in Healthcare

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 07:00:32 +0000

Modern healthcare enterprises recognize the need for digital transformation: according to one survey, 93% of healthcare organizations either have a digital transformation strategy in place or are in the process of planning one. Digital transformation is essential to capitalize on the opportunities presented by advanced technologies like high-performance computing (HPC), real-time analytics, and artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). However, applying those technologies isn’t always straightforward. Advanced digital solutions require healthcare organizations to collect, store, process, transfer and protect massive amounts of data, and many organizations lack the distributed digital infrastructure needed to do that. The complexity of healthcare ecosystems…

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How Application Modernization is Transforming the Retail Sector

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 12:00:28 +0000

Large big-box retailers that have been in business for any length of time may have started with one or two locations. Whether their expansion occurred at a steady pace, or they experienced explosive growth, it’s likely they didn’t evolve their business applications and infrastructure simultaneously. Added to the pain of maintaining and upgrading legacy applications was the new challenge of running an e-commerce division that required 24/7 availability and real-time inventory management to display product availability in a mobile app. Finally, the expansion of physical locations may have led to a statewide, regional, national or worldwide footprint, producing a massive…

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6 Elements That Make Up the Anatomy of Hybrid Multicloud Networks

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 12:00:43 +0000

Hybrid multicloud has emerged as one of the key factors driving digital transformation today. The benefits of pairing multiple public clouds with cloud-adjacent on-premises data centers are now widely recognized. Selecting the ideal environment for each app or workload can help maximize the performance, flexibility, security and cost-efficiency of your entire IT architecture. Regardless of the exact criteria you’re trying to meet or the cloud providers you work with to meet them, the fact remains that ensuring effective network connectivity is essential to a successful hybrid multicloud strategy. For this reason, it’s no surprise IDC predicts the multicloud networking market…

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5 Sustainability Concepts Driving the Data Center of the Future

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 07:00:25 +0000

The theme for Earth Day 2022 is “Invest in Our Planet.” It’s an idea we’re proud to support, as it aligns with our own Data Center of the Future initiative. We believe investing in sustainable data center technologies isn’t just the right thing to do for the future of our planet; it can also be a key source of business value for our customers today. The report “Ten tech trends driving transformation in 2022” from 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, provides more insights that back up our thinking. According to the report, sustainability is a key factor…

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To Overcome Hardware Supply Chain Issues, Go Virtual

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 12:00:42 +0000

One lesson digital leaders worldwide have learned from the pandemic is the increasing need to adapt quickly to disruption. Companies must be more agile, both in how they run their businesses and in how they take advantage of expansion opportunities in spite of supply chain issues. Network virtualization can help solve both challenges. Expanding networking functions into a new metro traditionally required enterprises to make a large upfront investment in physical hardware devices. Those devices often took several months to be deployed; since the pandemic started, the wait has grown even longer. In contrast, virtual network functions (VNFs) allow a…

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The Hidden Costs of Cloud

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 12:00:47 +0000

In spite of the performance, scalability and flexibility benefits of public cloud, IT leaders are increasingly realizing it’s not the answer for every challenge they face. This is reflected in the growing trend of cloud repatriation. According to one survey from 451 Alliance, 48% of respondents said they had moved at least one workload away from the public cloud within the last 12 months. One of the key factors driving this trend is cost. In the early days of cloud computing, being able to shift from large upfront capital expenses (CAPEX) to spread-out operating expenses (OPEX) was one of the…

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How Tokopedia Democratizes E-Commerce Leveraging a Digital Infrastructure

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 23:00:02 +0000

The pandemic has propelled e-commerce to the forefront of global trade. In 2021, retail e-commerce sales amounted to approximately US$4.9 trillion worldwide and is forecast to continue growing by 50% over the next four years, reaching US$7.4 trillion by 2025. The sharp rise in e-commerce sales was driven by the strict lockdown and mobility policies implemented in several countries. To capitalize on the market opportunities, retailers adopt digital channels more swiftly to meet the demand of customers who have become increasingly reliant on online…

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3 Key Components of High Performing Data Center Operations

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 12:00:49 +0000

If we had to choose the single most important factor to explain what makes the delivery of data center capacity and uptime successful, we would choose: continuous and strategic maintenance. Data center facilities must operate within a very stringent set of parameters—24 hours a day, 7 days a week. An operator’s approach to strategic maintenance is really the key to ensure the highest quality and continuous delivery for clients. Maintenance encompasses a complex interaction between people, process and equipment; only one of which is easy to quantify–the equipment. Typically, the listing of a data center’s equipment is published on the…

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Building a Sustainable, Inclusive Future for the Data Center Industry

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 00:00:26 +0000

At Equinix, we spend a lot of time thinking about the future, and what we can do to help build a better future for us all. But exactly what kind of future are we talking about? As the world’s digital infrastructure company™, our support for an innovative, digital-driven future is a given. However, we care equally about ensuring our planet is healthy, everyone has opportunities to thrive, and businesses lead with integrity and purpose. That’s why we call our corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy “Future First”. As the 2021 Equinix Sustainability Report shows, we did a lot to…

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Equinix Bolsters Digital Acceleration in South America

Tue, 03 May 2022 11:59:52 +0000

At Equinix, we recognize that our customers need carrier-neutral digital infrastructure in more places across the world to support their digital transformation and deliver cutting-edge solutions where end users want them. That’s why we’re so proud and excited to announce that today we are officially entering Chile for the first time, thanks to our acquisition of four data centers from Empresa Nacional De Telecomunicaciones (Entel), a leading Chilean telecommunications provider. The acquisition will include the following facilities in and around the Chilean capital of Santiago: Two data centers in Ciudad de los Valles, which boasts the largest multitenant data center site…

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Connect with Third-Party Ethernet Providers via Equinix Fabric

Thu, 05 May 2022 12:00:38 +0000

Today’s network service providers (NSPs) are always looking for ways to better serve their customers in more places across the world. However, it’s a simple fact that no one network can be everywhere customers need services. For the NSPs, expanding their service reach into new markets by deploying new physical network infrastructure is a costly and time-consuming proposition, especially during an era of widespread supply chain disruption. For most NSPs, the potential return on investment doesn’t justify such an approach. Network-to-network interfaces (NNIs) offer a quicker and easier way for NSPs to begin expanding their Ethernet services, helping them reach…

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Expanding Digital Connections to Boost Healthcare Innovation

Fri, 06 May 2022 00:00:05 +0000

Historically ranked as one of the least digitized industries, Healthcare has jumped up the list to become one of the sectors that have undergone the most extensive digital transformations over the last two years as a result of being on the frontlines of the pandemic. And this momentum is set to continue. Global trends, such as aging populations, shortage of skilled professionals, the prevalence of chronic diseases, and rising costs along with health data volumes, are driving the relentless pace of technology adoption in the sector. For healthcare providers looking to transform their infrastructure, a critical component underpinning their successful…

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Equinix, Nasdaq and Amazon Web Services Build the Capital Markets Infrastructure of the Future

Fri, 06 May 2022 18:30:19 +0000

Over the past decade, the adoption of electronic trading has grown steadily, accelerating the requirement to expand digital infrastructure at the core and the edge—worldwide. The next wave is the cloudification of global capital markets. In parallel, digital ecosystems have become the epicenter of innovation as financial services companies, including capital markets, discovered the tremendous value of collaborating with other companies from across the industry. According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5, the financial services industry accounts for 18% of the global interconnection bandwidth mix, by far the most of any industry. This shows that financial services companies…

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Deploying Digital Infrastructure? Consider These Key Factors

Mon, 09 May 2022 12:00:04 +0000

Now that we are into year three of the global pandemic, distributed digital infrastructure continues to propel digital leaders forward as they use technology for competitive advantage–when and where they need it most. Cloudifying business as usual is no longer enough. Whether at the digital core, the digital edge or both, where companies position compute, storage and networking capabilities is driven by their digital-first strategies. According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5, digital leaders are moving 4.5x farther ahead with their digital-first strategies compared to traditional businesses. There is no longer a distinction between business and IT units;…

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Digital Readiness in Minutes vs. Months

Tue, 10 May 2022 12:00:48 +0000

The supply chain disruptions of the past two years have impacted many businesses, as they waited on the delivery of physical networking hardware and devices to connect crucial business operations. We’ve all seen the videos of container ships in holding patterns offshore, waiting for the green light to unload their cargo at destination ports. Once the hardware and devices arrive, businesses may still need to order and install international lines for connectivity between a colocation facility in one country and a colocation facility in a different country. Something that sounds like a simple order can take upwards of 90 business…

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How can Government and Organizations Collaborate to Enhance Public Services

Wed, 11 May 2022 01:27:23 +0000

Digital capabilities have become the cornerstone for achieving operational efficiencies, creating economic growth opportunities, and improving citizens’ lives in today’s global economy. Forward-thinking government leaders recognize increasingly that in addition to providing reliable internet connectivity, and innovative online services, it is imperative for them to ensure that online citizen services and infrastructure are inclusive and accessible to all – regardless of age, gender, geographies and abilities. Demonstrating this line of thinking is the Singapore government’s move to accelerate the provision of digital devices to students when schools had to move online during the pandemic, so that students from all backgrounds…

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Taking a Data-Centric Approach to IT Modernization

Thu, 12 May 2022 12:00:19 +0000

For federal agencies, IT modernization efforts are often the catalyst for opening up a path to digital transformation. But what do we actually mean when we talk about “digital transformation?” The goal of digital transformation is for agencies to be able to provision new operational environments as quickly and easily as pushing a button. The idea sounds simple enough, so why are so many agencies struggling with it? To go from siloed legacy IT systems to a seamless digital posture, agencies need to work with an ecosystem of trusted partners. When IT modernization efforts fail, it’s often because too much…

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Technology is propelling Australia’s mining industry forward

Mon, 16 May 2022 03:16:59 +0000

We like staying connected to our customers and the industries we work within. That’s why last year, we conducted extensive research to uncover the state of mining sector: what is the outlook, what are the challenges and opportunities, and what role does technology play in the future of mining. Equinix Mining Technology Report 2021–22 is a leader’s guide to digitisation in mining today, describing how technology is helping miners to meet current challenges, capitalise on opportunities and shape the entire industry for a brighter future. According to our research, despite ongoing pressures the sector faces, the future for the mining,…

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Peering vs. Software-Defined Interconnection

Mon, 16 May 2022 12:00:37 +0000

To increase business agility and accelerate revenue growth, enterprises around the world are pursuing digital transformation. A successful digital transformation initiative requires enterprises to maximize the value of their data by moving it freely across an ecosystem of partners, enabling shared insights and co-innovation. The Gartner® report “Top 2022 Tech Provider Trend: Co-Innovation Ecosystems Will Boost Transformational Growth” highlights this as an imperative for business success: “In the expanding digital economy, business value is created or enhanced through various digital technologies and data. Considering that digital ideas, services or data flow easily across different boundaries of enterprises, industries or countries,…

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A Modernized Digital Infrastructure is Key to a Resilient Digital Supply Chain

Tue, 17 May 2022 07:00:34 +0000

The manufacturing industry is in a state of flux: customers have greater expectations than ever for more innovative goods, more customization at scale, and fast or even next-day deliveries. These expectations put unprecedented pressure on global manufacturing supply chains. Today’s manufacturers need to be resilient and agile, not only to meet rising customer expectations, but also to cope with supply chain disruptions created by global incidents like natural disasters, geopolitical instability, health crises and raw material shortages. Manufacturers must address these challenges while also meeting sustainability imperatives—not only making their operations greener, but also proving they’ve done so. The conflict…

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Resilient, Agile Digital Infrastructure Keeps Mercury Building

Wed, 18 May 2022 07:00:25 +0000

Today’s engineering and construction designs are highly dependent on sharing information from digital technologies such as 3D modeling, smart devices and augmented reality (AR), as well as physical information systems. To keep within tight deadlines and budgets, fast and reliable access to a hybrid IT environment that supports both virtual and physical infrastructure is essential for engineering firms to excel in this dynamic sector. Mercury Engineering is an international engineering and construction contractor based in Dublin, Ireland that is reimagining how people work and live in their built environments. It is responsible for engineering designs and construction across a range…

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AAPI Heritage Month: One Community. Many Connections.

Fri, 20 May 2022 12:00:42 +0000

At Equinix, we strive to find connections for the diverse Equinix Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community. This post represents our personal opinions and shared experiences as interASIANconnect (iAc) members honoring AAPI Heritage Month. Julie Joseph, Director of IT Communications, and Communications Lead, interASIANconnect Growing up, I described myself as a South Indian living in North India. I was multi-lingual, celebrated all festivals and could relate to various cultures. I embraced the notion of my diverse identity, but little did I know that I was merely scratching the surface of my identity as an Asian. When I moved from India…

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Equinix Fabric Connects More Businesses in More Places

Mon, 23 May 2022 12:00:28 +0000

We’re now well into the third year of the pandemic, and the business challenges are only continuing to pile up. Whether it’s supply chain disruptions, geopolitical instability or labor shortages, enterprises certainly have their work cut out for them, and most of them have realized these challenges are just too big to tackle alone. Instead, we see digital leaders tapping into partner ecosystems to access infrastructure and IT capabilities as a service. This continues the trend of IT services living outside traditional enterprise-owned data centers, whether that means in the cloud, with a SaaS provider, or at the edge. According…

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Equinix Fabric Connects More Businesses in More Places

Mon, 23 May 2022 12:00:28 +0000

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AAPI Heritage Month: One Community. Many Connections.

Fri, 20 May 2022 12:00:42 +0000

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Resilient, Agile Digital Infrastructure Keeps Mercury Building

Wed, 18 May 2022 07:00:25 +0000

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A Modernized Digital Infrastructure is Key to a Resilient Digital Supply Chain

Tue, 17 May 2022 07:00:34 +0000

The post A Modernized Digital Infrastructure is Key to a Resilient Digital Supply Chain appeared first on Interconnections - The Equinix Blog.

Peering vs. Software-Defined Interconnection

Mon, 16 May 2022 12:00:37 +0000

The post Peering vs. Software-Defined Interconnection appeared first on Interconnections - The Equinix Blog.

Technology is propelling Australia’s mining industry forward

Mon, 16 May 2022 03:16:59 +0000

The post Technology is propelling Australia’s mining industry forward appeared first on Interconnections - The Equinix Blog.

Taking a Data-Centric Approach to IT Modernization

Thu, 12 May 2022 12:00:19 +0000

The post Taking a Data-Centric Approach to IT Modernization appeared first on Interconnections - The Equinix Blog.

How can Government and Organizations Collaborate to Enhance Public Services

Wed, 11 May 2022 01:27:23 +0000

The post How can Government and Organizations Collaborate to Enhance Public Services appeared first on Interconnections - The Equinix Blog.

Digital Readiness in Minutes vs. Months

Tue, 10 May 2022 12:00:48 +0000

The post Digital Readiness in Minutes vs. Months appeared first on Interconnections - The Equinix Blog.

Deploying Digital Infrastructure? Consider These Key Factors

Mon, 09 May 2022 12:00:04 +0000

The post Deploying Digital Infrastructure? Consider These Key Factors appeared first on Interconnections - The Equinix Blog.

Equinix, Nasdaq and Amazon Web Services Build the Capital Markets Infrastructure of the Future

Fri, 06 May 2022 18:30:19 +0000

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Expanding Digital Connections to Boost Healthcare Innovation

Fri, 06 May 2022 00:00:05 +0000

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Connect with Third-Party Ethernet Providers via Equinix Fabric

Thu, 05 May 2022 12:00:38 +0000

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Equinix Bolsters Digital Acceleration in South America

Tue, 03 May 2022 11:59:52 +0000

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Building a Sustainable, Inclusive Future for the Data Center Industry

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 00:00:26 +0000

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3 Key Components of High Performing Data Center Operations

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 12:00:49 +0000

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How Tokopedia Democratizes E-Commerce Leveraging a Digital Infrastructure

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 23:00:02 +0000

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The Hidden Costs of Cloud

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 12:00:47 +0000

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To Overcome Hardware Supply Chain Issues, Go Virtual

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 12:00:42 +0000

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5 Sustainability Concepts Driving the Data Center of the Future

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 07:00:25 +0000

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Digital Infrastructure as a Core Engine for Sustainability

Tue, 24 May 2022 23:00:22 +0000

There has never been a more pivotal timeframe than now to fight against climate change. A recent report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a stark warning calling for organizations and countries to work together for a brighter future. As pressure from stakeholders continues to accumulate, organizations are increasingly looking for new solutions to fast-track sustainable developments. In Asia-Pacific (APAC), organizations are also accelerating sustainability efforts, including Hong Kong. As the main gateway between Mainland China and international countries, Hong Kong has long played a vital role as a financial and trade hub in Greater China…

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Virtual Infrastructure Simplifies Business Operations in China

Mon, 23 May 2022 23:00:19 +0000

Doing business globally often introduces regional and country-specific complexities. China, with its fast-growing economy and significant manufacturing sector, has its fair share of these complexities. Businesses in China are facing challenges as they accelerate their digital transformation in response to the global pandemic, which has increased demand for reliable and cost-effective digital infrastructure and connectivity services. These services include enabling cross-border commerce, with businesses in China connecting to the rest of the world and businesses in the rest of the world connecting to China. In this blog, we’ll explore the factors contributing to these challenges, such as reliance on the…

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How Connecting Cities can Boost Economic Growth

Wed, 25 May 2022 23:54:40 +0000

Singapore is one of the global cities with high greenery density, according to Treepedia. Amidst buildings and expressways, nature corridors connect habitats to create the green aerial view of a City in Nature, while preserving the genetic diversity and resilience of wildlife. Digital corridors, too, exist to connect disparate companies, industries, or cities. This connection helps businesses enjoy faster and more reliable digital connectivity, allowing for the adoption of tech like digital twins, and providing new opportunities for economic growth. In this blog, we will delve into how digital connectivity across cities and regions enables innovative technologies and fuels growth opportunities…

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How Businesses Can Get Proactive About Data Privacy Compliance

Thu, 26 May 2022 12:00:01 +0000

Regulations governing data privacy are complex and ever-changing. Places like the European Union and Canada have traditionally taken the lead on passing stringent laws covering the collection, storage and management of personally identifiable information. These regulations can be challenging to comply with, but they at least give businesses a sense of what to expect. In the United States, things haven’t always been so straightforward. Lawmakers in the U.S. have thus far declined to pass a federal data privacy regulation, which has left individual states to step in and create privacy legislation of their own. With the potential for different requirements…

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Execute Cloud Application Migration at Software Speed

Tue, 31 May 2022 12:00:47 +0000

Hybrid multicloud architectures have become the de facto norm for enterprise IT, delivering the flexibility and agility organizations need to compete in a fast-paced business environment. According to the Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report, 89% of surveyed organizations have now embraced a multicloud strategy, with 80% using a hybrid approach that includes both private and public clouds. As companies advance their digital transformation and seek opportunities to maximize their cloud investments, the ability to migrate cloud applications quickly and easily is essential. Hybrid multicloud networking solutions operate behind the scenes to help businesses connect the different components of…

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An Alternative Platform for Cloud-Native Applications

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 07:00:49 +0000

Today’s application developers are turning to cloud platforms to create cloud-native SaaS solutions, however, finding the right one is increasingly challenging. Does it provide comprehensive application and database development, testing and hosting services? Is it secure and compliant with data protection and privacy regulations? Is it scalable and affordable? And last, but not least, is it robust and reliable enough to deliver continuous access to users? In an effort to give European application developers simple, scalable, yet affordable cloud infrastructure services from secure and GDPR-compliant locations, Exoscale developed its cloud platform on Platform Equinix® as an alternative to hyperscale provider…

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Where is the Digital Edge?

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 12:00:22 +0000

The growing importance of the digital edge has perhaps been the defining story in IT over the last several years. Recent events, like the move to remote work and the buildout of 5G, have accelerated a shift that was already underway. The traditional approach to IT infrastructure—where all traffic flows through a core data center or cloud location—no longer makes sense in a world where enterprises need to limit latency and reach more end users in more places. The old way of doing things was all about moving the data to the compute. Now, data sets are growing ever larger,…

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Equinix and Cisco Deliver Key Encryption Technology Over Global Networks

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 12:00:22 +0000

In my last blog, I talked about the proliferation of IT services at the digital edge, how it creates new cybersecurity challenges, and what digital leaders are doing to overcome those new challenges. I focused on the promise of MACsec technology to enable encrypted multi-domain data transport, and how the advent of WAN MACsec could make this groundbreaking encryption methodology viable for use on a global scale. In this post, we’ll expand upon that idea with a deeper look at why MACsec can be beneficial for federal agencies that need to operate at the digital edge without exposing mission-critical data…

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Web3 and What It Means for Data in the Future

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 23:00:24 +0000

The emergence of the metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), along with mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrency, decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain, continue to make headlines this year. In 2021, investors poured over US$30 billion into cryptocurrencies, nearly a fourfold increase from 2018’s US$8 billion investment. It demonstrates a growing excitement in the industry as investments and interests stream in. One region that is seeing the most action is Asia-Pacific. Thanks to a…

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3 Ways Enterprises Can Create Business Value with Equinix Fabric

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 12:00:15 +0000

In recent years, the IT infrastructure needs of large global companies have changed drastically. Thanks to an increasingly borderless economy, the growth of latency-sensitive digital applications, and a complex patchwork of data privacy and sovereignty regulations, the old way of doing things is now untenable. Rather than continuing to rely on siloed, centralized IT infrastructure, where all traffic passes through a core data center location, digital leaders are increasingly turning to distributed, interconnected digital infrastructure. This allows them to get closer to end users by deploying at the digital edge, and interconnecting those edge locations across the globe. In addition,…

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3 Key Technology Considerations for Successful Collaborative R&D

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 23:00:31 +0000

The World Bank’s recent projection that the global economy will grow by of 4.1% this year – a drop from 5.5% in 2021 – signaled a volatile but positive transition to a post-Covid-19 future that holds much potential with bright spots of growth. In step with this, Singapore recently announced plans to strengthen its digital capabilities to power its next stage of growth. In addition to infrastructure upgrades with future technologies like 6G, augmented and virtual reality, Singapore will invest S$200 million to equip local enterprises with cutting-edge digital capabilities and automation solutions for increasing productivity and access to overseas…

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How Equinix and Verizon Power Digital Ecosystems in Los Angeles

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 12:00:09 +0000

Today, the new normal is constantly changing as the world gets more connected and businesses capitalize on new opportunities as they present themselves. This creates new challenges for IT organizations across the globe, including: Enabling employee, customer and partner access to applications on-demand. Streamlining internal and external business processes. Working more efficiently within evolving ecosystems. Leveraging new technologies in networking and the cloud. Though these are all global trends, we see the expanding Los Angeles (LA) metro area as a vibrant microcosm, where industry sectors such as financial services, digital media and entertainment, manufacturing, and healthcare are rapidly growing. But regardless of where you…

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Equinix PrideConnect: We Celebrate Pride All Year Long

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 00:00:58 +0000

When I first joined PrideConnect, our LGBTQ+ Employee Connection Network, I was elated that I could be part of a community that encouraged me to show up as my authentic self and provided me the ability to connect with peers on empowering and real topics. That was a true gift. Now, here we are three years later and I see how far we have advanced our internal movement and I am proud of the work we have done. So, as we kick off what I love to call Summer of Pride, I reflect on how far we have come but…

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How Can Enterprises Meet Data Sovereignty Standards?

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 07:00:43 +0000

Governments throughout the world are beginning to see digital infrastructure—the data centers, subsea cables, terrestrial fiber and satellites that move data and enable digital applications—as being just as important as physical infrastructure like oil and gas pipelines. For this reason, it’s no surprise that geopolitical competition to build and control that digital infrastructure is heating up in many parts of the world. In Europe, this competition is playing out in interesting ways. Foreign investment in digital infrastructure is pouring into the E.U., particularly from the U.S. and China. From the U.S. side, this investment has been driven mostly by big…

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How to Deploy Network Infrastructure in the Right Places

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 12:00:24 +0000

It’s now clear to anyone who’s been paying attention that the traditional incumbent network service provider (NSP) model is facing a variety of changing market forces. Chief among those forces is the growth of 5G technology. It’s simply not possible for NSPs or their enterprise customers to realize the full potential of 5G ecosystems without completely overhauling the way they deploy and operate their networks. 5G is enabling enterprise-grade use cases at the edge that would have been literally impossible before now. This means that 5G is revolutionary for NSPs, not evolutionary. NSPs must act now to meet demand for…

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Conversations with Our Customers – Sharpening the Edge

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 12:00:02 +0000

As organizations enhance the services they deliver and the value those services create, data generation and cloud evolution both play an increasingly critical role. Where is data coming from? What’s the most efficient way to make use of it? And what role do cloud architectures play in that process? These are key questions asked by business and IT leaders alike in nearly every industry. That’s why edge computing—including smart sensors, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, operational technology (OT) of many types, and the tsunami of new data they all yield—has taken on new importance. Bridging the gap between the edge…

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Deploying Offsite Disaster Recovery Infrastructure at the Digital Edge

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 12:00:23 +0000

As organizations migrate applications and workloads to public clouds, they need to deliver those applications in a secure and compliant fashion across a resilient distributed digital architecture. Public cloud services can fail, which makes disaster recovery critical to maintain the 24/7 operations of a business. To build an offsite disaster recovery (DR) strategy, organizations must determine how much they’re willing to spend, in terms of both time and money, to achieve their desired DR outcome. Because a disaster event can potentially take down workloads and/or applications, DR objectives should include seamlessly recovering applications/workloads or avoiding downtime altogether. While backup and recovery options…

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How to Build a Cloud-Agnostic Architecture

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 12:00:36 +0000

The value that IT organizations can get from deploying a hybrid multicloud architecture is now widely recognized. Many enterprise IT teams rightfully view hybrid multicloud adoption as a key aspect of their digital transformation initiatives. However, recognizing the need for a hybrid multicloud architecture and successfully deploying one are two different things altogether. Overcoming technological complexity and ensuring interoperability of applications across different cloud service providers are among the key challenges standing in the way of successful hybrid multicloud adoption. According to data from the IDC Cloud Pulse Survey, 89% of respondents have achieved some degree of hybrid and/or multicloud…

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The Future of DCIM

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 12:00:21 +0000

In today’s business landscape, digital assets and applications are absolutely essential for success. With this in mind, it’s no wonder so many enterprises are relying on colocation providers to help them more efficiently house and maintain those critical assets (servers, storage, network equipment, etc.), and applications in vendor-neutral data centers located throughout the world. Since these assets are so important to the business, enterprises increasingly want transparency into how they’re performing and how colocation data center infrastructure (power, cooling, backup generators, etc.) are performing to maintain business continuity—and they want those insights backed up by hard data. To help give…

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Cybersecurity Priorities for Digital Leaders Navigating Digital Transformation

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 23:00:17 +0000

The pandemic has forced the economy into digital overdrive. Organizations had to rapidly adopt remote working and online channels in response to lockdowns and accelerate digital transformation agendas to survive. Unfortunately, the global threat landscape continues to escalate at an alarming rate, and rapid digitalization has left organizations vulnerable to cyberattacks. In recent years, Asia-Pacific has especially been a hotspot for cyberattacks, and as we continue into 2022, it’s evident that the problem is becoming more significant. Accelerated by external factors such as the pandemic, and now the Ukraine-Russian crisis, the risk of cyberattacks is on the rise and predicted…

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Data Protection Architecture for the Hybrid Multicloud World

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 12:00:22 +0000

In the IT world, the word “backup” usually creates a sudden urge to leave the room. While data protection should be considered the most important responsibility of IT teams, it often comes as an afterthought when discussing enterprise architecture. At a time when monolithic data centers were the norm, the impact of this architectural dynamic was relatively minimal. Since you at least knew where all your applications and data were located, data protection problems were limited to a single realm without the possibility of scaling. Today, hybrid multicloud is the reality for over 93% of large enterprises, 89% of which…

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Why Using the Right Time Protocol is Essential for Business

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 12:00:07 +0000

The growth of the digital economy and distributed computing has put an increased focus on time accuracy in networks. As digital transaction volumes increase, manufacturing operations become more sophisticated, and IoT functions rely more on real-time data, time synchronization across distributed workloads and databases has never been more important. Operating without accurate time can result in transactions processed out of order across multiple servers, expired data overwritten on current data in distributed databases, or a glitch in the delivery of live streaming media.

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Carbon Neutrality Technologies are Propelling Australia’s Mining Industry to New Heights

Sun, 26 Jun 2022 20:00:18 +0000

There is clearly a strong business case to advance the environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda. Companies and industries are facing increasing pressure from consumers to adopt greener measures, and COVID-19 has only heightened this. In a recent Australian survey, 79% of consumers were aware of brands’ sustainability practices, and the majority said sustainability was increasingly becoming top-of-mind when making a purchasing decision. Many companies have recognised this shift in awareness and recalibrated their sustainability strategies accordingly, predominantly in industries like mining and IT. The Equinix Mining Technology Report 2021-22, launched earlier this year, stated that 74% of mining leaders…

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Equinix Increases Network Agility with F5 NGINX Plus Load Balancer

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 12:00:33 +0000

Today’s customers have grown more demanding than ever. Across industries, end users expect new services and applications that make their lives easier, and they expect those applications and services to be available when and where they want them. To meet these demands, service providers and their enterprise customers need network agility, and they’re investing heavily in virtual network functions (VNFs) such as those delivered from Network Edge on Platform Equinix® to get that agility. The IDC Worldwide Edge Spending Guide looked at more than 150 edge computing use cases across various industries and domains, and found VNFs were among the…

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Build a Cloud-Ready Infrastructure with Equinix and WWT

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 12:00:00 +0000

While the ongoing hardware supply chain shortages aren’t news to anyone, exactly how long they’ll continue is difficult to say for sure. Analysis from Gartner® shows that the shortage will begin to clear up by the end of 2022: “Based on the aggregated projection recovery, a return to normal inventory levels won’t occur until Q3 or Q4 of this year.” However, that would only be the beginning of the recovery; it may take well into 2023 for supply to fully catch up to demand, particularly for more advanced semiconductor nodes. This shortage may have thrown a wrench into many enterprises’ expansion plans,…

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Don’t Let the Chip Shortage Derail Your Digital Transformation

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 07:00:00 +0000

The global chip shortage has been going on for over two years now, and it’s still unclear exactly when chip production will return to normal levels. Despite hope that the issue would start to resolve itself last year, the IT industry is still experiencing hardware supply delays of up to 12 months. According to Forrester, this won’t change in the immediate future: “Because demand will remain high and supply will remain constrained, we expect this shortage to last through 2022 and into 2023.” According to analysis from Goldman Sachs, the semiconductor shortage has impacted a staggering 169 different industries, with the…

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The future of elderly patient care begins with architecting digital ecosystems

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 23:00:42 +0000

The aging population has increasingly become a global issue with significant implications on healthcare, especially with a decreasing ratio of healthcare workers to patients as well as the growing number of elderlies living alone. With one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world, it is projected that 25% of Singapore’s population will be aged 65 years and older by 2030, up from 14.4% in 2019. I recently spoke with Soh Keng Taan, Chief Digital Strategy Officer, Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) Singapore about the current and future technology enablers for digital transformation in the intermediate and long-term care…

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IT Decision-Makers Demand the Anywhere Economy

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 07:59:05 +0000

While the “anywhere economy” was thriving before the pandemic, it surged with the increased 24/7 demand from consumers and businesses as they relied on the internet for essential services from companies like Amazon, Netflix and Adobe. Robust digital infrastructure is imperative for the anywhere economy to deliver on the increasing expectation of anything, anytime, anywhere. Despite the anticipated economic headwinds that threaten to stall business growth, IT decision-makers are expressing solid confidence in their ability to continue the success they’ve achieved with the anywhere economy over the past two years. In the fourth annual Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS),…

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Increased IT Spending in Asia-Pacific Fuels Ambitious Expansion Plans

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:42 +0000

Over the years, organizations in Asia-Pacific have made impressive strides to transition the region from a manufacturing center to a significant technology and innovation hub. Organizations in this region have successfully illustrated the advanced benefits of integrating technology at all levels of business and societies for more connected, efficient and streamlined operations. This played an especially important role in the region’s early response to the pandemic as organizations were able to swiftly pivot operations using digital and mobile technologies. This continued acceptance of innovation and openness to adopting new methods of work that we are witnessing today is crucial to…

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Future-Proofing Europe, Middle East and Africa IT Strategies

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 07:00:27 +0000

Contributing to the annual Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS) weighed in on today’s biggest technology trends and challenges. The results uncovered the top priorities for future-proofing EMEA businesses’ IT strategies as they reinvent themselves throughout the ongoing global pandemic. According to the GTTS results, over 80% of EMEA IT decision-makers see improving data compliance, cybersecurity and customer experience as their top priorities for future success. However, they also reported challenges that threaten these objectives, including: Increasing cyberattacks and security breaches and data leaks Changing regulatory environments around data…

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5 Equinix Fabric Use Cases for Network Service Providers

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 12:00:53 +0000

Today’s network service providers (NSPs) face an increasingly complex landscape of business customers needing connectivity for their enterprise. Hybrid networks that combine traditional private networking technologies with SD-WAN solutions, VPNs, and cloud-based connectivity have become the norm, altogether redefining what customers expect from their NSPs. To keep up with the needs of their customers, NSPs are turning to Equinix Fabric™. Equinix Fabric is our on-demand virtual interconnection service that powers connectivity for Platform Equinix®. It features a publicly documented, standards-based interface framework for enterprises and service providers looking to easily extend their network infrastructure into the global digital ecosystem. Equinix…

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How to Build a Future-Proof Business in Latin America

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 12:00:29 +0000

Following more than two years of seemingly nonstop disruption—from the pandemic to supply chain breakdowns to geopolitical conflict—many IT organizations are long overdue for an opportunity to stop and take stock of the changes they’ve made, and to think about where they need to go next. That’s why now is the ideal time for Equinix to release the findings from its 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS). IT decision-makers from around the world participated in the survey, sharing insights about the biggest challenges they face and what they’re doing to overcome those challenges. In Latin America (LATAM), there were 100…

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Emerging Connectivity Trends at the Edge

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 12:00:48 +0000

B.A.N.I. – Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear and Incomprehensible world. Do any of those–or all–sound familiar to you when working to bring the best from yourself, your team, your applications and your business? While combining vision and technological resources at your disposal to build and enhance the foundations required for your business to thrive in the digital economy? This is not exclusive to discussions with C-Suites, technologists and business technologists. The perspectives become more interesting when bringing expanded roles and skills into this conversation. Jamais Cascio—an American Anthropologist, author and futurist—when presenting the BANI acronym, drives us to address the complex changes…

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5 Ways Governments and Businesses Can Go Green

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 23:00:23 +0000

Record-setting rises in global temperatures, atmospheric CO2 and sea levels have sounded the alarm on the global climate emergency. Governments and businesses have come under the spotlight because of their combined scale and influence. As they have the ability to take the lead in steering policies and voluntary action, governments and businesses are in a unique position to fight climate change on the political, societal and economic fronts. To help reverse the potentially devastating effects of climate change, here are five areas of focus that both private and public organizations can consider and act upon. 1. Invest in zero carbon…

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Connecting Telco Cloud and MEC From A to Z

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 12:00:13 +0000

Much like their enterprise customers, network service providers (NSPs) are learning the importance of shifting away from a CAPEX-intensive approach to digital infrastructure. Building out private infrastructure generally worked fine in the days of wireline networks and during the early generations of wireless. Now, the advent of 5G networks has changed the equation. 5G rollout is a fundamentally new kind of investment for NSPs; it’s not something they can achieve with a few inexpensive tweaks to their existing infrastructure. Building out 5G network infrastructure using a traditional, owned-and-operated approach may require billions of dollars in up-front capital expenses. Add in…

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Can You Replace MPLS—and Should You?

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 12:07:56 +0000

When multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) was developed in the 1990s, it offered faster network connections than public internet routing—a clear advantage as large businesses sought to accelerate traffic across geographically dispersed infrastructures. However, a lot has changed since then. Today, more and more business applications live in the cloud, requiring fast, secure connectivity between a wide range of cloud providers and services. MPLS—which is mainly used for point-to-point connectivity—simply wasn’t designed for the complex cloud interconnectivity needed in today’s hybrid multicloud environments. Thus, networking technology has evolved. Software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) are better designed for cloud connectivity since they deliver…

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How Digital Infrastructure Cements Singapore’s Position as Asia-Pacific’s Foreign Exchange Hub

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 23:00:06 +0000

As the world’s most liquid asset class, foreign exchange (FX) has always provided scope for organizations to capitalize on technological developments which create revenue-generating opportunities for themselves and their customers. As such, the global FX market continues to grow year on year. Supporting this growth today is the global nature and sophistication of FX markets. The availability and widespread adoption of electronic platforms mean FX markets are more responsive and connected than ever before. One country which has been accelerating its FX advancements is Singapore. Progressive governance from Singapore’s central bank and regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), has…

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Run Amazon EKS Anywhere on Bare Metal: No Hypervisor Required

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 12:00:34 +0000

Last September, I shared the news that Equinix was a platform partner for the launch of Amazon EKS Anywhere. This launch made the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Kubernetes service available for the first time on any infrastructure outside of the cloud, including on-premises deployment options such as virtual machines (VMs). Initially, EKS Anywhere supported the use of hypervisors for running production workloads. Fast-forward to today: EKS Anywhere is now available directly on Equinix Metal™, our automated Bare Metal as a Service offering, without the complexity, overhead and licensing costs of a hypervisor layer. EKS Anywhere is provided via free, open-source…

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The Future of Banking Will Be Open and Interconnected

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 07:00:13 +0000

The banking industry as a whole is undergoing a digital transformation, challenging the supremacy of established banks that have been at the heart of the global financial system for decades. To stay relevant, those established banks must start thinking and acting more like innovative, agile fintechs and challenger banks. Implementing new technologies is a logical start, but what banks truly need is an entirely new operating model. We call that new model Banking as a Service (BaaS). Back in late 2020, when I last discussed BaaS on this blog, it was still a nascent concept. There were a few examples…

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Emerging Digital Currency Model Requires the Right Infrastructure

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:00:55 +0000

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) have the potential to revolutionize how we transact using money. In this article, we’ll explore how financial services firms can leverage digital infrastructure and dense industry ecosystems to support this new form of digital payments across the globe. Constant media attention (pro and con) has elevated cryptocurrencies to mainstream awareness. While it is possible to use Bitcoin, Ethereum, USnDT and thousands of others as a currency, they are far from replacing traditional exchanges of value and are mainly held as an asset by most users. As one of the most recent entrants to this sector, CBDCs…

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Hybrid Multicloud Networking is Hard!

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 12:00:39 +0000

Nowadays, a hybrid multicloud architecture is a crucial part of any digital transformation initiative. Increasingly, enterprises are pursuing cloud-agnostic digital infrastructure to avoid vendor lock-in and get the best possible balance of innovation, cost-efficiency, resiliency and more. In addition, pairing multiple clouds with cloud-adjacent on-premises environments can provide important security and data privacy benefits. In light of these benefits, most enterprise IT leaders are no longer asking themselves if they should pursue hybrid multicloud. Now, the question is more likely how they should pursue it. An effective hybrid multicloud strategy requires network infrastructure that enables the uninterrupted flow of data…

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Unifying Cloud and Edge: 6 Industry Experts Share Their Insights

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 12:00:17 +0000

According to the latest Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey, 59% of tech decision-makers said they planned to increase their spending on interconnection during 2022. One reason IT leaders are investing in interconnection capabilities is to supercharge their digital transformations through an optimized cloud-to-edge strategy. We reached out to several industry experts, and asked them how companies should be using hybrid multicloud architectures and flexible digital infrastructure to bring their cloud and edge strategies together. Read on to learn what insights these experts had to share about this important topic.

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Best Practices for Building a Better Mobile User Experience

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 12:00:41 +0000

According to the 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey, IT decision-makers see ensuring a better user experience as a top priority for future-proofing their businesses. These IT leaders were highly likely to say that they are prioritizing improving the customer experience (83%) and improving the employee experience (81%). These results drive home a key fact of the modern digital economy: both high-value customers and highly skilled employees are in limited supply, and providing a better user experience is vital to acquiring and retaining them. It no longer makes sense to talk about customer experience and employee experience separately from one another….

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4 Ways Digital Leaders Drive Acceleration and Agility

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 11:00:57 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk in the business world lately about digital leaders, and how they’re better suited than other organizations to adapt to disruption and succeed in the digital economy. But what does it truly mean to be a digital leader? According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) Volume 5, digital leaders are organizations that are accelerating their digital-first strategies, and bridging the gap between business and technology. The GXI found that they are now being rewarded handsomely for their efforts: digital leaders were much better suited to adapt during the chaotic early days of the pandemic, and…

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6 Expert Insights on Data Center Sustainability

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 12:01:34 +0000

Sustainability has become an important business priority—in fact, according to the latest Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey, 69% of tech decision-makers indicate that sustainability is now one of their organization’s most important drivers, and 65% say they’ll only work with IT partners who can meet key carbon reduction targets. Companies must now demonstrate a commitment to sustainability to ensure business growth and maintain competitive advantage. We reached out to several industry experts and asked them for insights on how companies can concentrate their efforts to reduce carbon output in relation to their IT footprint. From leveraging AI to measure CO₂…

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The 4 Ps of Digital Transformation

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 12:00:20 +0000

In a digital-first economy, network service providers (NSPs) play a key role in helping their enterprise customers thrive. In fact, the Leader’s Guide to Digital Infrastructure from Equinix found that network modernization helped some digital leaders increase bandwidth 10x while cutting both costs and latency in half. NSPs can enable digital transformation for their customers by helping them select the ideal ports for each use case. Enterprises often feel compelled to default to public ports, due to their wider availability and perceived benefits around costs and complexity. However, with the right approach to digital infrastructure, NSPs can help make private…

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Optimize Your Hybrid Multicloud for Speed & Agility

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 01:14:15 +0000

Early adopter organizations of public clouds, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, have led the market in demonstrating the benefits of utility computing. Its advantages, ranging from rapid on-demand provisioning of highly scalable services to flexible pay-per-use pricing models that eliminated the need for large, upfront infrastructure investments, have boosted cloud adoption among companies of all sizes. Mobility, remote working and collaboration requirements in today’s expanding digital economy continue to drive sustained demand for cloud services. According to Equinix’s 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey, an overwhelming 81% of Asia-Pacific (APAC) digital leaders consider migrating IT infrastructure…

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3 Equinix Fabric Use Cases for Cloud Service Providers

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 12:00:32 +0000

Today’s digital businesses face a variety of opportunities and challenges. The acceleration of new technologies is helping enterprises increase flexibility and serve customers in unexpected ways. At the same time, labor shortages, supply chain challenges and economic uncertainty are forcing businesses to transform how they operate. To overcome the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities, many businesses are turning to cloud services. This is one key takeaway from the Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS). The survey found that despite the key role cloud services already play within the digital economy, there’s still room for significant growth going forward:…

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Zero Trust Security vs. Zero Touch Security

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 12:00:49 +0000

For the past years, if you were to whip a cybersecurity bingo card out in conferences, you would undoubtedly mark “blockchain,” “defense in depth,” “security by design,” and recently, “zero trust” aka ZT. Zero trust has been getting all the buzz lately for shifting defenses from traditional, network-based perimeters to focus on users, assets, and behaviors. Zero trust, as the name implies, assumes there is no implicit trust granted to users or devices. Zero trust employs a more granular perimeter control based on identity (i.e., users), devices, geolocation, and historical usage patterns to identify whether something is to be trusted…

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Content Creation and Delivery Reimagined with Digital Infrastructure

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 12:00:30 +0000

The content and digital media (CDM) industry has undergone massive transformation as a result of ever-evolving social media, gaming and streaming media channels. From new content delivery and advertising models to constantly increasing consumer expectations, CDM companies are challenged to deliver better experiences and leverage technology and ecosystem partnerships to support that goal. A new IDC white paper highlights the challenges in this new era of broadcasting and the opportunity for companies to take advantage of a digital platform and partner ecosystem to deliver fast, compelling user experiences. According to this IDC report, “Two years after the emergence of the…

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5 Reasons Federal Agencies Should Consider Hybrid Multicloud

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 12:00:01 +0000

As the sprint to the cloud continues, many organizations are making multicloud a key aspect of their IT modernization efforts. They’re doing this because they recognize that cloud-agnostic digital infrastructure can deliver the best combination of innovation, resiliency, cost-efficiency and other key benefits. However, it’s important to recognize the perceived challenges involved with driving successful cloud adoption. According to one recent survey from Cisco, 37% of organizations said deploying multiple clouds created security challenges, while 35% said it increased operational complexity. These concerns are often magnified for federal government stakeholders with sensitive missions and data to protect. Many of these…

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5 Reasons Federal Agencies Should Consider Hybrid Multicloud

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 12:00:01 +0000

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An Updated Guide to DDoS Attacks

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 14:35:41 +0000

As the global economy becomes more distributed and digital, enterprise and public sector organizations today are more reliant upon the availability and performance of their network, cloud and IT infrastructure than ever before. Many organizations simply could not exist without the digital assets and connectivity underpinning their business. In particular, day-to-day activities such as commercial transactions, customer engagements, post-sales support, distributed workforce, and supply chain management depend upon internet access, and it’s absolutely essential for organizations to ensure A) the availability of their internet connectivity and B) the security of their cloud and IT infrastructure. There is a constant need…

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6 Best Practices for Data Center Migrations

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 13:29:56 +0000

Cloud services have become foundational to growth in the digital economy—making cloud migration plans a high priority for many organizations. According to the Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey, 71% of IT decision-makers plan to move more functions to the cloud in the next 12 months. While hybrid cloud has become the most common deployment approach, the hybrid model of physical and virtual infrastructure presents IT teams with complex decisions around what systems and applications to migrate to cloud, as well as where to strategically place mission-critical workloads today and in the future. Data center migrations are particularly difficult because…

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Equinix FaithConnect: Where We Celebrate Spiritual Diversity

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 12:00:30 +0000

As the founder of FaithConnect, one of many Equinix Employee Connection Networks, it’s exciting for me to look back at how quickly this network has evolved since its inception in March 2021. From planning and launching internal initiatives to partnering on events with faith-oriented employee resource groups (ERGs) at other global companies, we’ve been actively demonstrating our mission: “FaithConnect’s mission is to inspire a culture of learning and respect for all faiths, non-faiths and worldviews in the workplace. Through educational events and initiatives, FaithConnect strives to lay a foundation of belonging and holistic wellbeing at Equinix. By celebrating spiritual diversity,…

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What Is NoOps and Is It the Future?

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 23:00:59 +0000

The impact of the pandemic has shifted the way we work in unimaginable and irrevocable ways. Organizations faced challenges maintaining the same level of services, operations, and coordination across widely distributed teams. The pressures to become flexible and productive uncovered a disorganized reality in which many employees were still spending time doing repetitive manual work. As such, digital transformation accelerated and propelled the adoption of automation to help control costs and manage such a distributed workforce and workload. Automation is now a vital consideration for organizations to create a successful modern workplace and set to play a key role in…

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Accelerating Non-Stop Broadcast Security for Global Events

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 07:00:50 +0000

With video piracy on the rise, protecting broadcast media content has become a priority among content producers and delivery network providers. Live broadcasts of sports and other streaming events are subject to piracy and vulnerable to bad actors illegally selling access to the content. For example: Global pirated video material gets over 230 billion views a year. More than 80% of global online piracy can be attributed to illegal streaming services. Annual global revenue losses from digital piracy are between $40 and $97.1 billion in the movie industry. Protecting live media content from local and global broadcasts typically includes setting up and tearing…

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Hybrid Infrastructure Speeds Time to Market for Online Gaming

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 12:00:56 +0000

The pace of global growth in online gaming, real-money gaming and mobile sports betting continues to rise exponentially. According to an article in FinancesOnline, the number of gamers worldwide is forecasted to increase from 2.81 to 3.07 billion between 2021-2023. At the same time, gamer expectations for a seamless, high-performance experience from one device to another are increasing as well. A new Equinix white paper highlights the challenges online gaming companies must overcome to take advantage of this fast-growing market and meet the unprecedented levels of scalability and performance required to compete. Launching games faster to the right markets with…

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Global Coffee Company Improves Cloud Performance and Eliminates Outages

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 12:00:05 +0000

In the modern digital economy, global food and beverage manufacturers face a conundrum: their physical supply chains remain as important as ever, but they must also ensure the resilience of their digital supply chains. A breakdown anywhere in their IT infrastructure—such as a cloud service outage—will inevitably lead to logistical issues, lost sales and a negative customer experience. This is why digital leaders in the food and beverage space recognize the importance of ensuring redundancy and availability in their IT environments. They understand that now more than ever, manufacturing and logistics depend on agile, interconnected digital infrastructure, distributed in key…

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Ecosystem Proximity: The Advantages of Colocation Adjacency to Cloud Providers

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 12:00:06 +0000

Contributions by: Sudakar Kodandaram, Global Business Development at Equinix and Aivars Apsite, Healthcare Practice Manager at HPE It is no secret that one of the known benefits of the public cloud is ease of transaction and the ability to offload data hosting and associated management tasks to a third party. Yet, as discussed in our last blog, many businesses are seeking alternatives for a more balanced solution that allows them to outsource their data centers, but not necessarily migrate entirely to the public cloud. In our view, the HPE GreenLake at Equinix solution addresses the hybrid-minded business by offering privately…

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Small and Medium Businesses Working with Partners Is Big

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 12:00:33 +0000

When it comes to running your business in an increasingly digital world, whether you’re a small regional retailer or a big box store, your challenges are pretty much the same. You need to expand and interconnect your digital infrastructure and secure your applications and workloads wherever they are (on-premises or in the cloud). Also, you need to continuously deliver the performance that your users demand and ensure business continuity, all while lowering costs. The big difference between small and medium businesses (SMBs) and their larger counterparts is that they are challenged by fewer resources and technological expertise. However, the good…

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3 Use Cases at the Metro Edge

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 12:00:40 +0000

Today’s enterprises understand that although their operations are increasingly global, their interactions with end users must take place locally. This is the only way to ensure the extremely low latency required by many modern digital applications. For this reason, most enterprises are investing in an edge computing strategy, with the intent of positioning IT infrastructure in close proximity to end users. However, this effort is complicated by the fact there’s no universally accepted definition for what the digital edge is and where it resides. From the Equinix perspective, there are a hierarchy of different digital edges, defined both by the…

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3 Trends Leading to a New Digital Silk Road in Asia-Pacific

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 12:00:20 +0000

Digital infrastructure is quickly becoming a cornerstone for how businesses achieve competitive advantage and succeed in a digital economy. Governments and organizations are taking notice and recognizing that, now more than ever, establishing an extensive digital infrastructure is vital to fueling economic growth in their countries. In the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, several organizations have announced and launched initiatives to build out infrastructure that supports in-region economic growth through connectivity with the rest of the world. Various forms of network and internet traffic are being securely routed along the original Silk Road, to cloud, network and IT services providers in carrier-neutral…

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Going Green with Schneider Electric

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 12:00:55 +0000

Today’s enterprises are prioritizing environmental sustainability both as a source of business value and a key part of their future-proofing strategy. In the 2022 Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey, 69% of global IT leaders said that sustainability is now one of the most important drivers for their organizations. To address the full environmental impact of their operations, enterprises must consider their IT infrastructure. Legacy data centers use a significant amount of energy to power digital business processes. This is why Equinix has deployed new technologies to help optimize energy consumption at every logical level in the data center, from HVAC…

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Data Center Extension Unlocks New Possibilities

Fri, 26 Aug 2022 12:00:04 +0000

With their storage, compute and network capabilities now increasingly distributed across multiple edge locations, enterprises need new paradigms to help them leverage the proximity and agility of the edge. Today’s digital leaders are achieving that goal with data center extension, which involves pairing an on-premises data center, such as an Equinix IBX® colocation facility, with cloud-adjacent digital infrastructure. In other words, it’s a hybrid infrastructure model that allows organizations to seamlessly migrate critical workloads to and from the cloud as needed. The rise of data center extension is a byproduct of the growing cloud migration movement. Enterprises are shifting away from siloed,…

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Re-Architecting the Enterprise Data Center

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 12:00:35 +0000

Modern digital businesses have expanded their definition of on-premises beyond the walls of the corporate data center and are moving into third-party colocation and managed services facilities. We see this shift as a result of how companies are re-architecting their data center parameters to best meet the global distributed digital infrastructure requirements of their workloads and users. Being workload- and user-centric IT organizations are increasingly sensitive to workload placement and proximity to users, and it is one of the first questions they must consider as part of a modern digital-first strategy. It has been well established that placing data and…

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Equinix and Orange Partner to Accelerate Cloud-Native Telco Deployments

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 08:05:50 +0000

Businesses around the world rely on global network carriers like Orange for a mind-boggling variety of services powered by their global backbone networks: from internet connectivity to VPN access, SD-WAN, voice, 5G, security and managed applications. Those same underlying networks power the world’s consumer wireless services, and much of the infrastructure comprising them lives on Platform Equinix®, where network service providers, cloud platforms and thousands of enterprises can connect and exchange traffic. Each Equinix location is a digital marketplace of sorts, a place where parties relevant to each other can securely connect and do business together. We like to think…

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Nurturing Future Sustainability Leaders in Singapore

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 23:00:56 +0000

In the past, coding was a niche skill taught only in tertiary institutions. Now, children as young as 10 years old are learning to code. In Singapore, for instance, coding is incorporated into its formal schooling curriculum. This focus on education to boost digital know-how is now extending to sustainability. More people and institutions recognize the importance of nurturing expertise in this emerging sector. As the climate change crisis looms large, having individuals take the lead in building a sustainable future is a matter of survival. Global commitment to a greener future In 2015, countries around the world committed to taking collective…

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Building a Secure, High-Performance Edge

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 12:00:44 +0000

The cost of security breaches continues to rise as distributed users, systems, applications and cloud services expand the attack surface exponentially. A recent study by IBM shows that between March 2021 and March 2022, the global average cost of organizations’ data breaches reached an all-time high of $4.35 million—increasing nearly 13% over the last two years of reporting. To add insult to injury, these breached companies say their customers are paying for these cyber-crimes, with 60% of businesses raising product prices post-breach. This is not news. Businesses worldwide have been dealing with the increasing threat of cyber-attacks, security breaches and…

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Bridging the Gap Between Generations in the Workplace

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 12:00:27 +0000

Early in my career, I found it difficult to navigate my professional journey and wasn’t always sure where to turn for guidance. This is one reason I’ve found it rewarding to connect with new hires, interns and employees who are early in their career through the Equinix YoungProfessionalsConnect Network (YPC). It’s exciting to learn about each person’s interests, discover what motivates them and potentially guide them through their professional development and growth. The YPC network launched in April 2021 and is one of the newest and fastest-growing of the nine Equinix Employee Connect Networks (EECN) with over 800 members worldwide….

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The Rise of Virtual Infrastructure

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 12:00:00 +0000

Global digital business expansion is on the rise, and IT leaders are increasingly turning to virtual infrastructure to enable that expansion. According to the Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey, 41% of IT organizations that are planning to expand geographically within the next year will deploy virtually in the short-term before building permanent physical infrastructure, while 35% said they will deploy virtually for the foreseeable future. Today’s businesses need to reliably connect to internet and cloud applications with greater agility, security and cost-efficiency—especially given the current landscape of distributed workers, offices and applications. They also need to circumvent the continued…

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Reimagining Business Success with Web3 in the Future Starts Now

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 00:13:58 +0000

With Web3 becoming more prominent daily, sentiments, excitement, and opportunities for developing and applying Web3 technologies continue to push forward, especially in Asia-Pacific. According to the 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), over three-quarters of Asia-Pacific IT decision-makers expect Web3 to replace Web2 within the next five years, and over two-thirds of IT professionals have indicated their business has a Web3 strategy in place. Interestingly, Asia-Pacific IT leaders were significantly more likely to say this is the case than other global leaders, perhaps reflecting Asia-Pacific’s growing digital appetite. In our previous article, we touched on the fundamentals of Web3 and its potential to…

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Delivering Fast, Reliable and Secure Credit Card Payments

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 12:00:33 +0000

Contactless payments are predicted to grow at a rate of 20% from 2020 to 2027, with Europe leading the way. As speed and reliability are paramount when delivering credit card payments to retailers, processing companies need to expedite payment services instantaneously, without any downtime. This can be difficult to do given that digital payments is a two-fold process among multiple financial services partners: Front-end processors ensure customers have sufficient funds by routing transactions from merchants to the cardholder’s bank for authorization. Back-end processors accept settlements from front-end processors and move the money to a merchant’s issuing bank. Dojo, a leading UK payment technology provider,…

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The Future of Digital Infrastructure Will Be Written in Code

Fri, 09 Sep 2022 12:00:43 +0000

In this era of digital transformation, there are many trends shaping how enterprises deploy and manage their IT infrastructure. Among the most impactful of these trends is the growing role that code and software play in infrastructure management. In the Equinix vision paper “The future of digital leadership,” we identified three top technology trends that are accelerating the pace and scope of infrastructure change. Among these trends is the idea that the future of IT infrastructure will be developer-led and software-defined. We highlighted this trend because it shows the growing influence developers have in guiding digital transformation within their organizations. However,…

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3 Digital Infrastructure Use Cases to Advance Customer Experience

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 13:30:32 +0000

Delivering high-quality, consistent and personalized customer experience (CX) is pivotal to sustaining any successful business in today’s economy. Modern customers now demand proactive, personalized, immediate and consistent interactions across digital channels, and businesses that succeed are delivering smoother, more straightforward and frictionless journeys over their competitors. But over the last decade, a series of technological developments across cloud, mobile, social and artificial intelligence (AI), have enabled businesses to transform their approach to CX to gain a competitive edge. IT teams are increasingly focusing their digital strategies to address CX and capture customers mindshare. According to the 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey…

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6 Reasons Why You Need AI & ML in Your Data Center

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 12:00:46 +0000

What if your data center was smart enough to help you proactively optimize your operations, such as automatically alerting you when systems are over-consuming power or need to be updated or retired? Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies are making digital infrastructure smarter and more intuitive throughout every industry. At Equinix, we’ve made a real investment in AI/ML technologies and techniques to optimize our International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers and global business operations. AI/ML-based development helps us expedite products and service delivery, empowers us to reach our sustainability goals, and arms us with insights that drive efficiency…

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Celebrating the Vibrant Hispanic & Latino Culture at Equinix

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 12:00:19 +0000

As we start our celebration of Hispanic and Latino Heritage Month here at Equinix, it’s the perfect opportunity to shine the spotlight on what GenteConnect does throughout the year. One of nine Equinix Employee Connect Networks (EECN), GenteConnect provides a safe space to encourage the exploration of diverse perspectives around our languages, intersectionality and multiculturalism; it’s an environment where we can counter stereotypes and challenge perceptions. “Gente” is the Spanish word for “people”. By bringing colleagues together in GenteConnect, we nurture understanding of our culture and gain support for our efforts to attract and develop Hispanic and Latino tech talent….

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Digital Transformation Insights from Shell and Equinix

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 12:00:46 +0000

Today’s businesses face a seemingly endless array of macroeconomic pressures, from supply chain issues to competition for limited tech talent to inflation looming on the horizon. Fortunately, adopting digital technology can help address these challenges and more, while creating opportunities for cost savings and new revenue sources. By now, the idea of digital transformation driving better business results has been around for a decade or more. What’s changed is that IT is no longer driving the business to transform. In fact, it’s become increasingly difficult to determine where IT ends and the business begins. Both functions now recognize that digital…

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The Future of Robotaxis Relies on Distributed, Interconnected Infrastructure

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 12:00:36 +0000

Robotic taxi (robotaxi) deployments are on the rise around the world thanks to advancements in automated driving system (ADS) technology and regulatory changes that allow more self-driving vehicles on the road. While many consumers remain skeptical about widespread use of driverless vehicles, robotaxi fleets have already been deployed in several regions, with tests underway in others. Some speculate that robotaxis could even leapfrog private vehicles in being the first scaled implementation of driverless automobiles. Robotaxis offer the promise of increasing safety by reducing accidents caused by human error, improving accessibility to automobile transportation and driving sustainability benefits by increasing the…

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Getting to Know our Asia-Pacific Leader – David Bate

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 23:00:45 +0000

As our growth journey continues, the Asia-Pacific market marks the fastest growing region for Equinix. With 50+ International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center across key regional metros, we continue to empower our customers and partners in their digital transformation journeys. Our success has been down to the top-notch talent that continue to join our team, bringing new ideas, experiences, and innovations to shape the future of digital. David Bate joined Equinix in June 2022 as our new Senior Vice President of Sales in Asia-Pacific. In this “Getting to Know” session, I sat down with David to discuss the evolution of…

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Equinix Drives Digital Transformation in Madrid and Across Europe

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 07:00:57 +0000

When I last talked about my hometown of Madrid on this blog, I discussed how it offered ideal conditions for enterprises and service providers to come together and create a robust digital economy. Since then, Madrid has only continued to grow as a digital business hub. That’s why it’s no surprise that the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) report forecasts that interconnection bandwidth in Madrid will grow 56% CAGR by 2024. This makes the city one of the fastest-growing digital hubs in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. Equinix has recognized this growth, and has invested heavily to bring…

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AI Is Redefining What’s Possible. Is Your Infrastructure Ready?

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 12:00:24 +0000

Within the last decade, AI has gone from an emerging technology to a business imperative. Now, the development of new no-code and low-code platforms promises to send the growth of AI into overdrive. In the future, AI applications will no longer have to be built by dedicated developer teams with specialized skill sets. Anyone with an idea for how to solve a business problem will be able to create their own AI application using an intuitive drag-and-drop web editor. Although no-code platforms are still in their early days, users have already begun experimenting with them to do everything from helping…

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How IT Modernization Helps Government Solve for Customer Experience

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 12:00:34 +0000

When most people hear “customer experience,” their mind likely goes to consumer brands, such as a favorite sports team, clothing store, grocery chain or content provider, and not the federal government. But with all the inherently governmental functions we rely on—facilitating domestic and international travel, small business loans, subsidized medical care and more—it’s clear the U.S. federal government has a public-facing customer experience charter too. Research from McKinsey shows that there’s opportunity for improvement: Americans rank the federal government last in terms of average customer satisfaction, behind even recently criticized industries like airlines and pay TV. To address these shortcomings,…

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4 Leading Voices on the Benefits of Being Digital-First

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 12:00:25 +0000

At the Equinix Digital Leaders Summit held earlier this month, Karl Strohmeyer, Equinix Chief Customer and Revenue Officer, met with Anu Krishnan, Head of Information, Data & Analytics at Shell, for a session titled “It’s a Digital-First World.” As Karl recapped in his recent blog, the two leaders shared how digital transformation can help businesses of all sizes adapt to overcome the challenges facing them and open up new revenue streams. The session was filled with examples of how Shell, Equinix and our respective customers are using digital infrastructure to unlock the potential of new data-driven use cases. During the…

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The 4 Principles of Sustainable Data Center Design

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 07:00:42 +0000

The modern economy runs on digital infrastructure. To ensure that today’s digital businesses can continue operating sustainably for many years to come, it’s essential for that digital infrastructure to be as clean and efficient as possible. At Equinix, we’ve long recognized that our customers depend on us as a key part of their sustainability strategies. This is what led us to become the first company in the data center industry to commit to becoming climate-neutral globally by 2030, aligned to approved science-based targets (SBTs) to reduce emissions across our operations and supply chain.

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How Equinix is Supporting Former Athletes Explore a Career in Technology

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 23:00:07 +0000

A career change can be challenging for anyone, especially for former athletes transitioning out of elite competitive sports. But organizations that can provide support or opportunities for these talented individuals can often benefit from their unique set of skills; this includes teamwork, dedication, work ethic, problem-solving, communication and leadership, among many more, that can be applied during their athletic career and outside of sport. As an organization, Equinix is committed to building and maintaining a culture that reflects, at all levels, a rich diversity of thought, experience, culture, and background. This includes embedding Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB) into all…

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Driving Business Advantage with Your Sustainability Strategy

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 12:00:22 +0000

There’s been a tremendous increase in attention to sustainability initiatives across business and government in the past few years. What was once largely seen as the purview of individual consumers and regulatory agencies has now become a mainstream discussion for enterprises. Companies of all sizes, across industries, are establishing sustainability targets and measuring their progress—and customers, investors and regulators all expect quantifiable improvements year over year. At the 2022 Equinix Digital Leaders Summit, I had the opportunity to discuss sustainability trends around expediting key objectives and creating competitive advantage alongside sustainability experts Matthew Sekol, Worldwide Sustainability Industry Advocate at Microsoft;…

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4 Data Motion Patterns Enabled by Cloud Adjacency

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 12:00:10 +0000

In the early days of cloud, many organizations moved all their applications and data to one public cloud provider. They saw this as the quickest way to take advantage of cloud agility and scalability. As time passed and data volumes increased, it became clear that getting locked into a particular provider for all their needs was not ideal. Enterprises needed a cloud-agnostic approach to unlock the best combination of cost-efficiency, flexibility and best-of-breed services. To achieve that goal, they began to pursue hybrid multicloud strategies. At Equinix, we believe that cloud-adjacent digital infrastructure is the new on-premises component that enables…

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From Purpose to Impact: A More Digitally Inclusive Future

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 12:00:20 +0000

In a world where technology, connectivity and digital skills are vital for living, working and thriving, digital access is a human right—but currently, a significant portion of the global population lacks digital connectivity and skills training. According to the United Nations International Telecommunication Union’s Global Connectivity Report 2022, one-third of humanity (2.9 billion people) remains offline, and many users only enjoy basic connectivity. In response, the UN has declared “universal and meaningful connectivity” to be the new imperative for this decade. Connectivity has become a basic right associated with education, job access and healthcare outcomes, to name a few. However,…

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Precise Time Synchronization in Distributed Cloud Environments

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 12:00:40 +0000

Applications are getting faster every day. Transactions that used to take a few seconds now happen in the millisecond and microsecond range—and before too long, applications and systems will need to operate in the realm of nanoseconds. While those orders of magnitude are difficult for the human mind to comprehend, what’s clear is that precise time synchronization for IT systems keeps getting more important. As transaction speeds accelerate, the timing of systems conducting those transactions must be accurate and precise. Many companies now deploy solutions across distributed hybrid cloud environments and globally interconnected data centers. However, the distribution of servers,…

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How Data Marketplaces Add Efficiency, Security to Global Commerce

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 12:00:44 +0000

In today’s business world, companies are discovering that data–both their own and that of others–can help them grow both their business and their customer base. Data analysis, for example, can provide greater insight into the needs of current or future customers, or help spot new opportunities. Data sharing can promote goodwill, enable stronger collaboration among peer companies and generate cost savings for the participants. And monetization of new or enhanced data sets can provide revenue and a competitive edge. Data marketplaces can provide a virtual setting for all of these transactions. Underpinned by secure, high-bandwidth, low-latency digital infrastructure, data marketplaces allow…

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Equinix Fabric Now Offers Full-Mesh Data Center Interconnection

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 12:00:11 +0000

About a year ago, I wrote a blog covering how Equinix Fabric™ for data center interconnection allows enterprises to connect partners and applications in different locations throughout the world. I shared how being able to set virtual connections and move data between locations quickly, securely and reliably is a key part of why digital leaders are able to adapt and thrive in a world defined by change. Since then, the Equinix Fabric development team has continued to work on giving our customers new Ethernet service options that provide greater flexibility for their data center interconnection needs. Today, we’re proud to…

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Equinix Fabric Enables Ireland’s Goodbody To Adopt Hybrid Multicloud Strategy

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 14:30:09 +0000

Long before COVID-19 accelerated enterprises’ digital agendas, Goodbody was embracing digital infrastructure to transform its business for its customers and its employees – and with good reason. One of Ireland’s oldest financial institutions, Goodbody is a firm operating in wealth management, investment banking, and asset management in Ireland’s highly competitive – and crowded – financial services industry. A report from New Financial shows that between 2016 and 2021, 135 financial services firms relocated to Ireland, equating to 25% of all Brexit-related financial services moves. Add this to an already robust, world-renowned banking sector and competition is high. For Goodbody, the key…

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5 Ways Network Service Providers Can Expand to New Markets Quickly

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 12:00:51 +0000

Every network service provider (NSP) needs the agility to adapt to an ever-changing and unpredictable global marketplace. In the last few years, supply chain disruptions and skyrocketing operating costs have challenged their ability to launch services in new geographies. But virtual solutions—enabled by digital services—present a significant opportunity to help NSPs establish new markets quickly and easily. NSPs are already well versed in providing virtual networking services (VNS) to their customers in existing markets, but virtual solutions can also help NSPs boost their own agility and accelerate product rollouts to capture business in markets never considered as possibilities. As growth…

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How Can Organizations Make Digital-First R&D Their Competitive Advantage?

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 23:02:52 +0000

While traditional factors like low costs, powerful branding, and strong customer service have historically helped organizations create a competitive advantage, maintaining that is a different challenge. Thanks to globalization, today’s world continues to move faster, and consumers are faced with more options than ever. Building long-lasting business success requires organizations to adapt to change and keep up to date with the pace of innovation. Thus, a true deep-routed competitive advantage can be found through valuable research and development (R&D) investment. The importance of R&D for organizations, economies and development From the introduction of smartphones and cloud computing to the development of…

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What Is a Data Center? What Are Different Types of Data Centers?

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 12:00:20 +0000

Are data centers expanding, modernizing or shrinking? According to a recent Network World article, “Companies might not be physically building brand new, centralized data centers, but they are modernizing their existing data center facilities and expanding their data center footprint to edge locations.” Not only is the definition of the traditional data center morphing but different types of data centers are more prevalent. Basically, a data center is where a business or a third-party provider houses IT infrastructure and all the physical and virtual systems, networks, applications, and overhead (space, power, cooling, racks, cabinets, cabling, etc.) that make a data…

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How Insurance Companies Can Capture Data-Driven Insights

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 07:00:20 +0000

In many ways, the insurance industry has always revolved around data. In the past, this meant insurers using historical data, paired with inferences about the future, to gauge risk as accurately as possible and make informed underwriting decisions. What’s changed within the last few years is that insurance companies now have access to much greater volumes of data than ever before, from a much wider variety of data sources. In addition, this data is now available in real time, meaning that insurance companies no longer have to make assumptions about the future based on the events of the past. Examples…

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Benchmark Shows Performance Benefits of Equinix Fabric for Cloud Data

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 12:00:41 +0000

The volume of data flowing into enterprise systems continues to grow exponentially, driven by emerging technologies like IoT, AI and 5G. This data represents both an opportunity and a challenge: since it can be used to support more informed decision-making, data has clear business value. However, enterprises also need a new approach to moving and storing all that data to make sure they aren’t completely overwhelmed. With very large databases becoming increasingly common, enterprises are turning to cloud services to help meet their capacity needs. In the 2022 Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 71% of IT leaders said they…

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Making the Connection: Your Ecosystem Is Your Infrastructure

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:59:26 +0000

News about supply chain constraints and geopolitical and economic instabilities dominate the headlines. This atmosphere of uncertainty isn’t likely to change anytime soon, which is why proactively preparing for the future is now front and center for most, if not all, companies. According to the Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey, digital leaders are prioritizing initiatives that help them future-proof their business. Of the 2,900 digital leaders surveyed, 76% indicated that connecting with new digital ecosystems is a top priority in their technology strategy. The 2023 Global Interconnection Index (GXI) market study, published by Equinix, provides insights on companies that…

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Digital Infrastructure Roadmap to Unlock Growth – Part 1: Digital Core

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 12:00:10 +0000

We are living in a digital-first world. The businesses that recognize this fact and establish themselves as digital leaders will be in the best position to react with agility to overcome challenges, improve their customer experience and establish new revenue streams. Although each business is different, the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2023, published by Equinix, found that the common factor unifying digital leaders is that they’ve all merged business and technology strategies to ensure they become the disruptors, not the disrupted. According to the GXI, the number of organizations becoming digital leaders grew 30% percent over the last year, despite…

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Equinix is Meeting Demand for Digital Infrastructure in Latin America

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 12:00:15 +0000

Equinix has been doing business in Latin America for 11 years now, investing nearly $2 billion in the region during that time. We’ve seen first-hand how digital transformation has accelerated in the region within the last few years. Only 5% of internet traffic originating in LATAM stayed within the region in 2019, according to TeleGeography. Today, that number has grown to 20%. This is a clear sign that businesses in the region are adopting new digital capabilities quickly, and we are excited about what this means for our customers’ success. To support this digital boom, Equinix has announced a new…

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How to Make Private Networking as Easy to Consume as Public Networking

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 12:00:51 +0000

Technological advances like 5G, network virtualization and edge computing are changing the way network service providers (NSPs) operate and plan for their future. Momentous developments in public IT infrastructure in the last decade have altered the competitive landscape, challenging NSPs to consider new ways to provide connectivity and digital access to their customers and partners around the world. To compete in a market that’s defined by the speed, low cost and scalability of public infrastructure like public cloud, NSPs will have to get creative. Today, they need faster access to new markets and cost-effective ways to bring private networking to…

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지속 가능한 데이터 센터 설계를 위한 4가지 원칙

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 02:42:58 +0000

현대 경제는 디지털 인프라 상에서 흐른다. 오늘날 디지털 비즈니스가 향후 수년 간 지속하기 위해선 가능한 깨끗하고 효율적인 디지털 인프라를 구축하는 것이 중요하다. Equinix는 고객이 지속 가능성 전략을 달성하기 위한 핵심 요소로 Equinix에 의존하고 있다는 사실을 오랫동안 인지하고 있다. 따라서, Equinix는 자사 비즈니스 및 공급망 전반에서 탄소 배출량을 줄이기 위한 과학 기반 목표(SBT)에 따라 2030년까지 기후 중립을 달성하는 기업이 되겠다고 약속한 데이터 센터 업계 최초의 기업이 되었다.

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Enabling Application Deployment at the Digital Edge

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 12:00:27 +0000

As global realities propel digital demands, the increased urgency for digital applications creates challenges for enterprises that need to securely deliver and manage applications closer to users and devices. Whether it’s to enable real-time interactivity, data sovereignty, or localized data handling, customers are increasingly turning to edge computing. Equinix offers the global colocation footprint, digital services, and diverse partner ecosystem needed to help them deploy at the edge quickly and securely. Applications are fundamentally changing every aspect of our lives. They are the primary way many of us shop, work and connect. The old requirement to push large volumes of…

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Automate Your Digital Infrastructure for Better Results

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 12:00:42 +0000

Humans have been dreaming about the possibilities of automation for centuries. Today, we’re fortunate to live during an era when automation technology is finally starting to catch up to some of our wildest dreams. From an enterprise perspective, no digital transformation strategy is complete unless it includes a comprehensive automation strategy. Enterprises can apply automation to cut costs, reduce waste and inefficiency, increase performance and reliability, free up employees to focus on high-value work, and much more. The potential benefits of automation are essentially endless; this means it’s important for enterprises to strategize exactly what they hope to accomplish, in…

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Equinix Simplifies Connectivity to Google Cloud with Quick Connect

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 12:00:06 +0000

About this same time last year, I wrote about how Equinix had partnered with Google Cloud to make databases work anywhere. Our joint hybrid-cloud connectivity solution makes it faster and easier to connect applications and databases, maximizing existing database investments while helping enterprises modernize their applications. Fast-forward to today: recent studies confirm that hybrid multicloud continues to be a priority as a crucial component of digital transformation initiatives. According to the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2023 market study published by Equinix, 85% of global companies will expand multicloud access across several regions by 2025. Speed and agility are a key…

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Accelerate Your Economic and Competitive Advantage with Equinix

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 12:09:27 +0000

To fast-track digital advantage in a complex and rapidly changing world, enterprises and service providers increasingly need flexibility to choose the right technology, located in the right places and operated by the right partners. However, many companies struggle to stay agile in the face of evolving business needs. Rising hardware costs, supply chain challenges and slow data speeds further encumber them. Up against these challenges, virtual infrastructure and digital services are a game changer, helping organizations get products and services to market faster, in more geographies, at a lower cost. Leveraging cloud services is the hallmark of the digital journey,…

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Digital Infrastructure Roadmap to Unlock Growth – Part 2: Digital Ecosystems

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 12:00:49 +0000

Digital transformation and the evolution of the digital economy show no signs of slowing down; instead, the pace is accelerating. Digital leaders have discovered that it’s no longer feasible to operate as a standalone company in a hyper-competitive digital world. Instead, the priority must be to invest in the organization’s strengths and leverage ecosystems for commoditized business functions. In Part 1 of this 3-part series, we discussed why establishing an interconnected digital core is a necessary first step on the journey to digital transformation. When companies leverage the digital core as their foundation, they can tap into a vast ecosystem…

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Equinix Debuts PumpkinTech Interconnection Services

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 07:00:53 +0000

Equinix has experience helping thousands of customers make the shift to distributed, interconnected digital infrastructure. We help our customers exchange data with their partner ecosystem in a private, dedicated manner using interconnection solutions such as Equinix Fabric™. However, we’ve never stopped researching how to give our customers even more options to meet their interconnection needs. Today, we’re announcing a new service that does just that—with a little help from Mother Nature this time. Equinix is proud to mark the Halloween season with the announcement of Equinix PumpkinTech, our new pumpkin-inspired interconnection service. Equinix PumpkinTech was built on the principles of…

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Closing the Digital Divide in Africa

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 07:00:23 +0000

A recent report from the Internet Society, ISOC ranked Nigeria and Kenya at Stage 2 and only South Africa at Stage 3. The rest of Africa is largely undeveloped at Stage 1, despite the welcome presence of many internet exchange points (IXPs). The ISOC white papers may create the misperception that IXPs alone…

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How Federal Agencies Can Accelerate Zero-Trust Security Adoption

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 12:00:35 +0000

As federal agencies digitize their processes and modernize their IT systems, the value and potential of the data they collect increases significantly. The right digital infrastructure platform enables collaboration with broad ecosystems of service providers and government mission partners across the globe that wasn’t available before the latest advancements in technology. Examples include direct interconnection with data analytics providers with machine learning capabilities that allow intelligence analysts to identify leads quicker and software-defined networking that removes IT siloes to integrate data sets across agencies. That platform also helps agencies improve their customer experience by facilitating the digitization of payment and…

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How to Future-Proof Your Cloud Infrastructure

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 12:00:49 +0000

The growing “cloudification” of services is one of the defining stories in enterprise IT over the last decade. Digital leaders across the world have taken advantage of cloud services to increase performance, scalability, flexibility, cost-efficiency and more. In fact, the trend of growing cloud adoption is ongoing even today: according to the 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS) from Equinix, 71% of global IT leaders said their companies plan to move more functions to the cloud during the next 12 months. That said, exactly what the future of cloud will look like remains an open question. One thing that does…

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Australia’s Prime Minister switches on new low-latency subsea cable

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 22:59:06 +0000

According to TeleGeography’s Submarine Cable Map 2022, there are 486 cable systems around the world, with 1,306 landings that are currently active or under construction. The latest cable to go live is the new $300 million international digital super-highway that directly links Western Australia to key global markets through Oman, called the Oman Australia Cable (OAC). We were delighted to welcome Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan to our campus in Perth to celebrate the launch of OAC.

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Digital Infrastructure Roadmap to Unlock Growth – Part 3: Digital Edge

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 13:00:53 +0000

Edge computing has become a profoundly important paradigm in IT in recent years. Trends like the shift to more remote work and 5G have accelerated the move to edge computing strategies. As part of their digital transformation, companies want to distribute digital services closer to their users. They’re moving away from centralized architectures and pushing infrastructure out to the edge, where the demands are greatest. The digital edge offers the promise of better user experience for customers and employees, better data insights through real-time analytics and more opportunities to accelerate innovation. New research confirms that the move to edge computing…

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3 Ways Digital Services Can Help Enterprises Overcome Complexity

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 13:00:21 +0000

Enterprises around the world are investing in digital transformation, empowering themselves to be more responsive to the demands of end users everywhere. One crucial factor driving this trend is the growth of digital ecosystems, which allow business partners to exchange data and services with one another, thereby unlocking new capabilities and co-innovation opportunities. The Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2023, an annual market study published by Equinix, shows how the distinction between digital service providers and traditional enterprises is growing increasingly blurry. In fact, the GXI predicts that by 2025, 90% of Fortune 500 companies will be both consuming digital services…

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Investing in Tech Talent Always Pays Off, Even in Uncertain Times

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 13:00:56 +0000

The past several years have driven home a hard lesson for many business leaders: no matter how strong their business fundamentals may be, every organization is ultimately subject to the ripple effects of global events and the general up-and-down patterns of the business cycle. Recessions are periods of economic challenges, but they’re also periods of business opportunity. The enterprises best positioned to capitalize on those opportunities are not necessarily those with the best set strategies—they’re the ones that are most agile and adaptable. Businesses that continue to invest in people despite the looming economic uncertainty can achieve that level of…

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Reaching Climate Neutral Through Equinix and Alibaba Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 00:00:55 +0000

Popular shopping events like ‘Singles Day’ has brought into focus how online high-traffic events can be made sustainable through green cloud practices. For the first time last year, Alibaba’s ’11.11’ event––the world’s largest shopping festival ran fully on the cloud. The deployment of 100% cloud-native technologies during the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival in 2021 reduced computing resources by 50% for every 10,000 transactions in comparison to previous years. The use of renewable energy in Alibaba’s Zhangbei County data center also helped reduce carbon emissions by over 26,000 tons, creating a more low-carbon society. To support the vast volume of…

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Shifting Priorities for Workload Placement Require a Hybrid IT Approach

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 13:00:45 +0000

In the digital economy, addressing the rapidly changing priorities of placing workloads and data close to users and applications is a top focus for IT leaders worldwide. Managing the diverse placement of workloads introduces the need for a hybrid approach to IT infrastructure. According to the 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey by Equinix, 38% of global IT decision-makers are deploying cloud services via a hybrid cloud model, making it the most common deployment approach. Hybrid IT provides the flexibility enterprises need to place various workloads across on-premises data centers, colocation facilities, the cloud and the digital edge. Workloads include distributed…

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How Can Broadcasters Scale Infrastructure for Major Sports Events?

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 13:00:37 +0000

Global sporting events like the upcoming World Cup in Qatar require broadcasters to deliver live content to end users with consistent ultra-low latency. To do that, they must deploy distributed infrastructure at the digital edge. In this case, the digital edge will be anywhere fans are watching from, which means just about anywhere there are people with internet-enabled devices. When it comes to deploying at the digital edge, live sports broadcasters face several unique challenges: Enabling a consistent user experience across time zones and devices Ensuring network scalability to keep up with shifting demand Setting up temporary infrastructure quickly and cost-effectively

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Build the Cloud You Need

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 13:00:31 +0000

Over the course of our respective careers, we have both seen massive changes in how the world uses technology. From servers kept in “the IT closet” and dial-up modems at home to cloud computing and Starlink in the yard, the last 20 years certainly saw a lot of change! Users today have the power of massive-scale clouds quite literally at their fingertips. Accelerated by the cloud native and open source movements, alongside maturing DevOps practices, software that was once difficult to set up and deploy is now highly automatable and portable. We’ve come a long way. Recent years have demonstrated…

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Equinix Joins Gaia-X to Support Data Sovereignty in Europe

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 08:00:20 +0000

In order to maximize the value of their data, businesses must be able to share it across their partner ecosystem in a secure, consistent manner. According to the 2023 Global Interconnection Index, an annual market study published by Equinix, interconnection bandwidth is forecast to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35% across every region and major metro included in the study. This shows that organizations across the world will continue to share more data with one another, and that they’ll use direct, private interconnection services to do it. Data marketplaces provide a virtual setting for businesses…

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How Colocation Providers Spur Innovation with Emerging Technology

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:00:59 +0000

Emerging technologies are at the forefront of innovation. Digital leaders are adopting cutting-edge solutions that leverage the Internet of Things (IoT), AI, augmented and virtual reality, robotics and automation to accelerate innovation and differentiate themselves from competitors. These technologies generate enormous volumes of data collected by sensors, drones, cameras, microphones, even streetlamps—that companies need to process, share and store cost-effectively. It’s not easy for businesses to stand up the infrastructure needed for these projects on their own. Often, the barriers of high costs, lack of skilled human resources and an inability to scale IT make the projects difficult to…

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Powered by Equinix, Orange Leads in Cloud, Connectivity and Security at the Edge

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 20:47:29 +0000

Coauthored by: Myriam Rosselli, Equinix Global Partner lead for Orange Business Services Ahmed Mouhib, Global Solutions Architect for Orange Clémence Vauzelle, Head of International Strategic Domains, International Sales, Orange Business Services Orange expands cloud connectivity, security, digital integration capabilities and global reach. This content supports the “Evolution Platform” strategic value proposition. Modern interconnection, network connectivity services and edge computing technologies are transforming how businesses deliver digital capabilities to their customers. Direct access to a broad ecosystem of service providers permits businesses to quickly meet customer demand. However, only a modern digital infrastructure secured across networks, cloud and edge is capable of delivering these capabilities. In partnership…

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Doing DevOps in the Hybrid Multicloud World

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 13:00:37 +0000

There was once a time when a music company was just a music company, a car company was just a car company, and a bank was just a bank. Now, things have changed. We’ve seen how the music industry has transformed—from physical disks to MP3 files to a streaming subscription model. In short, music companies have become software companies. This is just one example of a trend that’s playing out across industry verticals. Companies that make software the heart of their operations put themselves in the best position to achieve their business goals and thrive in the modern competitive landscape….

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How We Enable People of All Abilities to Thrive at Work

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 13:00:25 +0000

A billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability. According to the World Bank, “Persons with disabilities are more likely to experience adverse socioeconomic outcomes such as less education, poorer health outcomes, lower levels of employment and higher poverty rates.” While diversity, equity and inclusion have received significant attention in the last several years, disability has been a missing piece in the puzzle. Now, more companies, C-suite leaders and investors are starting to pay attention and recognize the importance of disability…

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Is Ambient Computing Driving the Extinction of Hardware Devices in the Future?

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 02:02:51 +0000

The 21st century has been the focal timeline to usher in a new era of hardware and software synergy. Digital devices are increasingly ingrained into holistic ecosystems, becoming an essential part of our lives and changing the way we do business. Organizations embarking on digital transformation must leverage reliable networks as a key metric to deliver seamless digital experiences for people, devices, applications, and processes. With a growing focus on interconnectivity between devices in an ecosystem, IT is increasingly merging into operational technology (OT) and interest in connected, smart devices are surging. As such, exponential Internet of Things (IoT)…

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Game-Changing Network Edge Solutions Unlock Enterprise Advantages

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 04:50:16 +0000

Tokopedia, Sime Darby, VR Group – what do these companies have in common? At first glance, absolutely nothing. Tokopedia is a technology company that runs Indonesia’s largest marketplace platform; Sime Darby is a global trading and logistics company; and, VR Group is a Finnish-based travel, logistics and maintenance service company. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals distinct similarities. All three forward-thinking organizations chose decisively to adopt a digital-first approach to overcome the IT disruptions. They leveraged Equinix Fabric™ and Network Edge to build new agile, flexible, scalable and future-proof digital infrastructure, to futureproof their business. Without the need for manual onsite configuration and…

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Equinix Fabric Helps Customers Capitalize on Subsea Cable Capacity

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 13:00:55 +0000

Subsea cables are the unsung heroes of the modern digital world. With an estimated 99% of all international communications traffic crossing subsea cables, the internet as we know it wouldn’t be possible without them. In spite of the key role they play in enabling global digital connectivity, it’s all too easy to take them for granted. They simply run in the background of our everyday lives, and most of us never have to stop and think about where we’d be without them. That’s why the launch of the EllaLink cable between Europe and Brazil in 2021 was such a noteworthy…

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Why Businesses are Moving to Everything as a Service

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 08:15:53 +0000

Today’s IT leaders face a variety of challenges, including economic uncertainty, geopolitical conflict and supply chain interruptions. To address these challenges, they’re looking for ways to maximize agility and flexibility, so that they can expand their digital infrastructure and roll out new services quickly. In addition, they need to achieve that goal while keeping their CAPEX spend manageable. The 2022 Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), which compiles responses from 2,900 global IT decision-makers, provides key insights about how and why organizations are pursuing digital transformation to future-proof their businesses. According to the GTTS, one way IT leaders plan to…

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Leading with ‘Future First’ as Equinix Asia-Pacific Drives Towards Climate Neutrality in 2030

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:32 +0000

Sustainability is more urgent than ever before, as world leaders rally together through summits like COP27 to address looming climate change and other global concerns. As the world’s digital infrastructure company, operating data centers around the globe, Equinix recognizes its responsibility to play a leading role in making change. In 2015 we became the first in the industry to set a 100% renewable energy goal and in 2021 we led by example, setting a climate neutral by 2030 goal that is aligned with science-based targets across Scope 1, 2, and 3 as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG)…

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What is ClickOps, and How Can You Prevent It?

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 13:00:28 +0000

The potential benefits of hybrid multicloud are undeniable. The 2023 Global Interconnection Index (GXI), an annual market study conducted by Equinix, predicts that 85% of global companies will expand multicloud access across several regions by 2025. These companies are choosing multicloud because it helps maximize flexibility, lower costs and ensure access to best-of-breed services. If the benefits of hybrid multicloud are undeniable, then so too is the complexity it often creates. The proliferation of self-service and on-demand portals offered by cloud providers to help customers deploy and manage automated infrastructure can further exacerbate that complexity. These portals supposedly exist to make…

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What Is DevSecOps, and Why Is It Important to Security?

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 13:00:18 +0000

DevOps has been helping teams to embrace automation and achieve scale for years now, however in this approach, security might be relegated. Practices like hardcoding credentials/passwords directly into applications can make coding easier and faster but are risky and can get out of hand fast. As many organizations continually expand their cloud portfolio, from hybrid multicloud and data centers to virtual environments and more, the constant monitoring of code has become more crucial than ever. Developer environments, as evidenced by recent attacks, are on the radar of threat actors. The SolarWinds hack highlights how the supply chain can be vulnerable…

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Simplify Multicloud Networking with Aviatrix Edge on Network Edge

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 13:00:11 +0000

In hybrid multicloud environments, networking can get complicated. Every cloud vendor offers a different networking construct, which creates complexity for cloud infrastructure teams working with multiple cloud service providers. To address this complexity, organizations need a multicloud networking solution that provides visibility, control and embedded security features. This month, Equinix is announcing a new networking solution on Network Edge. Aviatrix Edge on Network Edge is a powerful cloud networking service that helps teams manage the complexity of multicloud networking. Aviatrix Edge is now generally available in the Equinix Marketplace. This new Network Edge device extends Aviatrix Intelligent Cloud Networking using…

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Build a Technology Foundation for Better Customer Experiences

Tue, 06 Dec 2022 13:00:36 +0000

In the digital era, users have come to expect fast, engaging, personalized experiences with applications, products and services. Consumer brands like Netflix, Starbucks and Uber have led the way in transforming customer experience (CX) and reshaping people’s expectations. As users, we know how delightful it is to get the perfect recommendation or have a brand anticipate our needs before we’re even aware of them. Such experiences create brand loyalty and set expectations for similar experiences in our personal and professional lives. At work, users want the same fast, easy, relevant interactions they’ve grown accustomed to having as consumers. As a…

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How to Solve for Data Fragmentation

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 13:00:11 +0000

Today’s enterprise leaders recognize that data is a resource with tremendous business value. As organizations bring in more data from more sources, the value businesses can draw from their data will increase accordingly. However, increased volume and variety of data also leads to increased complexity. This is particularly true for organizations that are capitalizing on the benefits of hybrid multicloud. Data fragmentation—where data sets are scattered across different locations, platforms and environments—not only makes it more difficult for businesses to capture the full value of their data, but also opens up cybersecurity vulnerabilities. In this blog, we’ll take a deeper…

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Rethinking Your Network Architecture for Cloud Deployments

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 13:00:07 +0000

It’s impossible to talk about the future of enterprise IT without mentioning the growing importance of cloud services. The 2022 Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS) found that 71% of global IT leaders plan to move more functions to the cloud in the next 12 months. In addition, the cloud deployment models those IT leaders are choosing are growing more complex: The GTTS found that 38% of IT leaders are deploying via hybrid cloud, making it the most common deployment model. In addition, about 79% said they currently work with two or more cloud providers. This ongoing shift to hybrid…

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Expansion of Digital Infrastructure Makes the Headlines

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 13:00:40 +0000

It is increasingly evident that the global pandemic has been a catalyst for how customers view digital transformation as a strategic business imperative. Our expansive global reach and robust interconnected ecosystems continue to attract a diverse customer set as they prioritize digital investments and embrace Platform Equinix as a point of nexus to support hybrid and multi-cloud. This wave of digital infrastructure demand and our highly differentiated value proposition are setting us up for a strong trajectory as we look to 2023 and beyond. Here are a few recent news stories from around the globe highlighting the expanding world of…

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IDC MarketScape Names Equinix a Data Center Colocation and Interconnection Services Leader in Canada

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:00:09 +0000

Canadian organizations continue to accelerate their digital transformation strategies to compete in Canada and on the world stage, with 43% of Canadian IT decision-makers saying that they intend to increase investment in interconnection services, as reported in the 2022 Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS). But planning for digital transformation requires the right combination of digital infrastructure, and that includes data center colocation and interconnection services. As the world’s digital infrastructure company™, Equinix empowers businesses to achieve their goals by offering innovative and sustainable solutions to compete today and prepare for tomorrow, and that’s why we’re so proud to have…

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4 Trends That Will Change the APAC Digital Landscape in 2023

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 00:00:53 +0000

The growing data appetite of Asia-Pacific has fueled the rapid development of cloud infrastructure across both established and emerging markets. Major metropolitan hubs across the region demanding greater data connectivity have driven Equinix to continuously increase the capacity of digital infrastructure. In 2022, we announced ME2 and SG5 expansions in Melbourne and Singapore, and new International Business ExchangeTM (IBX®) data centers in Tokyo (TY15) and Mumbai (MB3). Emerging markets like Indonesia and Malaysia are also growing their digital footprint, and have received significant investment as the market for digitization continues to develop at scale. Equinix has positioned itself to…

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What’s Next for Networks: Interconnection, NaaS and Edge Services

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 13:00:34 +0000

Is your network evolving for a digital-first future? Digital transformation has been a major topic of discussion for years. However, despite being part of the solution value chain, networks themselves haven’t yet transformed. But now, the time has come for network service providers (NSPs) to realize the vision of digital transformation for the network too. Service providers can no longer rely on the traditional value-creation model of building a product or service to solve a “now” problem; instead, they need to build capabilities that can solve an unbounded set of problems. MPLS, carrier Ethernet and business broadband services are slowing…

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Network Modernization: A How-To Guide

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 13:00:37 +0000

Mike, Mike, Mike—guess what day it is. Refresh day! Network modernization is inevitable, given the reality of impending networking equipment refreshes. But network modernization can also be an opportunity to align with your enterprise’s digital transformation initiatives. Smart organizations are using refresh cycles to build next-generation networks that address the requirements of digitally transformed applications and workloads. Companies are leaning away from centralized data centers with traditional networking and instead are migrating toward SD-WAN enabled hybrid multicloud models, where infrastructure can be positioned closer to edge locations and users. Cloud computing has introduced new requirements, forcing networks to reach data…

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How We All Can Work Together To Achieve Greater Digital Inclusion

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 13:00:46 +0000

(This article was originally published in Forbes.) Many of us in the U.S. don’t spend a ton of time or energy thinking about how the internet we use every day works or where it comes from. We take our video calls from our home offices (or kitchen counter, closet or ironing board), turn the baby monitor on when we go to sleep and order food delivery on our phones. We do so without ever having to consider all the puzzle pieces that must physically come together to enable us to live our lives in such a way. The reality is, though, the…

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Simplify Network Management With Equinix and Google Cloud

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 13:00:44 +0000

Today, most enterprises run on-premises and cloud infrastructure that includes one or more cloud providers across multiple geographies. Network management can quickly get complicated in hybrid multicloud environments, especially when managing hundreds, or even thousands, of public and private connections across multiple locations. This is true especially for large enterprises with a variety of connectivity requirements including public and private cloud and virtual and physical connections. They need a centralized mechanism for building out hybrid multicloud networking that is faster, easier to deploy and more secure. Through our partnership with Google Cloud and its Network Connectivity Center (NCC), Equinix customers…

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The Digital Moment Is Here for Travel and Transportation

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 13:01:13 +0000

The last few years have brought significant changes in the travel and transportation sector—changes that are driving companies to adopt more digital IT services to enable agility, speed and cost-effectiveness. Airlines, hotels, railroads, and trucking and shipping companies have all faced massively fluctuating demand due to the pandemic, along with travel restrictions, supply chain challenges, labor shortages and other variables. Not only that, but they’re under pressure to provide an increasing array of digital services to own the customer experience in a highly competitive market. In addition to evolving market conditions, businesses in the transportation sector have been gradually undergoing…

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Accelerating Zero-Trust Adoption: Conversations With a Federal CIO

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 13:39:49 +0000

In our previous blog post, we discussed the mandate federal agencies face to adopt zero-trust architecture (ZTA) as part of a modernized cybersecurity strategy. In May 2021, the Biden administration’s Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity The OMB memorandum argues that traditional cybersecurity perimeters are ineffective in the current threat environment….

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5 Trends That Will Change Australia’s Digital Landscape in 2023

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 01:43:17 +0000

As we exit the first year of this ‘post COVID’ era, organisations of all sizes continue to embrace digital infrastructure to accelerate their growth and capitalise on new and emerging technologies which enable delivery of new services, increase competitive advantage, and facilitate employee productivity, regardless of their location. Despite some economic uncertainties, we anticipate continued investment in infrastructure underpinning the growing demand for digitisation as organisations are increasingly reliant on technology. Driving this growth, five themes illuminate us on what the year ahead might bring.

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Best Practices for Data Center Risk Mitigation in 2023

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 13:00:37 +0000

Today’s IT leaders dedicate much of their time and resources to protecting against cybersecurity threats, and for good reason. Despite how important cybersecurity is, it would be a mistake to not also consider the risks facing your physical data centers. Physical security is a major component in the protection of the information systems that make your company’s digital presence possible. Cybersecurity and physical security must work together as part of a holistic protection strategy. In this blog, we’ll share six best practices that can help you mitigate the risks facing your physical data centers: Establish a multi-layered security perimeter Institute robust physical…

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4 Factors That Define Responsible AI

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 13:05:10 +0000

For years now, business leaders have been dreaming about how artificial intelligence would one day transform their operations to be smarter and more efficient. Now that AI adoption has finally gone mainstream, those leaders must also be aware of the wider implications of that fundamental shift. Specifically, businesses are now sharing the outcomes of their AI models with business partners and customers. As a result, they must extend the same care and consideration to those outcomes as they would any other product or service they offer. They have a responsibility to do AI the right way—on behalf of anyone who…

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How Digital Healthcare Ecosystems Drive Innovation and Collaboration

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In the modern digital economy, working well with partners is one of the most important factors determining business success. Organizations must constantly master new technologies, build resilient digital supply chains and turn data into insights across their distributed operations. To do all these things, they must find the right partners and interconnect with them in the right places. The 2023 Global Interconnection Index (GXI) study from Equinix provides insights about what this new ecosystem economy looks like. The GXI forecasts that interconnection bandwidth will grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35% globally, a clear sign that…

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4 Ways to Manage the Complexity of Distributed Environments

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 13:00:39 +0000

Gone are the days of a centralized data center at company headquarters; instead, companies today must manage complex IT environments spanning the globe. Distributed IT has become mainstream as enterprises continue to make progress on their digital transformation and adopt more Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. That’s because modern applications and emerging technology implementations require modern infrastructure that puts compute closer to where data is generated and interconnects you with a dynamic ecosystem of partners. Not only that, but such architectures require highly modern networks capable of tying together all the elements of dispersed IT environments while keeping…

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How Infrastructure Will Accelerate Digital Transformation in 2023

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 13:00:43 +0000

The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to pause and consider what’s next for digital transformation. Industry leaders have been discussing it for years now, but we’re seeing some eye-popping investment figures that drive home how much the digital economy will accelerate in the years to come. In its Worldwide Digital Transformation Spending Guide, IDC predicts that global digital transformation spending will reach $3.4 trillion by 2026. To put this in perspective, if digital transformation were a country, its GDP would rank in the top five globally. In this post, we’ll explore how transformation is happening across…

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What’s on the Horizon for Time as a Service (TaaS) Solutions?

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 13:00:44 +0000

Some of the greatest minds in history—physicists, electrical engineers, even philosophers—have studied and theorized about time. For IT operations in a digital world, time is truly of the essence—perhaps more than ever before as more companies adopt hybrid multicloud infrastructures. The ability to accurately and reliably synchronize time in your IT systems can have important implications for security, operations and regulatory compliance. It’s no longer a nice optional feature; it’s indispensable. Time is also one of the most precise and difficult attributes to manage in an IT environment, and the industry has come up with a variety of solutions to…

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How Payment Providers Can Modernize Their Data Strategies

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 08:00:05 +0000

To stay competitive, relevant and secure, payment providers and other financial services companies are going through a massive digital transformation process. To enable that transformation, these companies are embracing hybrid multicloud architectures. In the 2022 Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey, about 79% of global IT leaders across industries said that their organizations currently work with two or more cloud providers. Financial services organizations have good reason to be especially cautious about not depending too heavily on a single cloud provider. Avoiding vendor lock-in in their cloud environments can help payments companies: Implement redundant infrastructure on multiple clouds to remove the single…

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Cross Connects vs. Virtual Connects

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:00:15 +0000

As the pace of the digital economy continues to accelerate, so do consumer expectations for faster transaction speeds. If we open an app or browser and don’t get instant results with a seamless experience, we simply close the app or browser and choose another option. There’s usually not a single company to blame. Frequently, multiple providers operate behind the scenes to generate responses. Think about what’s involved with booking a reservation with a ride-hailing service from an app on your mobile device: You initiate the ride request from the app and the app authenticates you. GPS locates where you are and determines…

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4 Future-Proofing Priorities for EMEA Businesses in 2023

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 08:00:56 +0000

As executives in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) transition into a new year, the question of how best to future-proof their business—for 2023 and beyond—looms large. These businesses face the same challenges as their global counterparts, but there are others driven by the unique legal and political realities of the region. According to the Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 81% of EMEA IT leaders said they see future-proofing the business as a top priority for their technology strategy. Specifically, the GTTS found these three areas as the most common future-proofing challenges named by EMEA IT leaders: Complying with…

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Data Management Best Practices for a New Era of Digital Twins

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 13:00:53 +0000

Digital twins are nothing new. While the term was coined by NASA in 2010, we were creating models of physical artifacts long before that. In the last decade or so, technological advancements in big data, high-speed networks and supercomputing power have caused digital twins to pick up significant momentum. Today, they’re being more widely adopted as businesses create models of factories, hospitals, airplanes, cars, data centers and even human customers or patients. We’ve entered the era of digital twins for both enterprises and consumer AR/VR applications. Companies are always looking to optimize their operations, better serve customers and predict trends…

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What Is Dedicated Cloud?

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 13:00:27 +0000

Cloud computing technology has evolved rapidly over time, and so too has the vocabulary we use to describe it. At Equinix, our How to Converse in Cloud series aims to help business and IT professionals keep up with the latest developments in cloud, including the changing terminology that goes along with them. In the early days, a “cloud” was simply any compute instance running in an off-premises location. The early cloud was also subject to the capacity limitations of the underlying hardware. Now, things have changed: Hyperscalers offer customers flexibility to scale up capacity on demand, along with a multitude…

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How to Do AI Sustainably

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 13:03:18 +0000

Enterprises are increasingly concerned with how they can take a responsible approach to AI, ensuring their models maximize business value for stakeholders by delivering results that are accurate, unbiased and compliant. But AI models must also be sustainable to be responsible. At the Gartner® IT Symposium/Xpo™ in October 2022, Daryl Plummer, distinguished VP analyst and Gartner Fellow, shared several top strategic predictions for 2023 and beyond, including this one: “By 2025, without sustainable artificial intelligence (AI) practices, AI will consume more energy than the human workforce, significantly offsetting carbon zero gains.” Enterprises can use their AI models to pursue a variety of…

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Hyperscalers Expand Beyond Core Locations for Proximity and Speed

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 13:05:39 +0000

Hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have become a ubiquitous part of our lives. From searching the internet, to online shopping, to storing data in the cloud, few of our online transactions escape the reach of hyperscalers. And like other businesses, hyperscalers have to continually pursue new business opportunities while tracking the evolving needs of their customers and partners. As hockey great Wayne Gretzky once observed when asked about his proficiency at scoring goals, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” Similarly, hyperscalers, who have focused traditionally on…

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Accelerating Sustainability to Build Stronger Businesses

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 08:38:31 +0000

Environmental sustainability has emerged as a significant concern and a business imperative for organizations today. A poll of public and private sector leaders in the latest World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2022 found that environment-related threats, including climate action failure and extreme weather events, topped the lists of short and long-term global risks. According to Equinix’s 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey, 74% of Asia-Pacific IT decision-makers considered sustainability to be one of their organization’s most important drivers, while 62% regarded challenges in meeting sustainability targets a threat to their organizations. For 73% of respondents, environmental impact reduction is a…

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IoT Ecosystem Collaboration Speeds Innovation and Growth

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 13:00:18 +0000

The Internet of Things (IoT) market continues to rapidly evolve and expand. With companies at various stages of maturity in the IoT market, finding common ground in an ecosystem makes it possible to share best practices, co-innovate new products and services, and collaborate to solve various challenges. The Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2023, a market study published by Equinix, found that businesses connected to the most ecosystems have expanded their digital operations more in the past five quarters than in the previous five years. Ecosystem density has become a catalyst for digital innovation as businesses reinvent themselves in the aftermath of…

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What is Supercloud?

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 13:00:21 +0000

Going back in time by traveling faster than the speed of light…developing telekinetic abilities a la Roald Dahl’s Matilda or by using “The Force”…and the promise of an efficient hybrid multicloud architecture. What do all these things have in common? The answer: They’re all nothing more than science fiction. Seriously though, despite how often the words have been uttered in meeting rooms or written in technical articles or analyst studies, digital leaders are realizing that “hybrid multicloud” as it’s been sold to us simply isn’t working. It may sound great on paper, but actually manifesting it in a way that…

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4 Benefits of Blended Internet Access

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 13:00:26 +0000

In a world defined by digital technology, it’s no exaggeration to say that how an organization gets internet access is one of most important decisions business leaders will ever make. Getting the right internet access the right way—reliably and with consistent high performance—can be a tremendous source of competitive advantage for businesses. However, with so many different options available to them, it may be difficult for business leaders to even know where to start when making such an important decision. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at the two main ways businesses can acquire internet access: dedicated internet…

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Closing the Gender Digital Divide with World Pulse

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 13:00:37 +0000

Bridging the gender-based digital divide is a necessity. Digital connectivity has become a basic human right associated with access to education, employment opportunities, healthcare and other community resources. Unfortunately, progress on gender-based digital inclusion has slowed—and even reversed—in recent years. Women remain 18% less likely than men to own a smartphone, which puts 315 million women at a disadvantage when it comes to mobile internet access. For more than 15 years, World Pulse—an independent, women-led, global social network for social change—has been at the forefront of the movement for digital inclusion for women, girls and gender-expansive individuals. Through its social…

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Southeast Asian Markets are Emerging as a Powerhouse for Digital Growth

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

No one denies that Southeast Asia (SEA) is one of the most economically developed regions in the world. The region’s digital economy approached US$200 billion in gross merchandize value (GMV). E-commerce has been a massive driver of growth in SEA with adoption skyrocketing across the region, up to 98% for affluent users and 74% for suburban consumers. For the first time this year digital financial services have begun to overtake e-commerce as SEA’s top investment sector with payments retaining the biggest slice of deal activity. Invigorated by a highly favorable growth environment, the industry has made significant inroads into SEA…

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The DIY Era of Digital Transformation Is Over

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 13:01:00 +0000

Forward-thinking businesses recognize that the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to digital transformation no longer meets market demand for continuous innovation. And because the pace of digital transformation is accelerating, no single entity – customer or partner – can adequately address the rapidly evolving requirements. If they do try to take the DIY approach, they risk losing momentum and competitive advantage in today’s fast-moving anywhere economy. In the fourth annual Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), we learned that 58% of digital leaders viewed “not being fast enough in digital transformation” as a threat to business success. Take the day-to-day management of…

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Automation Without Transformation Is Pointless

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 13:00:03 +0000

The acceleration of digital transformation initiatives has put IT teams in a unique position: Since digital technology now plays a key role in essentially every business process, IT teams now have end-to-end visibility into everything the business does. This could include everything from the most basic backend tasks that are just about “keeping the lights on,” all the way up to the most advanced customer-facing applications that improve user experience and drive new revenue opportunities. The visibility IT teams now have into business operations makes them well-positioned to drive transformative change that increases business value and sets the organization up…

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Building Hybrid Infrastructure That’s Simple, Scalable and Repeatable

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 13:00:28 +0000

What if you could access new colocation resources, on demand, with a simple, standardized, interconnected design that’s ready for immediate use? Perhaps you need to get infrastructure up and running quickly to help your business expand into one or more new countries or regions. Or, maybe your global business has an imperative to scale into new technologies and connect more edge locations. In the fight to stay relevant, organizations need to respond to ever-evolving business requirements with speed and agility. Creating scalable, repeatable infrastructure to support their strategic priorities comes with a host of challenges, though—and they don’t always have…

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How Did My Cloud Bill Get So High?

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:02:26 +0000

Deciding where to deploy your hybrid IT workloads is complex. Do you choose the public cloud, colocation, edge, on-premises or even Bare Metal as a Service (BMaaS)? And what factors must be considered in your decision-making process? There’s cost, agility, business value, speed, reliability, compliance, customer experience, data protection, disaster recovery and more. If you choose to simply take a lift-and-shift approach to migrating workloads to the cloud—instead of creating a holistic migration strategy that fully considers all key criteria for cloud success—then cloud repatriation may be in your future. Post-cloud deployment (also known as cloud repatriation) is the migration…

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Connecting the Mediterranean: New Subsea Cable Hubs Emerge

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 09:01:31 +0000

Telecommunications technology has come a long way in the last 150 years, but the one constant throughout has been the humble subsea cable. Today, about 99% of all international communications traffic crosses subsea cables. Demand for digital connectivity from both businesses and consumers remains at an all-time high, and we’ll need more subsea cable systems in more places before we can fulfill that demand. With this in mind, it’s no wonder TeleGeography is predicting almost $5 billion in new subsea cable investment during 2023 alone. This eye-popping figure is driven both by high demand and by the fact that we’re…

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Why Africa Should Be Part of Your Digital Infrastructure Strategy in 2023

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 08:00:14 +0000

Digital transformation is increasing in Africa at an ever-accelerating rate. There are specific challenges and opportunities that are entirely unique to the continent. One example is the digital divide in Africa, a gap that both African and multinational tech companies are working to help close. Internet penetration in sub-Saharan Africa is growing faster than anywhere else in the world, going from less than 1% in 2000 to about 30% in 2022. However, there are about 840 million people on the continent who are still waiting to be connected. The opportunity is clear: Every small step toward closing this coverage gap…

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Unlock the True Potential of 5G With Edge Infrastructure

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 13:00:07 +0000

Global 5G adoption is now well underway, with almost 1.7 billion 5G devices already in use. This number is forecast to continue growing rapidly over the next several years, reaching almost 5 billion by 2028. Looking forward to this new era of growth, the question remains: Are we prepared to do 5G in a way that truly lives up to the hype we’ve heard in recent years? The entire premise of 5G is that it can enable enterprise-grade wireless services, where previous generations of wireless technology were only capable of supporting consumer services. It’s still not clear whether we have…

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How to Fight DDoS and Ransomware Attacks with Interconnection

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 08:00:16 +0000

The cybersecurity threats facing today’s digital businesses are complex and always changing. Companies rely on their digital infrastructure more than ever before, which means the risk of falling victim to a cyberattack has never been higher. At the same time, businesses are increasingly using distributed digital infrastructure to get closer to end users at the edge, creating a much larger attack surface for them to protect. To address security vulnerabilities across their distributed digital infrastructure, businesses need a distributed security strategy that includes the right capabilities, delivered by the right partners in the right places. Only by implementing such a…

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The Journey Towards a Data Democracy Starts with Digital Infrastructure

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:21 +0000

Shifting towards hybrid working and remote work structures has exerted additional pressure on organizations to accelerate the digitalization of their business and fast-track the introduction of data democratization techniques. A study by CBRE showed that close to 60% of Asia-Pacific companies intend to retain hybrid working arrangements even as employees return to the office on the back of easing COVID-19 restrictions across most of the region. While the employees and stakeholders of today may not be in close geographical proximity with one another, data must remain accessible to drive collaborative professional experiences across organizations and borders. Now more than ever…

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What is Latency, and How Can You Address It?

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 13:00:41 +0000

As the world grows increasingly interconnected, it can be easy to forget that the digital applications we use every day do still have a presence in the physical world. The underlying data centers and network infrastructure that make those applications possible all have to be located somewhere, and exactly where they’re located can have a big impact on performance and user experience. This is due to the concept known as latency, or more specifically, network latency. Any time data packets cross a network, there’s a built-in upper limit to how fast they can travel. “Latency” refers to the delay that…

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Is Limited Agility Your IT Achilles Heel?

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 13:02:23 +0000

Improving speed and agility has become an imperative for IT leaders—especially given recent economic shifts, tightening budgets, geopolitical turmoil, supply chain issues and security worries. In fact, top CIOs and IT leaders surveyed by CIO Journal indicated that because they’ve had to adapt so quickly and often to meet their goals, speed and agility are among their top priorities in 2023. Increased business agility positions you to retain customers, jump on new business opportunities and recover more quickly in the event of an outage—all of which drive greater revenue and competitive advantage. On the flip side, a lack of agility…

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3 Steps for IT Modernization in Government and Education

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 13:00:24 +0000

Today’s public sector organizations face a variety of challenges, including pursuing their missions on a global scale, keeping up with a complex cyber-threat landscape, navigating supply chain complexities and providing a better user experience. Savvy public sector leaders recognize they can’t face these new challenges using old technology. Many of these organizations—including federal government, state and local government and education agencies—are also facing outside pressure to modernize their IT systems. For instance, the Office of Management and Budget released its Information Technology Operating Plan in June 2022 to advance four key priorities for federal agencies: cybersecurity, IT modernization, digital-first customer…

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Adopt SASE to Take Your SD-WAN to the Next Level

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 13:00:06 +0000

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) adoption is on the rise. In the third quarter of 2022, SASE saw 33% revenue growth—a pattern that’s expected to continue this year. We shouldn’t be surprised about this uptick in SASE adoption. Security risks have increased, and organizations want to strengthen their security posture. After all, nobody wants to risk being in the spotlight due to a data breach….

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International Women’s Day 2023: “Why equal opportunities aren’t enough”

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 02:00:49 +0000

“Equality is giving everyone a shoe; equity is giving everyone a shoe that fits.” ~ Dr. Naheed Dosani, advocate for equitable healthcare Today is International Women’s Day (IWD), a day dedicated to celebrating the achievements of women, raising awareness against bias, and taking action in support of equity. This year’s IWD theme “Embrace Equity” is especially important as it calls attention to why, in order to advance women, we need both equality and equity. Equinix is proud to support IWD 2023. As the executive sponsor of our Equinix Women’s Leadership Network (EWLN) and an ally who pushes for the empowerment of…

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What Are Overlay Networks and How Are They Shaping Our 5G Future?

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 12:00:27 +0000

You’ve probably heard of overlay networks, and if you haven’t, you’re at least familiar with the most widely used one: the internet. But did you know that overlay networks are a critical technology that’s paving the way to widespread 5G adoption globally? In this blog post, we’ll walk through what overlay networks are and then talk about why they’re essential to 5G open radio access network (Open RAN) and the strategic placement of the user plane function (UPF). Finally, we’ll look at some exciting projects that are exploring the use of overlay networks for the next frontier of 5G networks. Overlay…

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Security Threats in Smart Factories and Industry 4.0

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 12:01:57 +0000

It was 2010 when the industrial sector had a wake-up call in the form of Stuxnet, a destructive malware that spread across production networks via removable USB media using a 3rd party attack aimed at gaining access to a 1st party edge device. It was an early look at how cyberattacks can wreak havoc on industrial machinery. Over a decade later, many companies find themselves in the thick of the fourth industrial revolution, commonly referred to as Industry 4.0; it’s driving digital transformation in manufacturing. Enabled by the industrial internet of things (IIoT), Industry 4.0 converges information technology (IT), operational…

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The Backdrop of Equinix’s Data Centers in Asia-Pacific

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 23:00:57 +0000

As industries around the world embark on their respective digital transformation journeys, governments and organizations across Asia-Pacific are increasingly reliant on digital infrastructure to connect them to the global digital economy. The data center market in Asia-Pacific in particular is expected to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.1% during the period of 2022 to 2027 fuelled by deep internet penetration, public cloud services and higher predicted Internet of Things (IoT) growth. Throughout the year 2022, Equinix has been responding to the growing demand for data facilitation across the region by developing data infrastructure at speed with the…

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Quantum Computing + Colocation + Interconnection = Transformation

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 07:00:04 +0000

Any time there’s a new technology that’s fundamentally different from anything that’s come before it, there’s bound to be both excitement about the opportunities and curiosity about how to drive widespread adoption of that technology. This is where we currently find ourselves with quantum computing. The hype cycle for quantum is now well underway, and for good reason. While conventional computers rely on binary states—represented by either a 0 or a 1—quantum computers can represent every state simultaneously—that is, both a 0 and a 1 at the same time. For this simple reason, quantum represents something new and different, rather than…

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4 Ways to Drive Business Value with Digital Ecosystems

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 12:00:46 +0000

What is the “special sauce” that separates a successful business from a struggling one? In the past, most experts would have agreed it was some combination of visionary leadership, informed decision-making and an engaging employee culture. All these things are obviously still important, but in today’s interconnected world, we can no longer judge businesses based solely on what’s happening inside their own four walls. Instead of asking how good a particular company is, it may be better to ask how good its partnerships are. Thriving in today’s business landscape requires specialized digital infrastructure, services, applications and data. When businesses can…

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How CIOs Can Invest for Now and Later

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 12:00:23 +0000

At a time when IT budgets around the world are getting tighter, CIOs face a conundrum. They know they can’t let the day-to-day whims of the market stand in the way of pursuing their digital transformation goals. How can they get the funding they need to modernize legacy IT systems, eliminate technical debt and ensure the agility needed to future-proof the business, in spite of the prevailing macroeconomic trends? Business leaders have a responsibility to budget resources wisely, so it’s no wonder they’re growing more conservative when there’s a possible recession on the horizon. Specifically, the IT projects that are…

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How We’re Inspiring the Next Generation of Data Center Professionals

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 00:00:02 +0000

The data center industry is experiencing a period of hyper growth, in which there are more jobs available than there are people coming into the industry. This presents a significant opportunity to bring those new to career, as well as those outside the industry, into the data center industry. Hiring new talent will allow time for the more experienced data center workers to pass their expertise on to the next generation–before they retire. To close the skills gap, data center companies should take a two-pronged approach: building a culture that engages existing employees with support and development opportunities, while also…

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How Network as Code and SaaS Are Shaping the 5G Future

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:00:43 +0000

5G traffic is already growing and is expected to explode to 5 billion mobile subscriptions by 2028. Companies want to understand how they can tap into the promise and potential of 5G as it gains traction. 5G standalone (SA)—the next development in 5G technology—offers enormous promise to unlock value for network service providers (NSPs). Not only does it deliver clear benefits like higher quality of service, reliability, low latency and massive IoT connectivity, but it also provides new capabilities such as network slicing and API-enabled services to application developers. These advancements in 5G enable numerous emerging technology use cases, ranging…

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Time – A Critical Dimension to Business and Digital Infrastructure

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 23:00:32 +0000

The sustained adoption of video conferencing and streaming resulting from hybrid working, long-term growth in e-commerce and the uptick of high-frequency trading are several compounding factors driving demand for digitalization services in the Asia-Pacific. The growth of network service providers to support these industries and trends has led to the inevitable need for increasingly accurate timekeeping. For instance, financial institutions rely on precise time stamping to accurately track transaction sequences, broadcasting and streaming require synchronized audio and video feeds and e-commerce requires manufacturing and logistics to run on a mutually agreed upon schedule that ensures timely production and delivery. According…

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How Public Sector Agencies Are Optimizing Cloud Environments

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 12:00:55 +0000

Today’s public sector agencies are future-proofing their operations to continue delivering services to citizens. One way they’re doing this is by executing on their IT modernization strategy. An important aspect of that strategy should be leveraging the full power of cloud services to optimize performance, scale up capacity quickly and deploy flexible infrastructure. Agency leaders understand that simply moving to cloud is not an easy fix for the numerous IT challenges they must contend with. Not all cloud architectures are created equally and working exclusively with a single provider could lead to vendor lock in, higher costs, limited agility or…

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Equinix in the News

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 12:00:46 +0000

It’s been an exciting start to a celebratory year here for us at Equinix as 2023 marks the company’s 25th anniversary. We’re continuing to invest in the expansion of our global footprint, which now encompasses more than 245 data centers across 71 metros in 32 countries, and are further extending our comprehensive platform to offer customers access to Equinix’s robust interconnected ecosystem. Check out some recent headlines from around the globe highlighting the expanding world of digital infrastructure: Bloomberg’s Tech Disruptors Podcast: Equinix: Interconnecting the World via Digital Infrastructure Equinix CEO Charles Meyers discusses trends in the data center market that underpin Equinix’s…

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Power the Future of Finance with Cloud Transformation

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 12:00:05 +0000

Financial services firms have reached an inflection point; they can’t continue to rely on legacy IT infrastructure, no matter how well it’s served them in the past. They need a digital transformation strategy to help eliminate technical debt and create a future-proof IT infrastructure, and they need it now. Looking toward the future, firms will have to handle progressively larger volumes of data to enable the latest business capabilities and keep up with always-changing customer demands. Advanced digital applications like AI, automation and quantum computing require more data, which in turn requires more infrastructure in more places. This is one…

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3 Key Benefits for Reinventing Global Supply Chains Digitally and Sustainably

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 23:00:08 +0000

Modern enterprises today deal with unprecedented pitfalls resulting from sudden supply chain disruptions, rising energy costs and uncertainties caused by a turbulent global environment. Industries have come to realize the value of integrated and digitally connected supply chains that are tapped into a wider ecosystem. Amid the pandemic, digital leaders thrived over their offline counterparts and they continue to do so amidst increasing trade tensions and friction in global business. Business executives around the world are increasingly attentive to the importance of being digital-first and integrating sustainability into their overall business strategy. According to the Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey…

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What Is Technical Debt and How Is It Impacting Your Organization?

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 12:00:25 +0000

Technical debt refers to the inefficiencies and waste that arise when IT resources no longer meet an organization’s needs. It can encompass everything from code and applications to physical hardware. Perhaps the IT asset no longer works well, has become inefficient, is using too much energy, is underutilized or doesn’t integrate with your newer IT resources. Technical debt can have a range of negative consequences for your business—affecting your costs, operational efficiency, employee morale and even your environmental impact. Some estimates suggest that engineers spend 33% of their time dealing with it. And 60% of CIOs surveyed by McKinsey felt…

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Build an Agile, Interconnected Infrastructure with Equinix and Cisco

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 12:00:56 +0000

The world has changed: The on-premises data center is no longer where most applications reside. SaaS solutions have proliferated, and 89% of organizations have now embraced a multicloud strategy. The quest to provide seamless digital experiences has multiplied connections across many locations, leading to more fragmented, dispersed IT infrastructures. Not to mention, companies face a host of external pressures due to the economy, geopolitical events, industry change, cybersecurity risk and more. The bottom line? Organizations are dealing with constant change and evolving business models. They want an agile, interconnected infrastructure that helps them stay competitive. To survive and thrive in…

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5 Cloud Governance Best Practices

Fri, 07 Apr 2023 12:00:19 +0000

Cloud computing has delivered enormous value since being embraced as a fundamental element of IT strategy. But it can introduce complexity and risk, and therefore necessitates careful planning and prioritization. IT needs and risk are constantly evolving, so companies need to continuously evaluate, update and mitigate risk for their cloud environments. Cloud governance is an organization’s framework and guidelines for managing and monitoring all aspects of their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and OPEX infrastructure footprint. Cloud governance encompasses strategy and decision-making as well as monitoring and evaluation. It’s an imperative for every company using cloud solutions, but it can…

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Elevate Your Network Agility with the Arista WAN Routing System

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 12:00:44 +0000

Modern enterprises have been moving away from centralized infrastructure and toward more complex, distributed architectures that include a rich ecosystem of clouds, applications, service providers and data centers. To connect the disparate parts of their infrastructure, they need modern networking solutions that are adept at delivering fast, flexible interconnection to all the right services, partners and places where they do business. The network is the foundation of digital transformation—and that network must be fast, agile, reliable and interconnection rich. Equinix has a longstanding commitment to creating a global platform that enables digital leaders to thrive, and we’re continuing to invest…

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New Subsea Cables Make the Mediterranean a Global Digital Crossroads

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 07:00:34 +0000

In the Digital Corridors blog series, we explore the interconnected regions that help make the digital world as we know it possible. Internet traffic flowing through these regions, with stops in major interconnected metros, provides the foundation for growing digital economies, connecting millions of end users and businesses nationally, regionally and globally. Perhaps one of the most interesting—and vital—digital corridors we see emerging today is around the Mediterranean Sea, landing on Europe’s southern and southwestern shores. The Mediterranean plays an important role in enabling global connectivity because it occupies a prime geographic position between developed markets and new emerging markets….

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Equinix Announces 2022 Global and Regional Partner Award Winners

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 07:00:56 +0000

In 2022, news about supply chain constraints and geopolitical and economic instability dominated the headlines. Yet, that didn’t deter our Equinix global and regional partners from helping our shared customers accelerate their digital-first strategies. Today, we recognize our partners’ commitment to excellence with our 2022 Equinix Partner Awards. The Equinix partner ecosystem includes a broad range of technology, network and cloud service providers, managed service providers, systems integrators and value-added resellers committed to helping businesses establish and extend their digital presence. At the center of the partner ecosystem is Platform Equinix®, with its vendor-neutral digital infrastructure that helps our customers…

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Digital Infrastructure in Chile Powers New Business Growth

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 12:00:39 +0000

Like the rest of Latin America (LATAM), Chile was introduced to the internet and the concept of a digital economy in the mid-1990s. Since then, its government has invested heavily in policies and initiatives that support the development of the country’s digital infrastructure. These policies include tax incentives for startups and foreign companies willing to invest in the country, technology incubation programs and initiatives to promote the development and penetration of broadband infrastructure across the country. Today, Chile is the world’s largest producer of copper, which has helped create one of the most vibrant and fastest growing economies in LATAM….

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What Is the Future of Network Modernization?

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:00:16 +0000

Digital transformation requires evolving three primary components of your digital infrastructure: the digital core, digital ecosystems and digital edge. The network is the foundation of the digital core, tasked with interconnecting your business infrastructure to key partners, service providers and end users distributed around the world. Traditional centralized IT infrastructures simply weren’t built for the connectivity needs of today’s digital enterprises. By its nature, a centralized infrastructure design is commonly susceptible to increased latency and network complexity—and can’t provide the flexibility that distributed businesses need. On the other hand, an architecture designed around the idea of interconnection delivers greater…

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Network Agility at Cloud Speed

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 12:00:35 +0000

Speed and agility have become top priorities for IT leaders operating dynamic hybrid and multicloud architectures. Infrastructure and connectivity requirements can change quickly based on new opportunities or disruptions in the broader IT landscape—and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. Enterprise use cases increasingly require fast, flexible infrastructure solutions and easy interconnection with a wide range of clouds and service providers. IT teams often struggle to respond to these dynamic needs with traditional physical equipment in on-premises data centers, but on-demand virtual infrastructure can help them go to market faster and adjust rapidly to the evolving needs of…

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Digital Infrastructure Catalyzes the Era of Big Data Genomics

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 23:00:10 +0000

Amid the pandemic, the genomics industry witnessed staggering global market growth of 22.3% in 2020 as governments, biotech companies and private pharmaceutical enterprises accelerated their research efforts and investments to develop an effective vaccine or novel treatment for COVID-19. There is a mix of factors that contribute to this market growth in the region. For example, we have been seeing an increase in the number of studies, applications and initiatives for genomics like the GenomeAsia 100K…

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Don’t Get Trapped in the Public Cloud Alone

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 12:02:31 +0000

The digital world is constantly evolving. Enterprises need to keep up, and legacy digital infrastructure models based on siloed, centralized data centers aren’t nearly sufficient anymore. Companies need infrastructure partners that can deploy and operate digital infrastructure globally on their behalf. Don’t worry, that’s what the hyperscale cloud is for, right? But is going all-in on hyperscale public cloud the best answer? Not always. The solution for modern developers looking to utilize all the digital tools at their disposal? A hybrid infrastructure model that combines the best of both worlds: dedicated cloud and public cloud infrastructure as a service. But,…

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Warm Is The New Cool: Why Now Is The Time To Turn Up The Heat In Your Data Centers

Fri, 21 Apr 2023 07:00:45 +0000

(This article was originally published in Forbes.) On a recent business trip, I traveled across the U.S., from my bedroom to my hotel room, without talking to a single person. No, I’m not a raging introvert. I did it because every transaction was digital. From flight check-in and rental car to the “key” to my hotel room and ordering food, every step was automated. This isn’t unusual, of course. We live in a highly digitized world that makes things faster and easier for consumers and inspires businesses to transform traditional in-person services into clickable ones. Behind the ease of use and slick…

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SD-WAN Optimization: The Time Is Now

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 12:00:08 +0000

In a time of unprecedented economic, social and geopolitical change, IT agility has become essential to survival for digital businesses. Many companies are prioritizing network modernization to create more efficient flows of traffic where they need it most. Implementing or optimizing a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) is one of the most common network optimization projects companies undertake. SD-WAN may have hit some bumps in the road due to the pandemic, but adoption continues to rise. In a 2022 survey of WAN managers, 47% of respondents indicated they’d already installed SD-WAN, while another 39% were in either a pilot…

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Beyond the Airport: How Airlines Can Reimagine Customer Experience

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 07:00:48 +0000

The past several years have been disruptive across industries, but perhaps no sector felt the impact as strongly as aviation did. Whether it was airline traffic dropping to all-time lows in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic or the slow and unsteady recovery that followed—complicated by labor shortages, high fuel prices and other supply chain constraints—the industry has certainly been through a lot. It’s a testament to their powers of resilience and flexibility that airlines made it through this period as well as they did. Today, airlines and their partners in the aviation ecosystem—travel agencies, global distribution system (GDS)…

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What are Modular Data Centers and How Can They Help?

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 12:00:38 +0000

Agility is vital as companies continue to accelerate innovation and future-proof their businesses. Participation in the digital economy demands access to physical infrastructure at software speed, or companies risk losing competitive advantage. Physical data centers are often necessary, whether a business operates in a metropolitan area or a remote location in another country. Challenges await as companies begin designing and constructing new facilities near or far. Building traditional data centers from the ground up can be risky, expensive and time-consuming. Delays can occur when securing the necessary local permits and licenses to start the project. Unexpected environmental or ecological issues may arise. Supply…

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Becoming the Sustainability Partner Our Customers Need

Mon, 01 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000

At Equinix, we recognize that meeting key sustainability targets is one of our customers’ top concerns—now and into the future. This means doing what’s right for the planet, making a positive impact on people and communities and acting with integrity. Our customers are pursuing these goals because they want to future-proof their operations, setting themselves up to drive business value for decades to come. We know our customers need a trusted digital infrastructure partner to help them meet their sustainability goals, which is why we’ve made it a top priority to become a sustainability leader in the data center industry….

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3 Ways Public Sector Agencies Benefit from Digital Ecosystems

Tue, 02 May 2023 12:00:05 +0000

Across public and private sector organizations, it seems like everyone’s talking about digital transformation these days. But what does it really mean to be “digital”, and why does it matter? At Equinix, we believe that being “digital” means being able to clearly define the capabilities you need from your IT infrastructure, and then getting those capabilities with the simple press of a button. Achieving this goal requires distributed, interconnected digital infrastructure in locations around the world. For most public sector agencies, this will be a dramatic shift away from the legacy infrastructure they’ve used in the past, which was typically…

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Extending the Cybersecurity Perimeter to Protect Your Corporate Network

Wed, 03 May 2023 02:54:19 +0000

Across the globe, enterprises and people are dramatically changing the way they approach work and productivity. A wide range of sectors now recognize hybrid working as an inherent competitive advantage, allowing their employees to schedule their work hours between home offices or remote locations and their usual corporate premises. According to a recent survey by CBRE, nearly 60% of companies in Asia-Pacific will retain some form of hybrid working, ranging from an equal mix of office and remote working. Business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region also expressed that hybrid working has helped with work life balance, creating a happier,…

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AI and 5G Are Better at the Edge

Thu, 04 May 2023 12:00:10 +0000

The IT world is filled with exciting technologies that promise to unlock new possibilities for enterprises. In some cases, the confluence of two emerging technologies amplifies the benefits of both technologies. AI and 5G are perfect examples of such complementary technologies. Each one has tremendous potential, but they’re even better when used together. Why location matters for AI The AI workflow involves ingesting large amounts of data from multiple sources, using that data to train models, and then using those models to produce automated, data-driven outcomes. Increasingly, as more data gets generated at the edge, the different steps (workloads) in the…

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Equinix FaithConnect Welcomes Those From All Beliefs

Fri, 05 May 2023 12:00:49 +0000

Many of today’s headlines are about individuals or groups confronting each other because of their faith and personal beliefs—actions that can lead to exclusion or rejection. Similar attitudes and behavior may manifest themselves in the workplace. These trends led us to form the FaithConnect employee resource group, one of several Equinix Employee Connect Networks (EECNs), to connect with those from all faiths, non-faiths and worldviews in an environment that fosters a sense of belonging, acceptance and understanding. FaithConnect members are intent on conveying a sense of openness and respect—to lessen any hesitancy or fear that someone may have about participating…

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Move Data Between Clouds, Quickly and Consistently

Mon, 08 May 2023 12:00:05 +0000

The proliferation of powerful cloud services is one of the most important IT stories of our time. These services have completely redefined what enterprises can accomplish, giving them access to new tools and capabilities on demand, the flexibility to deploy IT infrastructure when and where they want, and the greater cost-efficiency that comes with shifting to an OPEX model. That said, most IT leaders recognize that working exclusively with a single public cloud provider will not yield the best results. Enterprises need a hybrid multicloud architecture to maximize the benefits of cloud while keeping costs down and avoiding vendor lock-in….

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All in on Industry Clouds? Not So Fast!

Tue, 09 May 2023 12:00:11 +0000

It seems like you can barely look at a tech news site these days without seeing another headline about a new industry-specific cloud offering. These platforms differ from traditional cloud services because they have built-in capabilities to address some of the biggest challenges facing enterprises in specific industry verticals. Gartner® expects that by 2027, enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate more than 50% of their critical business initiatives, whereas in 2021, it was less than 10%. So, what’s driving this growth? For one thing, many enterprises are adopting industry cloud platforms because they’re looking for ways to jump-start…

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7 Steps to Pick the Right Digital Infrastructure Solution

Wed, 10 May 2023 07:00:32 +0000

Most business leaders recognize they need a digital transformation strategy to keep up with the competition and future-proof their operations. However, if you ask them how they intend to execute that strategy, that’s when you get a lot of blank stares in response. With so many different digital infrastructure partners out there, trying to pick the right one may feel extremely daunting. In this blog post, we’ll lay out seven practical steps that every business leader can follow to evaluate the options available to them, identify the one that best meets their needs and implement it successfully: Assess your current infrastructure Define…

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Equinix and Oracle Partner to Demonstrate Encryption Leadership

Thu, 11 May 2023 12:00:43 +0000

Data is the vital resource that sits at the center of our digital economy, providing business insights and enabling advanced digital applications. In order to be useful, data needs to be mobile. Businesses must be able to make data available to cloud services, share it with industry partners to fuel collaboration opportunities, load it into AI/ML models to support automation and better decision making, and much more. Regardless of where or why they’re moving their data, businesses need to move it quickly, and they need it to be protected while it’s moving. This is why a software-defined interconnection solution like…

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Take Your Network Services to the Next Level with SD-WAN Optimization

Fri, 12 May 2023 12:00:07 +0000

Network service providers (NSPs) are always looking for new ways to differentiate their offerings for enterprise customers. To do this, they must capitalize on the trends of network modernization. Specifically, NSPs need to evolve their networks for a digital-first future, moving from physical network infrastructure to virtual, software-defined networks. Only by making this shift can they ensure the agility, flexibility and cost-efficiency needed to thrive in the digital age. One example of how NSPs can modernize their networks is by optimizing their approach to SD-WAN. Offerings based on optimized SD-WAN infrastructure are attractive to enterprise customers because they give those…

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Equinix Tackles Digital Divide with Free Internet Access for ISPs in 3 States

Mon, 15 May 2023 11:03:22 +0000

With twenty-three million Americans currently living without access to the internet, urgent action is needed to ensure equitable and inclusive access to the technology, connectivity, education, and skills needed to thrive in today’s digitally driven world. Such digital access has become a basic human right. It’s vital to living, working, and learning today. But the gap between those who have access to reliable, affordable internet service and those who don’t is staggering. This ‘digital divide’ is complex and inequitable. It dissimilarly affects different socioeconomic, underserved communities, and geographies. As the world’s digital infrastructure company, we feel strongly that Equinix is uniquely…

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3 Ways to Reduce Network Downtime Risk with Geo-Redundancy

Tue, 16 May 2023 12:03:05 +0000

In today’s always-on digital economy, customers are not forgiving when they experience downtime. And networking issues cause a large portion of those IT outages. According to Uptime Institute’s 2022 Data Center Resiliency Survey, networking-related problems have been the single biggest cause of all IT service downtime incidents–regardless of severity–over the past three years. Establishing redundancy, both locally and across geographic regions, is critical for achieving maximum resiliency. Businesses incur significant costs from outages, which go beyond lost revenue. For example, the mean time to recovery (MTTR) is ramping up. According to a 2022 Opengear study, it now takes organizations an…

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Are Superapps the Future of App Ecosystems?

Wed, 17 May 2023 00:51:38 +0000

The Asia-Pacific region is no stranger to mobile-first experiences. Hosting an environment conducive to high rates of internet penetration and smartphone usage, the region has become a hotbed and leading driver for the meteoric rise of apps. Findings from the Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2023, recently announced by Equinix, indicate that 90% of Fortune 500 companies will become digital providers by 2027, both selling their own and consuming ancillary digital services. Enterprises are recognizing that mobile applications are a key avenue to adding value for their customers through digital services, as well as improving their own operational effectiveness. The…

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Harnessing the Power of a Digital Integration Hub on Platform Equinix

Tue, 23 May 2023 12:00:42 +0000

In an interconnected digital landscape, enterprises face a multitude of challenges and opportunities when it comes to managing their data and applications across on-premises and cloud infrastructure. For organizations aiming to stay digitally competitive, the need for seamless integration between various systems, applications and platforms is now clear. This is where a digital integration hub (DIH) comes into play, offering a centralized and robust solution to connect, orchestrate and streamline data flow across enterprise systems. In this blog post, we’ll explore how a DIH architecture can help enterprises overcome integration complexities to unlock new opportunities for growth, and how Platform…

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3 Reasons You Need to Exchange Healthcare Data

Wed, 24 May 2023 12:00:56 +0000

The demand for faster, better patient outcomes intensified during the pandemic, accelerating the increase of collaboration across clinical and medical research to develop more effective drugs and treatments. Today, this trend continues to drive a sense of urgency to expand the secure exchange of healthcare data and store it in proximity to research workloads. There are certain factors you must take into consideration when it comes to exchanging healthcare data. For instance, it’s common for patient data to be collected and stored in disparate records across multiple healthcare networks, which means there’s no single source of truth for a patient’s…

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A Quick-Start Guide to Resilient Digital Infrastructure

Thu, 25 May 2023 12:00:59 +0000

Confused about disaster recovery, high availability and other related terms you may have heard thrown around in the IT industry? You’re not alone. Keeping IT systems up and running is a complex undertaking, so it’s no surprise we have a complex vocabulary to describe all the different factors that go into that undertaking. In this guide, we’ll try to clear up some of the confusion, and provide additional resources to help you learn what goes into achieving resilient digital infrastructure.

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Why We’re Investing in Dubai’s Digital Future

Tue, 30 May 2023 07:15:50 +0000

Due to its central location, the Middle East has long been an important digital corridor for traffic passing between Europe and Asia. More recently, it’s emerged as an important digital traffic destination in its own right. In particular, the Dubai metro has all the hallmarks of a growing digital hub: a highly connected population, a government that prioritizes digital innovation and investments from some of the biggest names in the technology industry. The Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2023, a market study published by Equinix, forecasts that interconnection bandwidth in Dubai will grow at a five-year CAGR of 50%, a clear…

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Establishing a Collaborative Digital Foundation for Effective Hybrid Work

Tue, 30 May 2023 23:00:16 +0000

Digital leaders recognize that the adoption of hybrid working should not result in compromises for security, productivity and collaboration. A recent research report from McKinsey suggests that 58% of corporate executives claim that productivity increased under hybrid working configurations with employee engagement rising up to 45%. Enterprises experiencing improved productivity from hybrid working are increasingly turning towards digital solutions to ensure that their employees have the necessary tools needed to collaborate and operate effectively between on-site and virtual environments. As hybrid and remote working evolves into a permanent fixture in many successful organizational cultures, it’s vital for organizations to…

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4 Reasons You Need Hybrid Infrastructure in Europe

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 07:00:50 +0000

Success in the digital era is all about having the right IT infrastructure in the right places to unlock the full power of your applications and data. Many people assume this means the public cloud. While there are certainly benefits to using public cloud services in some situations, there can also be drawbacks, such as high costs and the potential for vendor lock-in. Fully relying on or returning to classic on-premises infrastructure is not a reasonable alternative, as it can limit flexibility, incur high up-front CAPEX and create sustainability issues. To get the best possible balance of performance, flexibility, reliability,…

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Elevating Queer Joy Everyday

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 07:00:41 +0000

The first Pride marches were held in June 1970, a year after the Stonewall Uprising in New York City. But of course, those events were a direct result of many decades of prior organizing by LGBTQ+ activists. For more than 50 years since Stonewall, Pride marches and gatherings have taken place each June in the United States and across the globe—and often extend throughout the year. Queer and trans people have always existed, but the journey to achieve basic LGBTQ+ rights has been long and complicated. Throughout its history, the queer community has faced violence, incrimination and ostracization. We’ve made…

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How Enterprises Can Build Resilient Networks Using Equinix Fabric

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 12:00:50 +0000

Enterprises must manage globally distributed digital infrastructure and interact with thousands of different customers and partners regularly. To do this successfully, they need their network infrastructure to be as resilient as possible. However, this raises the question: What does it really mean for a network to be resilient? A network is resilient when it keeps unplanned downtime to a minimum, and limits disruption even when downtime does occur. Far too many businesses view network resilience as a simple matter of deploying multiple connections to multiple providers across multiple geographic regions. While redundancy should be part of a resilient digital infrastructure…

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How to Start Building the Data Center of the Future—Today

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 12:00:22 +0000

In the data center industry, our customers come to us for help achieving their digital transformation goals and future-proofing their operations. But we also know they have sustainability targets they need to meet. At Equinix, we believe that being successful in the modern digital economy and operating sustainably don’t have to be competing priorities. To help customers pursue their sustainability targets, we’re investing and innovating to build the data center of the future. Creating a sustainable approach to digital infrastructure won’t be easy: As data volumes skyrocket and latency-sensitive digital applications pop up to consume that data, demand for distributed,…

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Design for Data Center Resiliency to Reduce Downtime Risk

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 12:00:01 +0000

Just like any other building, data centers can be impacted by extreme climate conditions, such as excessive heat and flooding. What’s unique to data centers is the volume of businesses that require high availability of the infrastructure in those buildings. At Equinix, we have more than 10,000 customers worldwide, and all of them rely on our data center operations to help them serve their users without missing a beat. Over the past several years, we’ve seen the variety and frequency of these worst-case scenarios increasing due to climate change that has resulted in extreme weather conditions such as heat, rain…

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How to Make Better Infrastructure Decisions Enterprise-Wide

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 12:00:50 +0000

Choosing the wrong digital infrastructure provider without proper scoping based on workloads can be an extremely costly mistake. Cloud computing is one of the top OPEX costs for many organizations and cost management is now a non-negotiable imperative for CIOs that are expected to continue delivering positive outcomes despite lower budgets. With inflation concerns and economic uncertainty growing, they must scrutinize every infrastructure decision from a business, technology, and long-term economic view. Establishing a FinOps practice is one way that businesses can thoroughly understand cloud compute costs across the organization, cut wasteful cloud spending and identify best-fit options for individual…

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Accelerating AI Innovation Requires Ecosystems and Infrastructure

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 07:59:37 +0000

The advent of ChatGPT has now taken generative AI mainstream. Many organizations are focusing on accelerating their AI initiatives to better serve customers, employees and partners. All organizational functions (including sales, marketing, finance, support, operations, IT and product development) are looking to use AI to streamline and improve their internal workflows. The question is: Will these organizations have the necessary skill sets, systems and infrastructure in place to handle the massive disruption that AI will have on their operating models? Creating scalable AI solutions requires businesses to accommodate the ingestion, sharing, storage and processing of enormous and diverse data sets—while…

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5 Industry Experts Share Their Insights on AI and Sustainability

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 12:00:04 +0000

In the past year alone, we’ve seen tremendous progress in AI technology, to the point where it’s hard not to get carried away dreaming about the possibilities. However, there are still many challenges left to overcome before we can achieve production-grade AI use cases across enterprise settings. These challenges show up clearly in the results of the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS). In the survey, 42% of global IT leaders said they weren’t comfortable with their infrastructure’s ability to accommodate the growing use of AI. Many expressed a similar lack of confidence in their sustainability strategies: Less than…

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How to Fast-Track Your M&A with Digital Infrastructure Services

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 12:00:48 +0000

You can’t take your business into the future without ongoing transformation—whether that’s digital transformation, investment in new capabilities or reinvention of your core business through an acquisition or divestiture. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) happen frequently across the enterprise landscape. In 2022, there were nearly 55,000 global M&A deals, trailing only slightly behind the record-breaking 65,000-plus deals in 2021. Given the frequency and complexity of acquisitions and divestitures, companies need to have a good strategy for merging with or separating from other companies. M&As can involve migrating large volumes of data and other digital assets, expanding into new geographies where you have…

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Equinix & Hewlett Packard Enterprise Deliver On-Demand Private Cloud

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 17:05:05 +0000

Businesses today face intense competitive pressures and must be prepared to pivot as market dynamics change. In parallel, IT teams must ensure that modern and scalable infrastructure is in place to accelerate time to market and position workloads closer to customers with secure connectivity at the edge. IT teams must also address new challenges as companies prepare to operationalize AI at scale. To support evolving business objectives, IT teams typically manage hybrid multicloud environments comprised of multiple public clouds, colocation and on-premises data centers. These environments are complex and have a mix of fixed and variable costs. Running modern and…

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4 Distributed AI Deployment Use Cases Supported by Infrastructure

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 12:00:03 +0000

As businesses ramp up artificial intelligence (AI) practices across functions, IT teams realize that production-grade AI infrastructure is necessary for efficiently running these AI training models. Our previous blog mentioned that accelerating AI innovation requires engaging with tech partners in ecosystems and advanced AI infrastructure. The pace of AI innovation in business is accelerating, and the list of functions that can benefit is expanding. In the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), we learned that the top two business functions which companies already use or plan to use AI for are IT operations (85%) and cybersecurity (81%). Customer experience, research &…

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The Future of Digital Infrastructure

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 06:59:53 +0000

Introduction:25 years as the leader in data centers …

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4 Essential Attributes of a Time Synchronization Solution

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 12:00:44 +0000

Time synchronization for IT systems has become vital in a world where microsecond-level accuracy counts. Consider industries like financial services, where maintaining an ordered sequence of transactions is required for regulatory compliance. Or gaming, where the chronological order of play from multiple players needs to be precise. And what about broadcasting? Customer media experiences rely on perfectly synced audio and video feeds. For these and other use cases, organizations use time synchronization or Time as a Service (TaaS) tools to synchronize system clocks across the enterprise IT landscape. To deliver on their promise, time sync solutions need to meet certain…

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Enterprises Turn Towards XaaS as They Undergo Digital Transformation

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 23:00:24 +0000

The subscription model for digital services has proliferated in the consumer market as users across all demographics experience the benefits of the on-demand service economy. This phenomenon has contributed to the rise of Everything as a Service (XaaS), now percolating into the business environment as organizations rapidly shift their workloads onto cloud-based platforms. XaaS has become a digital force multiplier, enabling enterprises access to digital services that boost innovation, enhance business operations, improve efficiency and reduce overall costs. While only 9% of businesses have shifted fully to XaaS business models, 85% are at some level of progress stage, either…

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How Confidential Computing Helps Secure Data in Use

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 12:00:46 +0000

The increasing number of organizations that have gone through a vast digital transformation to level up their business in the digital age is not new. In fact, in the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 77% of global IT leaders said that digitizing the business was a top priority for their technology strategy. Moving to the cloud is indeed inevitable in today’s business world, as it was among the factors that helped companies successfully navigate the pandemic. Yet this urgency to further accelerate the adoption of modern IT environments that require data to be accessible from anywhere at any…

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How to Evolve for Wider Data Center Operating Temperatures

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 12:00:30 +0000

Companies come to Equinix not only for industry-leading digital infrastructure solutions but also as a partner in achieving their sustainability goals. For years, we’ve been at work designing a more efficient, sustainable data center—what we call the data center of the future. We’ve been exploring wide-ranging sustainable and efficient design practices to help us reduce operational emissions—from alternative power sources to airflow management solutions to high-density cooling technologies. And the results are tangible. As reported in the latest Equinix Sustainability Report, Equinix has seen a 23% reduction in operational greenhouse gas emissions across Scope 1 and 2 emissions since baseline…

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Equinix in the News Q2 2023

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 12:00:04 +0000

And just like that… we’re halfway through the year! As we wind down another quarter, we reflect on recent news and corporate happenings from around the globe including Equinix Analyst Day in New York and the company marking its 25th anniversary. Check out the latest news roundup which delves deeper into the company’s long-term financial outlook, global go-to-market strategy, evolving platform capabilities, and industry leading sustainability program. CNBC: A.I. is another wave of digital transformation, says Equinix CEO Charles Meyers On the company’s 25th anniversary, Equinix CEO and president, Charles Meyers, joined CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street’ to talk about how…

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Why You Need Australia in Your Global Digital Infrastructure Strategy

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 00:20:41 +0000

The impact of digital technology on our everyday lives is impossible to ignore, but it’s all too easy to forget about the underlying infrastructure that makes that impact possible. In reality, our digital world is made up of a series of interconnected regions. At Equinix, we call these regions digital corridors, and we believe they provide the basis for thriving digital ecosystems, where business partners come together to exchange data, unlock collaboration opportunities and form new markets. Australia provides a powerful example of what a digital corridor looks like. In recent years, increased investment in connectivity has emerged into, out…

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4 Questions to Help Assess Your Business’ Digital Maturity

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 07:00:11 +0000

Most organizations recognize that they need to digitize key business processes to make the most of the latest tech, meet the changing demands of customers and keep up with quick-moving competitors. However, even those who see the need for digital transformation don’t always know the best place to start. Digital maturity is a moving target. Organizations must constantly evaluate themselves to determine where they’re thriving and where they’re coming up short. Getting useful insights from your evaluation is all about asking the right questions. In this blog, we’ll explore four questions every leader should ask themselves as part of their business’…

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Is AI the Solution to Overcome Talent and Skill Shortages?

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 23:26:24 +0000

Businesses of every size, in every industry around the world, are experiencing one of the biggest skill shortages seen in decades – a challenge that is intensifying by the day. A staggering 77% of employers around the world are experiencing difficulties in filling job vacancies, marking the highest talent shortage in 17 years. A historic shift of high to low mortality and fertility rates, coupled with a mismatch between technological advances and a lack of human workers with the right skills is reshaping the way we work. The impact of the looming talent crunch has prompted organizations to accelerate…

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The Future of Subsea Cables

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 12:00:36 +0000

Subsea cables play an essential role in enabling the digital world we know today, but it’s important to consider that subsea cables predate the internet by well over a century. These cables are merely a transmission medium we’ve adapted to support various communications technologies over the years. As we look toward the future, we must ask how subsea cables will continue to evolve to meet the changing requirements of the digital world. Even today, bandwidth is exploding to all-time highs. That’s why it’s no surprise that the volume of subsea cable construction is the highest it’s ever been in the…

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Free Yourself from Technical Debt for a More Sustainable Future

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 12:00:09 +0000

When technical debt accrues, organizations can find themselves spending a lot of time and resources on maintenance, integrations and mitigating the risks and complexity it creates. But managing technical debt effectively can free your employees to focus on higher business priorities and innovation instead. In our previous blog post, we explained what technical debt is and how it can affect an organization’s health and operational efficiency. In this post, we’ll delve into the sustainability implications of tech debt and the benefits of reducing it, as well as some scenarios where colocation and digital services can help. Tech debt is an ongoing…

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For Better Customer Experience, Start with Better Employee Experience

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 07:00:23 +0000

Today’s customers are more empowered than ever. When they buy from a company, they expect an exceptional experience across every channel they use to interact with that company. This is particularly true now that digital natives represent a growing share of buying decision-makers. This group is accustomed to getting timely, helpful and consistent interactions across all channels, and they’ll bring those expectations to every buying decision they make. Companies need to understand customers in order to offer them personalized experiences, intuitive services, and recommendation engines that keep them coming back. If a company can’t do this, they’ll inevitably lose…

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Balancing Latency and Sustainability

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 12:00:52 +0000

Today’s enterprises face a mandate to make their operations more sustainable, from customers and regulators alike. In the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 68% of global IT leaders said that the environmental impact of their IT equipment and infrastructure is something they measure and actively try to limit. Many companies are simultaneously looking to implement compute-intensive technologies like AI, which can make their sustainability efforts even more challenging. To get the compute resources they need while also optimizing energy efficiency, some enterprises—and the service providers they partner with—look to position data centers in colder environments, far away from…

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Choosing the Right Connectivity for Your Distributed Architecture

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:00:33 +0000

Running a successful business is no longer a solo act. Instead, it takes an ecosystem of partners and providers to create new products; build applications; manage product information, inventory and end user data; build in payment processing; package physical products and schedule package delivery. To say that conducting business in a digital economy is complex is an understatement. And, as Tony Robbins once said, “Complexity is the enemy of execution.” Managing complexity requires companies to ensure proximity to customers, employees, partners and providers with continuous connectivity to IT infrastructure. Businesses also require secure, seamless connectivity to applications, workloads and data…

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SASE vs SSE: 4 Questions to Consider as You Plan for the Future

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 12:01:56 +0000

If you’re involved in network security or thinking about taking on a network modernization initiative, you’ve likely heard some new terms from IT industry analysts and vendors in the last few years. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Security Service Edge (SSE) were both introduced by Gartner®. SASE focuses on joining networking and security, while SSE converges only security functions into a single cloud service. But do you really need one of these solutions? What could it do for you? What are the risks and consequences of not having one? In this blog post, we’ll take a quick look at…

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Unlocking the Power of Data: How Data Liberation Accelerates Innovation

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 23:00:52 +0000

In a world fueled by data, there is a significant demand from organizations to undertake the recollection and subsequent analysis of their preexisting data caches to generate forward-looking insights behind an enormous data collection. For example, by gathering and extracting decades of past meteorological weather patterns and data, we can discover meaningful trends that translate into solutions to help tackle climate change, optimize farming outputs and create sustainable electricity and water consumption habits. However, traditional methods of data storage inadvertently neglected the process of efficient retrieval, resulting in vast troves of potentially valuable data being lost and left to…

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Best Practices & Use Cases for Private 5G

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 12:01:01 +0000

The rollout of 5G technology is a story of almost limitless potential, punctuated by a frustrating inability to truly fulfill that potential. As we argued in a previous blog, deploying 5G infrastructure at the digital edge and empowering the mobile developer community are two steps that network service providers (NSPs) must take to unlock the full power of 5G for their customers. Another factor that NSPs must consider is the growing demand for private 5G services. Many large enterprises are interested in private 5G because they see it as the best of both worlds: the high performance and low-latency connectivity…

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Deploy Your Hybrid Multicloud Architecture Quickly and Confidently

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 12:00:00 +0000

In today’s complex, fast-moving digital economy, all organizations can benefit from adopting a hybrid cloud or multicloud IT architecture. And hybrid multicloud is a particularly good fit for businesses that face challenges related to performance, security or data sovereignty. For these businesses, getting the right mix of on-premises infrastructure and cloud services from multiple vendors is key, but determining exactly what that mix should look like isn’t always straightforward. Businesses need to be able to test their hybrid cloud or multicloud environments thoroughly before investing the time and resources needed to put them into production. To help make it easier for…

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How Cloud-Adjacent Storage Solves the Hybrid Multicloud Data Problem

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 12:00:54 +0000

The last decade has seen tremendous growth in the adoption of public cloud services. Organizations of all sizes and types have seen the benefits afforded by the major public cloud providers—including elasticity, scalability and consumption-based pricing—and have shifted to the cloud to start taking advantage of those benefits. In addition, the rapid growth of containers and microservice-based applications has proven that public cloud has tremendous benefits for customers looking to rapidly deploy applications that drive critical business functions. The definition of public cloud has shifted somewhat over the years, going from simply “someone else’s computer” to an operational model that…

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6 Experts Share Insights on the Future of Digital Infrastructure

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 12:00:13 +0000

When we began the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Equinix last month, it inspired us to think about everything that had changed in our industry over the last 25 years, and how digital technology will continue to evolve during the next 25 years. In this blog, we’ve invited thought leaders from across the industry to share their own personal visions for how digital technology will evolve over the next 25 years and where and how it will influence positive change. We also asked them to consider what we need to do to close the digital divide, and make sure…

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How Digital Twins Can Help Grow the Green Economy in Europe

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 07:00:33 +0000

The European Union has made addressing climate change one of its top priorities. At the same time, European leaders also understand the importance of promoting energy security and growing the green economy. This is why the European Green Deal not only calls for “no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050” but also “economic growth decoupled from resource use.” The latter point speaks to the scope of the challenge ahead of us. Economic growth has been pegged closely to resource use throughout human history. In order to grow the economy without using significantly more resources, we’ll need a global sustainability…

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In Colombia, the Digital Future Starts Now

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 12:00:50 +0000

At Equinix, we believe the digital potential of Latin America is practically limitless. That’s why we’ve made it our mission to help businesses—both local and multinational—get the distributed, interconnected digital infrastructure they need to be successful in the region. I’m proud to say that we’ve been in Latin America for over a decade now, and we’ve invested about $2 billion across the region during that time. We’ve opened new Equinix IBX® data centers and supported the growth of digital ecosystems in all the leading markets in the region, including Brazil, Mexico and Chile. In short, wherever our customers needed interconnected…

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4 Ways to Evaluate Your Enterprise Data Science Projects

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 12:00:58 +0000

Today’s enterprises understand the rush to capitalize on the power of data science, but they may not always know exactly what a successful data science project looks like. Business leaders are primarily concerned with business KPIs such as revenue growth, efficiency and productivity. In contrast, data science teams deal in technical KPIs such as model accuracy and precision. For their projects to be successful, data science teams must bridge this gap, helping executives understand how technical KPIs translate into business KPIs. When both business and technical stakeholders speak the same language, they can determine what they want to accomplish with…

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What Generative AI Means for Data Centers

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 12:00:52 +0000

Generative AI has been making waves since the release of ChatGPT last year, and it has the potential to transform several industries. But what’s so different about it, and what does it mean for data centers? Increasing use of AI will make new demands of IT infrastructure, so organizations need to be prepared. However, according to the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 42% of IT leaders said they’re not confident in their infrastructure’s ability to accommodate the growing use of AI. Already, generative AI has influenced the architecture of AI clusters, requiring a larger neural network—which means more hardware—as…

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Why Cloud Modernization is Not Limited to Just the Public Cloud

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 12:00:12 +0000

Many enterprises have been using the cloud for years with varying levels of success, but they’re discovering that not all workloads are best suited for the public cloud. And, while the public cloud is a powerful enabler of modernization, it is no longer the only choice for performance, scalability, flexibility and cost-efficiency. The rise of hybrid multicloud has caused organizations to step back and reassess the best locations for applications, workloads and data. As a result, a new phase of cloud modernization is underway as businesses consider other cloud variants and cloud-like environments for their mission critical workloads. Cloud modernization…

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Balancing Sustainability, Resilience, and Reliability in the Data Center Industry

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 23:00:20 +0000

As data centers take on increasingly larger workloads, operators are looking for new ways to keep temperatures cool and reduce their environmental impact by deploying various innovative initiatives. Equinix is dedicated to creating a better future through our Future First sustainability strategy, enabling our International Business Exchange® (IBX®) and xScale® data centers to increase overall operational efficiencies, achieve renewables coverage and meet our emissions reduction goals. I spoke with Data Center Dynamics to discuss the challenges of sustainability within the data center industry and Equinix’s current progress towards achieving ESG outcomes through a “Future First” agenda. As the world’s digital…

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Digital-First Success Requires Ecosystem-First Thinking

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 12:00:31 +0000

The digital economy has come to dominate the global landscape. Faced with continuous disruption, more organization are shifting from their traditional delivery of physical goods and services to the creation of new services based on electronic exchange. Digital now represents a sizeable share of economic growth around the world, with global digital transformation spending forecast to reach $3.4 trillion in 2026 with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.3%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). Nearly all enterprises are trying to tap into this growth and have some form of a digital transformation strategy. However, despite…

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What’s Your Digital Infrastructure Strategy?

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 12:00:48 +0000

At Equinix, we’ve been helping businesses digitally transform for 25 years now. We’ve seen first-hand how much has changed during that time. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen how some things haven’t changed. Many businesses are still burdened by a legacy mindset to how they evaluate and purchase IT infrastructure services. They still treat IT as a cost center rather than a competitive differentiator, with keeping costs low as their top priority. In the early days of the internet, this mentality defined how businesses bought network services. There would typically be a lengthy RFP process that ended with signing a long-term contract…

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Pursuing Equity in the Digital Divide for Black University Students

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 12:00:12 +0000

Digital inclusion has become an increasingly critical issue as the pandemic brought greater visibility to disparities in internet access. With more aspects of life requiring access to the internet—everything from healthcare and education to business and government services—the disadvantages caused by the digital divide and inequitable access have only deepened. Moreover, internet connectivity and digital skills have become fundamental to getting a quality education and being eligible for many of today’s job opportunities. And yet, one-third of the world’s population—2.7 billion people—remains offline. In the United States, marginalized communities are further disadvantaged by lack of high-speed internet access. The digital…

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What Is Bare Metal? Is it a Server or a Cloud?

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 12:00:22 +0000

As businesses diversify and expand geographically, they’re discovering the need to deploy various types of infrastructure to meet specific requirements for different applications, high-performance processing, secure data storage and on-demand networking. Bare metal is an example of infrastructure that is helping companies meet increasing demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and processing power. Customers often ask me whether bare metal is a server or a cloud, and they want to understand the similarities and differences between bare metal and the cloud. In this blog post, I’ll explain what bare metal is and what makes it different from the cloud. I’ll also…

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How to Design an Infrastructure That Elevates Gaming Experiences

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 12:00:07 +0000

The gaming industry has experienced massive growth and is continuing to expand globally. Its value now exceeds $300 billion, and the number of gamers continues to climb, with growing representation across numerous demographics. People flock to video games to connect with friends, meet new people, have fun and find community among those who share similar interests. The industry includes major gaming companies that have been around for decades, as well as small studios, young and old. As the industry evolves, gaming companies have to balance the need to support old and new games, as well as integrate emerging technologies…

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Equinix Fabric and Network Edge Use Cases

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 12:00:43 +0000

Editor’s Note: This blog was originally published in July 2020. It has been updated to include the latest information. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses were forced to move their in-person interactions to virtual. Practically overnight, the number of people taking advantage of remote working and collaboration, telemedicine and online education services skyrocketed. Businesses had to find a way to scale their IT infrastructure quickly to keep up with that unprecedented demand. Now, it’s clear that many of the changes brought on by the pandemic have become permanent. For instance, we know that employees can successfully collaborate…

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Keeping Up With the Pace of Innovation in West Africa

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 07:00:02 +0000

In recent years, West Africa has emerged as one of the world’s biggest digital success stories. For instance, Nigeria met a key digital maturity milestone in 2020, when the Internet Society confirmed that about 70% of the country’s traffic was exchanged locally rather than in data centers abroad. This is up from only about 30% in 2012, a clear sign of the rapid growth of internet exchange points and ecosystem density in the country. This growth has helped local businesses deploy the latest digital technologies while also making the region a more attractive expansion target for global enterprises. The growth…

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When to Use Bare Metal as a Service, Public Cloud or Both

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 12:03:56 +0000

In the ever-evolving landscape of cloud computing, businesses face myriad options when selecting the right infrastructure to meet their specific requirements. Two prominent choices are Bare Metal as a Service (BMaaS) and the public cloud. While both offer powerful computing resources, they differ significantly in terms of infrastructure management, performance, security and scalability. In another blog post, my colleague Justin Beck explained what bare metal is and discussed how businesses can achieve a cloud-like experience when they use Bare Metal as a Service. Today, we will explore the unique characteristics of BMaaS and the public cloud to help you make…

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Digital Twins and AI Emerge as Twin Forces in Asia-Pacific Business Expansion

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 02:20:59 +0000

Being future-ready means being in the right places with the right people to support growth and overcome business obstacles. In the dynamic landscape of Asia-Pacific, enterprises looking to achieve their digital ambitions must act swiftly to adopt technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and digital twins to keep themselves ahead of the curve. According to the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey, over half of IT decision-makers in Asia-Pacific are already using digital twins for operational performance optimization and quality control management. A further 80% of digital decision-makers are also implementing AI in functions like IT operations and cybersecurity. It is…

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What Is Cloud Sovereignty?

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 12:00:57 +0000

Securing, managing, accessing and delivering data at scale is becoming increasingly complex as various jurisdictions worldwide establish their own regulations to govern how companies access and use data, its ownership and where it gets stored. These regulations also make it possible for governments to mandate how their citizens’ data is processed and stored by foreign entities. Building a cloud sovereignty strategy is one mechanism that helps companies manage the risks associated with storing data in multiple countries. It’s becoming increasingly important as organizations and governments strive to limit their exposure and retain control over critical data assets as geopolitical tensions…

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A Practical Guide to Expanding Your Digital Business in Europe

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 07:00:55 +0000

Today’s business landscape is fraught with challenges and barriers, including economic uncertainty, geopolitical instability, a rapidly changing regulatory environment and difficulty hiring skilled employees. With all these challenges in play, it would be reasonable to assume most business leaders would put their expansion plans on hold, and instead focus on operations closer to home. In fact, the opposite is happening: Businesses are prioritizing geographic growth as part of their future-proofing strategy. In the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 69% of global IT leaders said their organization is planning a geographic expansion within the next 12 months, be it…

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Network, Heal Thyself: On Self-Healing Networks

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 12:00:22 +0000

What if networks could heal themselves? Network outages and quality of service issues can have substantial costs and negative effects on a business: lost revenue, lost productivity, poor customer and employee experiences and more. As the tech industry evolves toward more intelligent infrastructure capabilities, we’re seeing the integration of AI, machine learning (ML), data analytics and automation into many areas of the technology stack—and networks are no exception. The promise of self-healing networks is beginning to come to fruition, as more advanced self-healing properties make it possible for networks to identify, remediate and predict problems without human intervention. The goal…

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A IA é a solução para superar a escassez de talentos e habilidades?

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 17:05:23 +0000

Empresas de todos os portes e setores ao redor do mundo vêm sofrendo uma das maiores carências de habilidades em décadas – uma dificuldade que se agrava a cada dia. No mundo todo, 77% dos empregadores estão tendo dificuldades para preencher vagas de emprego, marcando a maior escassez de mão de obra qualificada em 17 anos. Uma mudança histórica de alta a baixa taxa de mortalidade e fertilidade, juntamente com um descompasso entre os avanços tecnológicos e a falta de mão de profissionais com as habilidades certas, estão remodelando a nossa forma de trabalhar. O impacto da iminente crise…

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Accelerate Storage as a Service with Equinix Metal and Pure Storage

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 12:00:08 +0000

Bare Metal as a Service (BMaaS) is an operational model that allows customers to rapidly deploy digital infrastructure to meet the growing demands of modern applications and support their digital transformation strategies. BMaaS offers customers a cloud-like experience while also giving them greater choice and control than they can get from the traditional cloud computing model of shared infrastructure. With direct access to an API-driven digital infrastructure platform, customers can deploy their hardware and software where and how they want, while shifting to an OPEX consumption model that can provide scalability, security and agility. For this reason, BMaaS may be…

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Equinix Defines the Path to a Sustainable Future by Optimizing Data Center Operations

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 23:00:04 +0000

Data center demand has been steadily rising as businesses turn towards digital infrastructure and services to accelerate their own digital transformation journeys. Interconnection and sustainability are approaching an intersection and emerging as key business priorities, recognized by internal and external stakeholders as crucial for long-term success. Customers and employees are demanding accountability from organizations regarding the sustainability of their supply chains and are pushing for proactiveness in making operations ethical and green. In the Asia-Pacific region, 67% of IT decision-makers have stated that they would only work with IT partners that prove they meet key carbon-reduction targets, according to…

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Network as Code: The Path to Unlocking New Value from 5G

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 12:00:29 +0000

Network service providers (NSPs) have invested heavily in 5G, and 5G connectivity is expected to keep growing globally in the coming years. Alongside 5G growth, as-a-service models have taken the tech industry by storm, with OEM providers and hyperscalers joining the fray. Networks are now moving in the SaaS direction, with both mobile and wireline networks investing in new Network as a Service (NaaS) offerings. The desire to “cloudify” network services—to make them faster, OPEX based and easier to provision—is growing thanks to the benefits that SaaS models deliver, from faster time to market to easier consumption. As network operators…

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Capitalizar los beneficios de la IA en el sector financiero

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 13:00:26 +0000

La Inteligencia Artificial (IA) tiene el potencial de transformar numerosos sectores e industrias, pero el creciente uso de ella plantea nuevas exigencias a la infraestructura de TI, por lo que las organizaciones deben estar preparadas. Según la Encuesta de Tendencias Tecnológicas Globales (GTTS) de Equinix 2023, un 42% de los responsables de TI, tanto a nivel global como en Chile, afirma que no confía en la capacidad de su infraestructura para adaptarse al aumento en el uso de la IA. La incidencia en organizaciones de distintos sectores es indiscutible. Según la misma encuesta de Equinix, en Chile es más probable…

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What Is Multicloud Networking? Why Is It So Important?

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 12:00:44 +0000

Multicloud architectures have become the predominant cloud infrastructure model for the enterprise. According to research from TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, 94% of organizations are using multiple unique public clouds. Companies have done so for good reason: to optimize costs, prevent vendor lock-in and take advantage of unique capabilities and strengths of specific clouds. But with all the advantages deploying workloads across multiple cloud environments brings, it has also created sizable networking challenges. In the honeymoon phase of cloud adoption, a lot of companies implemented cloud solutions ad-hoc, without an overarching strategy. In many cases, this happened by circumstance, because organizations…

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Why Digital Infrastructure Is Essential for Exceptional User Experiences

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 12:00:30 +0000

Creating an exceptional user experience has long been one of the most important factors determining a business’ success or failure. What’s changed recently is that businesses are now more likely to interact with end users via digital channels rather than face-to-face. This means that the quality of the user experience is now defined by the digital infrastructure the business uses to connect with those end users. Specifically, businesses need to deploy distributed, interconnected digital infrastructure at the edge to get closer to end users, aggregate the data they need to understand them better, and securely and reliably analyze that data…

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To Get AI Right Tomorrow, Get Your Data Architecture Right Today

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 12:00:22 +0000

Large language models (LLMs) have been available to support mainstream AI use cases for less than a year now, and we’ve already seen how much they’ve impacted our lives. In the first two months after its launch, more than 100 million users had tried ChatGPT, making it the fastest-growing consumer app ever at the time. LLMs and other AI applications may seem…

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Join the Equinix Community to Learn and Connect

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 12:00:18 +0000

Today’s IT professionals are resourceful; they thrive in environments where they’re empowered to solve challenges and achieve goals through collaboration and knowledge sharing. Self-service resources and online communities provide quick solutions and access to a large knowledge base—and they’ve grown in popularity in the customer experience (CX) era. At Equinix, we acted on valuable customer input and created the Equinix Community as a place for IT professionals to explore resources and collaborate. It offers our customers new self-service capabilities to help them find information, connect with peers, post questions and share feedback. In this blog post, we’ll introduce the Equinix…

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3 Ways Service Providers Can Scale and Reach More Customers

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 12:00:39 +0000

Today’s leading enterprises are using distributed, interconnected digital infrastructure to supercharge their business strategies. They’re speeding up processes, getting closer to end users, and collaborating with business partners to innovate and unlock new opportunities. The role of service providers is to enable this digital success by helping their enterprise customers deploy the latest capabilities when and where they need them. To provide the global on-demand access their enterprise customers expect, service providers need a standardized, agile interconnection platform, capable of deploying flexible, high-bandwidth virtual connections at software speed. This is where Equinix Fabric® can help. When service providers make their…

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Redefining the Travel Experience: IHG Hotels & Resorts Builds Global Network Infrastructure on Platform Equinix

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 12:00:55 +0000

The advent of the digital economy adds a new wrinkle for any business looking to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Why? Because to create a seamless connection between a brand and its audience, this experience has to be delivered at the digital edge—but the exact location of the digital edge varies from business to business, and from application to application. In the case of travel and transportation companies, it becomes even trickier—because the customers themselves are always on the move, and they carry the digital edge with them in their pockets. Whether making bookings, managing trips or interacting with their…

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Poised for Growth: Emerging Economies in Southeast Asia Unlock Business Potential for Service Providers

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 23:00:11 +0000

The Southeast Asia region (SEA) is ushering in an era of rapid digital transformation, altering the very nature of goods and services, not only on what is produced and exchanged but how it is traded, customized and delivered. Accelerated adoption of e-commerce, digital payments and the emergence of new business models are all driving factors contributing to the digital evolution of the whole economic system of SEA. Coupled with widespread implementation of disruptive technology, abundant natural resources and an expanding middle class, SEA is set for exponential growth in its digital economy supported by a substantial demographic dividend. The region’s…

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Equinix Drives Strategic Value With AI & ML Solutions From Google Cloud

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 12:00:45 +0000

We’re witnessing a transformative period in the technology industry. Enterprises around the world are not just collecting data, but also harnessing it to gain unprecedented insights. With those insights, they’re solving problems, answering questions and driving real business value. Google has emerged as a significant contributor in this transformation, helping customers with AI-driven industry solutions delivered through Google Cloud. I lead the Google business for Equinix, and couldn’t be more excited about the synergies between our two companies. We’re not just leveraging each other’s technology; we’re working together to make the cloud journey quicker, simpler and more effective at scale…

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Equinix Helps Managed Service Providers Solve Complexity & Add Value

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 12:01:08 +0000

Today, companies face challenging economic conditions requiring them to understand and integrate evolving technologies while under pressure to do more with less across all business units. Given this urgency and complexity, many of them are turning to managed service providers (MSPs) to get expert advice and augment their existing resources. Even in today’s recessionary market, demand for managed services remains high: One survey from Canalys found that 89% of channel partners that are selling managed services expect this business to grow in 2023. It turns out that it’s because of economic concerns that enterprises are still willing to invest…

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8 Best Practices for Multicloud Networking

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 12:00:16 +0000

As organizations face pressure to reduce technical debt, retire legacy workloads, get out of existing data centers and modernize their infrastructure via digital transformation, they have a lot of decisions to make about how to strategically take advantage of cloud solutions. Many have found themselves in a multicloud architecture by circumstance. They adopted cloud solutions to meet specific needs, but without an overarching plan. Now, they need to tackle multicloud networking strategically to enable the transfer of data between clouds effectively, affordably and securely. Now that we’ve covered what multicloud networking is—networking from any cloud to any cloud—and why it’s…

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Exploring Liquid Cooling for Next-Gen Business Applications

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 12:00:10 +0000

The myriad of data that enterprises have at their disposal is unprecedented. Data has become the lifeblood and currency of the digital economy. In turn, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have matured as powerful tools for processing that data to produce insights and drive business outcomes. Companies are using these tools to gain competitive advantage, reduce costs, grow their business and improve efficiency. Data, AI/ML and the high-performance computing (HPC) systems they require have become central to making strong business decisions. Computer hardware and chip manufacturers have kept pace with the need for data-driven competitiveness by improving their…

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How to Navigate Complexity in Your Hybrid Infrastructure Strategy

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 07:00:14 +0000

When it comes to getting the IT infrastructure they need, today’s business leaders have more options than ever before. To drive their business forward, they can choose from traditional data centers, colocation services, private cloud, public cloud and all manner of virtual infrastructure solutions. While having greater infrastructure flexibility is undoubtedly a good thing, it also creates a paradox of choice: With so many different options available, it can feel nearly impossible to choose the right one every time. Deploying a hybrid infrastructure gives business leaders the flexibility to meet the requirements of diverse workloads across many different locations. However,…

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Equinix in the News Q3 2023

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 12:00:54 +0000

As we approach the end of another quarter, it’s time to review the latest happenings from Equinix that have made headlines around the globe. Check out our recent media coverage highlighting how we’re helping our customers accelerate their digital transformations by providing foundational infrastructure at the digital edge by deploying hybrid architectures with a broad ecosystem of partners. Nareit’s REIT.com: Equinix at 25: Creating a Home for All Things Digital Equinix CFO Keith Taylor sat down with the editor of Nareit to talk about the company’s 25 year history, as well as the substantial growth opportunity he sees for years to…

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Air Canada Takes Customer Experience to New Heights Using Future-Proof Network Infrastructure

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 12:00:14 +0000

Today is Customer Experience Day, a global day to celebrate great customer experience and the brands that deliver it. The theme for CX Day 2023 is “Good CX delivers better outcomes for customers, employees and organizations.” At Equinix, everything we do is in service to our customers. We’re dedicated to providing a better experience for them, which in turn empowers a better experience for their own end users. Today, we bring you a look at how we’re helping one customer, a leading airline, deliver a better experience for its passengers around the globe. Whether traveling for business or pleasure,…

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Phygital Connectivity: Enabling Seamless Interaction in the Physical-Digital Realm

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 23:00:53 +0000

Over the past decade, the physical and digital realms existed as separate entities, each occupying their own spaces with distinct characteristics and limitations. People went about their lives, engaging with the physical world through tangible experiences, while the digital world remained confined to computers and the Internet. But as time passed, a subtle shift began to occur — a “phygital” convergence that would redefine the way we work, consume and interact with our surroundings and one another. It began with the advent and subsequent boom of e-commerce, where the boundaries between physical outlets and digital marketplaces began to blur…

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Elevate Your Digital Transformation with Sustainability Impact

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 12:00:32 +0000

Today, IT leaders are tasked with finding solutions that meet at the intersection of business growth and environmental responsibility. Customer sentiment, evolving corporate values and government regulation have converged to make sustainability a strategic priority for nearly every business. And the importance of energy efficiency for enterprise IT cannot be overstated. The Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey found that 71% of global IT decision-makers agree that sustainability strategy and practices are critical to the longevity of their business, and 65% said their companies would only work with IT partners who can prove they meet key carbon-reduction targets. These priorities…

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Unlock Insights Hiding in Distributed Data Sets

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 12:00:27 +0000

This is Part 2 in a series exploring the Equinix approach to digital experiences at the edge: Part 1: User Experience Part 3: Secure Edge (coming soon) Digital businesses looking for a more informed approach across their global operations need to aggregate distributed data sets at the digital edge, but they also need the high-performance compute muscle to quickly analyze that data and draw valuable insights from it. When a business has access to the right data in the right edge locations and the right infrastructure to process that data in a timely manner, it forms what’s known as a smart edge…

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How to Trust No One in Just Four Steps

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 12:00:21 +0000

About a year ago, I penned a piece in Forbes on zero-trust security. At a high level, zero trust (or “ZT” for the cool kids) shifts defenses from traditional, network-based perimeters to focus on users, assets and behaviors. Zero trust, as the name implies, assumes there is no implicit trust granted to users or devices. I’m sharing this because I think it’s very timely, as enterprises are still in various stages of adoption. In a recent report, Gartner predicted that over 60% of organizations will embrace zero trust as a starting point for security by 2025; however—and to me this is…

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The Future of Networking Isn’t Physical or Virtual—It’s Hybrid

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 12:00:59 +0000

Our digital world has come so far in a relatively short time, and we owe so much of that advancement to networking technology. In fact, measuring the volume of data exchanged over global networks is one of the best ways to assess the growth of the digital economy. The Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2023, a market study published by Equinix, forecasts that interconnection bandwidth will grow at a 35% CAGR over the next five years in every region and major metro across the world. This shows that the global movement of data will continue to play a key role…

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4 Use Cases for AI in the Telecom Industry

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 07:00:20 +0000

In the last year, the hype we’ve seen surrounding large language models and AI in general has been relentless. It started with the record-breaking release of ChatGPT, which introduced millions of people to the power of generative AI for the first time. Since then, we’ve seen the launch of a new enterprise version of ChatGPT as well as new AI toolsets from familiar names like Microsoft and Google. Enterprises are scrambling to take advantage of these solutions, and for good reason: It’s clear that the companies that adopt AI first and start using it to its full potential will have…

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4 Ways to Convince Your Leadership to Invest in Digital Transformation

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 12:00:22 +0000

We’ve reached the season when many organizations are planning for the investments they’re going to make for next year and beyond. IT leaders have a responsibility to make sure their businesses are ready for whatever the future might hold, but this can be difficult to do when they don’t get final say over investment decisions. A future-proof business needs access to highly flexible digital infrastructure, deployed on demand wherever its customers reside. Unfortunately, high-level business leaders are often conditioned to think of major investments solely through the lens of short-term costs. If things seem to be going well enough with…

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Equinix Partners With NetApp to Drive Customer Demand for Cloud Adjacent Storage

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 12:05:48 +0000

Solving for the growth of business data has long been a challenge for many organizations. Today, an increasing number of enterprises are adopting hybrid multicloud strategies to address their ever-expanding data growth. At the same time, they’re struggling with where to place business-critical data that drives their digital transformation initiatives. The expansion of public cloud, the accelerated adoption of AI and the need to derive meaningful insights from data all put pressure on organizations to optimize the placement, control and security of their most valuable asset: their data. The applications that power modern enterprises typically require high availability and performance. As…

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What Makes Canada a Land of Digital Opportunity?

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 12:00:49 +0000

It’s easy to think of the digital economy as a single global entity, but in reality, it’s made up of a series of interconnected regions. Each region is home to digital ecosystems, where partners and service providers connect to collaborate and exchange data. In turn, distributed digital infrastructure has sprung up to help these ecosystems thrive. At Equinix, we call these interconnected regions digital corridors. Understanding where digital corridors form and why is key to understanding the digital economy as a whole. In many ways, Canada is one of the most dynamic digital corridors in the world today. The ongoing expansion…

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4 Use Cases for Resizing Virtual Network Functions

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 12:00:28 +0000

Organizations that have made the switch from physical networking devices to virtual network functions (VNFs) often need to resize their virtual resources as business needs change. This could happen for a variety of reasons—for example, acquiring another business, supporting more remote workers or moving from testing into a wider deployment. Virtualized infrastructure already offers well-known advantages that IT professionals have come to expect: faster time to market, more predictable OPEX-based costs and on-demand deployment in minutes instead of waiting months for hardware to arrive. Those benefits can be further enhanced with features that provide greater elasticity to accommodate ever-changing business…

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In Digital Healthcare, the Right Network Matters

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 12:00:04 +0000

Today, healthcare organizations have access to more patient and clinical data than ever before, fundamentally changing how they operate. Whether it’s hospitals looking to establish care plans, research institutes looking to understand diseases, or pharmaceutical companies looking to formulate new drugs, all entities that make up the digital healthcare ecosystem depend on data to do what they do better. Besides access to health data, the digital healthcare ecosystem should also provide a connectivity fabric that fosters collaboration. Every organization has a role to play in pursuit of one common goal: to drive better patient outcomes. This means that all the…

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Expanding Digital Economies in Africa

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 07:00:37 +0000

While 64% of the global population is connected to the internet, only 43% of Africans are. This statistic is a clear illustration of the digital divide that’s hampering Africa’s economic growth. The public internet is the de facto B2C channel of the digital economy, and it is simply impossible to build a thriving digital economy in any nation that lacks accessible and affordable internet access for consumers and businesses. Indeed, this is a major reason why the digital economies of African nations have traditionally been underdeveloped. There are other factors in play as well, including a lack of digital literacy and…

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Simplifying Digital Infrastructure with Bare Metal as a Service

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 04:02:13 +0000

IT leaders are reevaluating their digital infrastructure capabilities in an environment where business needs are constantly evolving. Organizations are faced with a prime opportunity to rapidly expand their businesses within their local markets and on the global stage. However, the decision to go global depends greatly on their digital infrastructure capabilities and balancing operations on the edge and the public cloud. Currently, a majority of organizations that have opted to operate through traditional on-premises infrastructure or public cloud infrastructure are considering adopting a hybrid approach using Bare Metal as a Service (BMaaS). With a greater need for expanded digital abilities…

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Federal Agencies Are Preparing for the Age of AI

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 12:00:51 +0000

While artificial intelligence as a concept has existed for decades, we’ve now reached the point where people from all walks of life have seen exactly what this powerful technology can accomplish. Now that they know how AI can make their lives easier, consumers are more likely to notice when an organization isn’t using AI to offer a better user experience. In the federal government, agencies are being called to optimize customer experience in the same way great consumer brands already have. Before AI became the industry buzz word that it is today, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)…

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It’s Alive! Equinix Brings ReAnimated Intelligence into Data Centers

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 12:00:43 +0000

While many companies are pursuing the promise of AI, Equinix has gone a step further. Today, we’re announcing we’ve become the first (and only) company to deploy reAnimated intelligence (reAI) technology in a data center setting. In collaboration with Dr. Hans Frankenstein, a pioneer in the exciting field of reAI, we’re proud to introduce Frankie, the newest member of the Equinix team. Frankie will work inside our latest Equinix IBX® data center, which we’ve built inside a foreboding Gothic castle nestled into the Carpathian Mountains of southern Transylvania. Frankie is the outcome of decades of reAI work from Dr. Frankenstein and…

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Equinix is a Leader in the 2023 IDC MarketScape for Data Center Services

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 11:55:05 +0000

Running a business in today’s market is not for the faint of heart. Unpredictable market conditions, economic instability, the ongoing tug-of-war over workers returning to the office in person, and the expectation to do more with less as budgets shrink are weighing on IT leaders. Yet, the digital economy continues to flourish, with more businesses than ever expanding their digital footprints for competitive advantage. Flexibility, agility and speed are critical for success, as is deploying digital infrastructure that includes a robust portfolio of colocation data centers and interconnection and digital services on a vendor-neutral platform. The IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Datacenter…

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Transform Your Application Architecture by Bringing It Closer to Hardware

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 12:00:10 +0000

Over the last few decades, organizations have undergone significant IT transformations—moving away from legacy systems and on-premises data centers to cloud-native technologies and distributed architectures. Applications built over the last 10 years have become increasingly reliable and stable, while the processing capabilities have seen a significant surge. Advanced technologies such as AI and automation have introduced intelligence and capabilities that once seemed like science fiction. In this landscape, hybrid and multicloud models have become predominant because organizations understand the importance of workload placement and that each workload is suited to a different environment. They want flexibility and control, reliable…

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How to Talk About Sustainability in the Data Center Industry

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 13:03:20 +0000

At Equinix, we believe the data center industry can play an essential role in balancing the demands of the growing digital economy with the need to ensure a sustainable future for our planet and all its inhabitants. That’s why we call our sustainability strategy Future First. Every year, we publish our Integrated Sustainability Report (ISR) to share our sustainability progress with customers, partners and other stakeholders. However, sustainability is a wide-reaching topic that has a language all its own. This means that our report often uses terminology that might not be familiar to all readers. In this blog post, we’ll…

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Unleash the Power of Data and Services by Connecting Southeast Asia for Economic Empowerment

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 22:20:13 +0000

The digital landscape in Southeast Asia is experiencing an unparalleled surge in growth. The region’s rapid digital transformation is evident, with notable tech “unicorn” companies leading the charge, alongside a wave of innovative entrepreneurs and small firms harnessing technology to fuel their growth. Major cities are witnessing the ubiquitous use of mobile phones for messaging and social media, while ride-sharing services and delivery apps are revolutionizing urban transportation and services. Consumers are increasingly turning to online platforms to make purchases, redefining the future of traditional retail. These cumulative contributing factors are driving a high level of interest from the region’s…

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How Is Generative AI Changing Data Center Requirements?

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:00:56 +0000

What is a data center, and how do we use it? More specifically, what are the different types of data centers, and what different purposes do they serve for companies that use them? These are seemingly simple questions, but it can be surprisingly difficult to come up with answers that feel satisfying. We sought to answer these questions in a blog post from last year. While the analysis in that blog is certainly still valid, our understanding of data centers and digital infrastructure in general is always evolving to keep up with the changing world we live in and the…

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Bring Intelligence to Your Digital Infrastructure with Observability

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 13:00:18 +0000

Modern digital infrastructures have become highly complex compared to the IT environments of the past. Organizations now have multiple infrastructure layers—from physical hardware to software applications, code, and cloud-native services like containers and microservices. Development teams are bringing applications and services to market faster than ever, and operations teams are inundated with monitoring data from across the IT stack. If you want Ops teams to see into and understand the state of their systems, you need a way to organize and sift through all the available data from logs, events, metrics and traces across your IT environment to get the…

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Bridging Service to Tech: We Support Veteran Career Growth

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 13:00:40 +0000

Veterans who transition to civilian life bring a wealth of expertise and experience that’s easily transferable to the corporate world. When you think about it, the military operates similarly to a large corporation with its vast ecosystem of departments and roles. Veterans possess skill sets from their roles in functions such as engineering, communications, logistics, finance, legal, HR and recruiting, healthcare, data analysis and social work. Equinix believes that veterans bring dedication and team spirit, and we’re committed to making them feel welcome and supported in their new roles. We hire veterans across all areas of our business and participate…

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What Is Colocation-Based Infrastructure as a Service?

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 13:00:45 +0000

The IaaS market has been growing for many years and is continuing to evolve to meet the requirements of today’s businesses. Not only has public cloud grown immensely in the last decade-plus, but the range of infrastructure solutions is growing as more organizations move away from private data centers toward shared infrastructure and distributed IT architectures. The data center colocation market is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.2%, There are numerous reasons for the growth of IaaS: Predictable cost…

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For a Great Digital Experience, a Secure Edge Is Essential

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 13:00:45 +0000

This is Part 3 in a series exploring the Equinix approach to digital experiences at the edge: Part 1: User Experience Part 2: Smart Edge Today’s digital leaders understand the importance of shifting their operations to the edge. Strategically deploying digital infrastructure in proximity to major population centers—where the highest concentrations of end users and devices are—helps ensure consistent, low-latency connectivity between consumers and applications. In turn, this enables the exceptional digital experiences today’s empowered users demand. We’ve talked in previous blog posts about the importance of building edge infrastructure that’s designed for optimized user experience and powered by real-time intelligence. However, meeting…

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3 Reasons Why Digital Ecosystems and Infrastructure Are the Future of Business

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 00:00:45 +0000

The world is becoming increasingly digital every day and so are the expectations and demands of the people who live in it. We’re transitioning towards a digital world where Everything-as-a-Service is coming into play. The click of a button or a tap on the screen can facilitate the delivery of food, streamline access to financial services and virtualize medical care. Users can shorten their time to value simply by consuming services digitally – anytime, anywhere. Digital-savvy populations are increasingly reliant on digital platforms and the ecosystems within them to go about their daily lives. But how do these platforms…

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What Is Private AI?

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 13:00:52 +0000

About a year has passed since generative AI burst into the mainstream, helping send enterprise AI growth into overdrive. According to a recent IDC report, annual spending on AI—including generative AI—will go from $175.9 billion in 2023 to $509.1 billion in 2027, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.4%. Enterprises are investing heavily in their AI strategies, both because they see the opportunity and because they don’t want to fall behind their competitors. However, as they accelerate their AI adoption, many enterprises also recognize they must be careful to ensure their AI strategy is sustainable and responsible. Another growing area…

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Tackling the Digital Divide for Girls Through Sports

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 08:01:16 +0000

Every November 20, the United Nations marks World Children’s Day, in commemoration of the date when the UN General Assembly first adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959. On this day, we are all called to think about how we can advocate, promote and celebrate the rights and welfare of children everywhere in the world. The theme for this year’s World Children’s Day is “For every child, every right.” In today’s digitally driven world, this means ensuring the right to digital inclusion for every child. Digital connectivity and skills are fundamental to accessing and benefiting from…

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Bridging the Gap Between On-Premises and Public Cloud Services

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 13:01:36 +0000

We are living in an era of cloud modernization, where enterprises are becoming far more nuanced and discerning about how they use public cloud services. This is not to suggest that we’re experiencing full-scale cloud repatriation; a few companies have left the public cloud altogether in favor of conventional on-premises IT, but they’re definitely in the minority. What’s actually happening across the wider industry is more complex—and far more interesting. We’re seeing a blurring of the lines between what’s on-premises and what’s public cloud. This even includes the hyperscalers expanding their portfolios of on-premises cloud service offerings, as Amazon Web…

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Accelerating Quantum Computing as a Service Through Ecosystem Partnerships

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 08:01:31 +0000

We’ve been talking about quantum computing for years now, and the promise it offers—solving certain problems in seconds that classical computers would take decades to solve—is now well established. Many enterprises have begun to plan what they’d do with the game-changing compute power that quantum offers. Now, the question isn’t whether they’ll adopt quantum, but how and when they’ll do it. Quantum computing technology has recently taken its first steps out of the lab, but we’re likely still a few years away from full-scale commercialization. A recent report from GlobalData forecasts that the quantum computing market will reach $10 billion…

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3 Trends Driving Liquid Cooling for Data Centers

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 13:00:15 +0000

The exponential growth of data and the development of advanced data analytics technologies have led to big changes in IT infrastructure. Infrastructure has grown ever-more powerful, and data centers are packing more computing power into smaller spaces. Even before AI was as popular as it is now, several developments in the marketplace were putting greater demands on data centers—changing hardware, the rise of edge computing, higher density deployments and the demand for greater efficiency. As both workloads and hardware have changed, data center operators have in turn been innovating to support this more powerful equipment, which produces more heat per…

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Thriving Amidst Uncertainty: Key Strategies for Digital Leaders in a Digital Business Era

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:04 +0000

In today’s fast-paced digital business era, digital leaders face the constant challenge of uncertainty. Navigating this landscape requires an effective digital-first strategy to maintain organizational competitiveness. However, CAPEX budgets are tight, technology brings complexity and there is a shortage of skilled professionals. Moreover, the threat landscape is ever-changing and end users have higher expectations. While digitization presents great opportunities, it also brings disruptive challenges. Digital leaders who can skillfully manage uncertainty have the potential to create a competitive edge for their organizations, fostering growth and driving innovation. Equinix strives to equip enterprises and service providers with the tools and context…

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Engineers Demonstrate Innovative Capabilities at Annual Hackathon

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 13:00:07 +0000

The competition to attract the best and brightest workers impacts companies everywhere. While talent hiring challenges affect all business units, they’re often more pervasive in engineering and technical roles. In the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS), 67% of digital leaders said that a shortage of IT talent was one of the top threats keeping them up at night. It’s a challenge that we experience ourselves at Equinix. To do our best work for customers, we must hire technical talent that doesn’t just bring a depth of skills and expertise; we look for those with a curious and creative…

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Partnering to Grow South Africa’s Digital Economy

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 08:00:36 +0000

Africa represents one of the most attractive expansion opportunities available to multinational tech companies today. The continent has a population of more than 1.4 billion, and more than half that number is currently excluded from the digital economy. This means that investing to connect the unconnected in Africa today could drive economic benefits for decades to come. Since South Africa has one of the highest rates of internet penetration of any country in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s a particularly attractive…

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Our 5 Biggest Cloud Conversations in 2023

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 13:03:59 +0000

In 2023, cloud computing continued to evolve to keep up with the changing priorities of customers. All this change has created additional complexity—and new terminology to go along with it. To help you keep track of everything, we’re bringing you a look back at some of the biggest cloud topics we covered this year. 1. The next step in the evolution of private cloud As customers looked to leverage the full power of cloud while avoiding high costs and vendor lock-in, many of them turned to private cloud. Dedicated cloud is the next step in the evolution of private cloud: Just…

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Creating a Resilient Network Architecture via Local Redundancy

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 13:00:15 +0000

Network outages lead to lost revenue, decreased employee productivity and reputational damage. According to the Uptime Institute’s Annual Outage Analysis 2023, network and connectivity-related issues are the most common cause of IT outages that affect organizations. And the cost of outages is increasing, with more than two-thirds of all outages costing more than $100,000. Therefore, every organization needs to think seriously about network resiliency. Network resiliency typically refers to how well your network can provide continuous operation and recover quickly from small failures. Redundancy involves including extra components in your network design that aren’t strictly necessary. Resiliency and redundancy are…

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Data Center Cooling Continues to Evolve for Efficiency and Density

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 13:00:50 +0000

The debate about how data center operators should design cooling systems has been raging for decades now. Today, as businesses expect their data centers to keep up with growing workload density while also improving efficiency, this question feels timelier than ever. The truth is that there’s no one right way to design a data center, and new technologies only serve to drive home that point. Over the years, different cooling technologies and designs for data centers have evolved to meet our changing needs, and you can track that evolution on the pages of this very blog: The distant past: Slab…

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Digital Ecosystems Are Driving Autonomous Vehicles Forward

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 13:00:50 +0000

The potential value of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) is clear. When fully implemented, AVs and ADAS could revolutionize our approach to transportation and logistics. They could move people and cargo from point to point more efficiently than ever before, while also improving safety—both for those inside vehicles and for vulnerable road users (VRUs) like cyclists and pedestrians. Despite this promise, there are roadblocks standing in the way of widespread AV adoption. For one thing, there have been several high-profile setbacks in the market recently. For example, Argo AI, an AV startup backed by Ford and VW,…

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What Are the Benefits of Private AI?

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 13:00:29 +0000

It goes without saying that enterprises need an AI strategy in order to thrive in this new business era. The question now is what that strategy should look like to capture the full benefits of AI and minimize the risks. In a recent blog post, my colleague Ruth Faller introduced the concept of private AI, where an organization builds or fine-tunes its own AI models, hosts those models inside a protected environment, and feeds proprietary data into the models. Ruth argued that a private AI approach is essential for any organization that wants to move past basic use cases and…

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The Road Ahead: 4 Tech Trends Propelling Digital-first Enterprises

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:50:06 +0000

The world is rapidly advancing towards a digital-first future and Equinix has been at the forefront of facilitating the movement of data by providing digital infrastructure in a sustainable manner for the past 25 years. Operating more than 250 data centers around the globe, Equinix recognizes its responsibility to play a leading role in enabling digital transformation and innovative change. With the introduction of new data centers in established and emerging markets, Equinix has been growing from strength to strength around the world. Digital infrastructure is quickly becoming a cornerstone for businesses to achieve a competitive advantage and succeed in…

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8 Advantages of Deploying Cloud Adjacent Storage on Bare Metal

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 13:00:36 +0000

As businesses shift to a highly distributed and data-driven landscape, their storage infrastructure requirements often change. They must continuously assess when to migrate workloads to the cloud and when running those workloads in their on-premises data centers is the best approach. High performance, reliability and scalability are key considerations for storage solutions, along with addressing expanding data needs for compliance, privacy, security, cost and location. Relying only on public cloud storage presents challenges like high data transfer fees, storage costs, and potential egress charges, requiring optimization strategies such as minimizing data movement, using cost-effective storage classes, and negotiating with providers. Cloud…

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Our 6 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2023

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 13:00:30 +0000

It should come as no surprise that cloud, automation and AI topics got a lot of attention this year—as well as old standbys like latency. These topics speak both to emerging technology trends and to the ways IT infrastructure is evolving to meet the needs of modern businesses. Our six most popular blog posts of the year have a lot to say about how business is changing and what might be on the horizon for 2024 and beyond. 1. Automation Without Transformation Is Pointless Automation is an exciting and cutting-edge technology that has been freeing workers to focus their energies on…

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Envisioning a More Sustainable Future, Step by Step

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 13:00:00 +0000

It’s been an exciting year for sustainability in the IT sector. In 2023, we’ve seen more companies prioritizing sustainability in their IT purchasing decisions, and in turn, Equinix has continued to scale up our efforts to deliver the changes our customers want and the planet needs. We know organizations are facing real pressure from new rules and disclosure standards—as well as from their customers and employees—to deliver targets and tangible plans to reach those goals. And we have a growing cross-functional team dedicated to advancing our sustainability programs and innovating to bring sustainable digital infrastructure to market. According to a…

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In 2024, Infrastructure Will Be Everywhere

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 13:00:33 +0000

It’s been quite a year for Equinix, our customers and our partners. No matter where they do business, the companies we work with face similar challenges. They need to optimize costs, increase performance and expand their reach—because this is how they beat the competition and deliver better customer experiences. In my role as Chief Sales Officer at Equinix, I have the privilege to meet with customers around the world to understand their business needs and then explore how they can innovate on our platform. And the same themes come up again and again. The solution? Working with a flexible…

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2023 in Review: Top 7 Achievements and Breakthroughs in Asia-Pacific

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 00:58:06 +0000

In 2023, we continued to make significant strides in various areas including sustainability, diversity and inclusion, philanthropy and the expansion of our digital infrastructure footprint in Asia-Pacific. Here are the top seven breakthroughs we achieved in 2023 that are shaping the future of the digital landscape. 1. Unwavering Commitments to Sustainability Involvement and Investment Time and time again, Equinix continues to reaffirm its commitment to sustainability. In Asia-Pacific, Equinix spent $34 million on 109 efficiency projects, which helped us exceed our power usage effectiveness (PUE) target. We have already realized a landmark milestone of 100% renewables coverage across all of our…

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How Will Digital Infrastructure Enable Private AI?

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 08:00:41 +0000

It’s no secret that business leaders are energized by the possibilities of generative AI. The dialogue around it is intense and there’s an urgency to figure out how it can help their companies. They have questions around where to start, how to scale and how to harness the knowledge from public AI models while protecting sensitive information such as IP. That’s where enterprise-level AI comes into play with its combined use of private AI and data and training models in the public cloud. Private AI gives companies the control to capitalize on the benefits of AI while keeping their sensitive…

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You Need an Edge Strategy; Here’s How to Build the Right One for You

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 13:00:36 +0000

Digital transformation is happening at the edge. So many of the advanced applications that offer compelling innovations—including AI, machine learning and IoT—depend on having the right edge infrastructure in the right locations. When enterprises lack an edge strategy, they’ll find themselves managing the edge on an ad hoc basis. Rather than designing their edge to drive greater business value, these businesses will be stuck in reactive mode. As new edge use cases continue to emerge, they’ll have to throw together custom solutions on the fly to support them. This will limit their business agility and make it difficult to future-proof…

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To Succeed With Private AI, Start by Building the Right Data Architecture

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 13:00:47 +0000

To capitalize on the power of AI without placing your sensitive data at risk, you need a private AI strategy. This means building or fine-tuning your own AI models, hosting them inside a protected environment and training them on your proprietary data sets. Unlike public AI services such as ChatGPT, private AI models won’t place your sensitive data at risk of exposure. With the right data architecture, you can get the right data to the right places to fuel your AI models, without sacrificing control over that data. This data architecture should be built around an authoritative data core. This…

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Monitor Real-Time Data to Maintain High Availability of AWS Networks

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 13:00:45 +0000

Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to deliver optimized connectivity services and solutions with the launch of the Amazon CloudWatch Network Monitor for AWS Direct Connect service. We’re pleased to announce that Equinix customers using AWS Direct Connect services can now leverage Amazon CloudWatch Network Monitor to help troubleshoot and resolve hybrid network connectivity issues on their dedicated and hosted Direct Connect services. The service levels and resilience from Equinix, combined with this new service, will help ensure their business and critical applications are always available and running. Equinix is a long-standing member of the AWS Partner Network (APN), connecting customers…

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Data Gravity vs. Data Velocity

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 13:00:08 +0000

As 2024 opens, it’s clear that organizations everywhere are in a race to harness the power of AI. Companies have accumulated massive quantities of data and are now using powerful analytics tools to mine it for business insights and generate value. But working with—and moving—all that data can get complicated and costly, and this is leading many organizations to re-evaluate their core infrastructure design principles. I believe the most strategic approach to infrastructure placement should consider several factors pertaining to your data: where data is generated; how it is staged, processed and aggregated; how to distribute where the data is…

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How Private Network Connections Enable Private AI Success

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 13:00:18 +0000

Since the explosion of generative AI into the mainstream, a growing number of AI models are being developed and hosted in the public domain. But for enterprises, this approach raises concerns around risk and data protection. As organizations look for opportunities to use AI for competitive advantage, they’re now developing new AI strategies that factor in the need to protect their sensitive data. Private AI is an emerging trend that enables companies to safeguard proprietary data, reduce regulatory risk and optimize AI performance. But to enable private AI, you need the right core infrastructure, with proximity to public clouds, access…

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Simplify Multicloud Networking With Equinix Fabric Cloud Router

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 12:55:21 +0000

Hybrid multicloud is the preferred way for enterprises to balance priorities around performance, flexibility, scalability, security, compliance and cost-efficiency. A hybrid multicloud architecture allows businesses to pick the best environment from the best provider for each individual workload. The value of hybrid multicloud is clear, but achieving that value can be difficult. For one thing, multicloud networking can be incredibly complex. It requires stitching together diverse environments to ensure data sets can move freely. Network service providers, software vendors and even the cloud providers themselves offer services to address this complexity. However, these offerings have limitations, including lack of agility,…

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How to Build Sustainable Subsea Cable Networks

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 13:00:07 +0000

Ensuring the sustainability of our digital world is an issue that concerns enterprises, industry analysts and regulators alike. The internet can only be as sustainable as the digital infrastructure that supports it, which is why Equinix and our technology partners are working to develop cleaner, more efficient data centers. However, there’s another aspect of sustainable digital infrastructure the industry has been slower to address. Despite the fact that 99% of intercontinental internet traffic crosses subsea telecommunications cables, the sustainability of subsea cable networks has received little attention until recently. As late as 2021, there was no industry-wide collaboration happening to…

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Enterprises Embrace the Future: Subscription-Based Digital Infrastructure

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 08:55:07 +0000

For many businesses, participating in the digital economy evolved from an outcome-driven digital transformation. They developed a digital-first strategy characterized by an automated cloud-to-edge digital infrastructure that set them up for reimagining products, growing with ecosystems of partners and rethinking distribution and engagement at the edge. Operating at this level required enterprises to expand their use of distributed digital infrastructure and virtual private network connections—what we call interconnection. Fast-forward to today, and we’re already seeing IT leaders expand their digital infrastructure via a subscription model. They’re discovering it can be more flexible and cost-efficient than relying on the traditional approach…

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Why Sustainability is Essential for AI Success

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 13:00:01 +0000

Enterprises can apply AI across two dimensions of sustainability: fostering sustainable AI deployments and using AI to solve sustainability-related challenges. Sustainable enterprise AI is about building responsible practices in AI deployments. On the other hand, AI for sustainability is about enterprises using the power of AI for good. The amount of power and energy required to use compute-intensive workloads to train AI models and run inferences on those models has enormous implications for emissions and climate change. Enterprises need to focus on designing, training and deploying AI to reduce the carbon impact of these technologies. Examples of how to do…

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How to Approach Multicloud Networking

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 13:00:45 +0000

Cloud computing has turned the world upside down in terms of how infrastructure requirements are gathered and correlated, and how new deployments are delivered. Infrastructure changes that used to take many months can now be done on demand in minutes. And most organizations—94%, according to 2023 research from Enterprise Strategy Group—are working with multiple clouds. The time has come to be intentional about architecting the networks that support workloads across increasingly diversifying environments. You have to effectively address multicloud networking to avoid risking poor application performance, inefficient use of resources or negative user experiences. But multicloud networking can be quite…

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Enterprises Need a Simpler Approach to Cloud Storage

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 13:00:48 +0000

The role that cloud plays in enabling greater scalability and flexibility for enterprises is undeniable. However, many of these enterprises have recognized that getting the most value from their cloud services depends on storing cloud data the right way. They need data to move freely across the different environments that make up their hybrid multicloud architecture. They also need their storage to be cost-efficient and reliable. And to top things off, they need to be able to maintain control over their data and ensure its integrity. You may not be able to do any of these things if you rely…

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What Is a Cloud On-Ramp?

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 13:00:26 +0000

Cloud services have helped digital businesses unlock greater flexibility, cost-efficiency and innovation. However, savvy IT leaders recognize that how they access those services matters. These days, anyone can access the cloud from just about anywhere. But to capitalize on the benefits of cloud, you must ensure reliable, low-latency connectivity to multiple cloud providers in strategic locations worldwide. At the same time, you need to be able to secure your cloud data, comply with data privacy and sovereignty requirements, and keep your costs predictable. You can achieve all these things using cloud on-ramps. A cloud on-ramp is a direct, private connection offered…

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Unleashing the Power of Software-Defined Cloud Interconnect

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 13:00:26 +0000

In our fast-paced world, customer expectations are at an all-time high, and competition is intense. To succeed in this environment, companies need secure, ultra-fast connectivity across their IT infrastructure. But today, organizations have data and infrastructure in more places than ever, and they’re working with more partners. Enterprise AI workloads are introducing new networking demands. The proliferation of connections, along with the shift to distributed multicloud IT architectures, has brought new connectivity challenges—as well as opportunities. One of the major challenges is optimizing the network across all parts of a hybrid multicloud infrastructure, including the “middle mile” network. For enterprises,…

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Focus on AI Innovation; Leave the Rest to Equinix & NVIDIA

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 13:00:41 +0000

The race to harness the massive potential of generative AI is on. For companies looking to fast-track AI, DIY infrastructure is not an option. Enterprises need the right partners and ecosystem access to accelerate the integration of AI development into their business operations using purpose-built infrastructure and by establishing secure, seamless connectivity to data sources across clouds, on-premises and at the edge. That’s where our recently announced collaboration with NVIDIA can help. Equinix Private AI with NVIDIA DGX is a fully managed private cloud service that enables enterprises to easily acquire and manage their own NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputing infrastructure…

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Building Infrastructure to Support Distributed Applications for Web3

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 13:00:42 +0000

While the Web3 ecosystem has been growing for a few years now, it’s still focused on building the essential elements of what’s emerging as a vibrant community. And now, companies are beginning to explore its implications. Web3—the next generation of the internet, also referred to as Web 3.0—involves a cluster of technologies, tools and applications, from blockchain and distributed identity to edge computing and artificial intelligence. These evolving technologies are coming together to move us toward a more decentralized, transparent and secure internet. Emerging companies have begun delivering solutions to help businesses use blockchain and participate in Web3. Software applications…

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3 Digital Transformation Success Factors: Strategy, Composability, Ecosystems

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 13:04:04 +0000

Digital technology has transformed our world in the last few decades—from the first digital communications to e-commerce, telemedicine, remote work and more. The digital economy is now the dominant form of economic growth, and a growing number of enterprises across industries are delivering digital services. The Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2024, a market study published by Equinix that measures growth in the global digital economy, predicts that by 2025, 90% of Fortune 500 companies will become digital providers, both selling and consuming digital services. While digital transformation isn’t a new concept, it has become mandatory for survival as we move…

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To Honor Black History Month, Let’s Promote Digital Inclusion

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 13:00:47 +0000

February is Black History Month in the U.S. and Canada, a time for remembering the great contributions Black people have made to our society. However, it’s also an opportunity to think about empowering the next generation of Black people to make future contributions. This means promoting digital inclusion for the Black community. We live in a digital world, where everything from educational opportunities to career success depends on having digital connectivity and the skills to use it. That’s why it’s discouraging to see that the digital divide disproportionately impacts Black people, leaving us with fewer opportunities to succeed in the…

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Congress to Agencies: Use All Commercial Data Center Solutions

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 13:00:28 +0000

In an important shift away from previous cloud-first or cloud-only strategies, Congress recently directed federal agencies to leverage the entire waterfront of commercial data center solutions to meet their data center mission needs. This direction appears in the Federal Data Center Enhancement Act of 2023, part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024. The Act makes many important updates to the expired Federal Data Center Optimization Initiative. This includes doubling down on previous impactful federal data center consolidation efforts, calling for new reporting requirements on sustainability, security, and reliability, and for the first time, giving agencies…

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Congress to Agencies: Prioritize Commercial Data Center Solutions, Including Colo and Hybrid

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 17:10:00 +0000

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What’s Driving Digital Infrastructure Growth in Emerging Markets?

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 13:00:36 +0000

The world now feels much smaller, thanks to how quickly most of us can connect with people and businesses globally. Yet the opportunity to make digital services available to millions, even billions, who don’t currently have access is significant. From a regional perspective, digital infrastructure may be expanding rapidly across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, but you’ll find that it’s currently concentrated in a handful of major cities. Residents living in remote or rural areas throughout the APAC region rely primarily on mobile phones for connectivity. These devices deliver a range of digital services that can help propel them to a…

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Enterprise Networking 101: Our Top 5 Posts to Teach You the Basics

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 13:00:13 +0000

The average person doesn’t spend much of their day thinking about computer networking. But networking is essential to our daily lives in countless ways—it’s a fundamental part of the underlying infrastructure of our digital world. Networking is the way data is exchanged and transported between computers, devices, servers or other parts of an information system. When networks slow down or experience outages, applications don’t work, customers have bad experiences, workers lose productivity, and companies lose revenue and business opportunities. For enterprises, networking is fundamental in the digital age. In fact, in many industries—from financial services to transportation to healthcare—highly available…

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Faster Wireless Network Deployment Enables Next-Gen Telco Services

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:00:29 +0000

With that 5G icon now brightly illuminating your phone’s status bar most of the time and apps running faster than ever, it’s evident this next generation of wireless connectivity is firmly established. Mobile network operators are making impressive strides toward upgrading the radio networks to this advanced standard. While some operators are carefully processing upgrades of the infrastructure that powers 5G networks behind the scenes, these backend upgrades are not merely about speed and efficiency; they’re about unlocking a new world of possibilities for businesses and consumers alike. Enabling advanced wireless infrastructure with Nokia Core SaaS Nokia is one company that was…

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5G Standalone: A Telco Revolution, or Just a Means to an End?

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 08:00:42 +0000

The rollout of 5G standalone (5G-SA) networks could help telco operators enable new services and better position themselves for future success. Industry analysts are predicting that 5G-SA will finally deliver the game-changing capabilities that proponents of 5G have been promising for years now. Providers are making admirable progress on 5G-SA rollout throughout Europe. For example: In Germany, Vodafone says that its 5G-SA network serves 45% of the country’s population. The company has previously said that it aims to achieve nationwide coverage by 2025. In the U.K., BT recently announced a new trial of 5G-SA network slicing capabilities in partnership with Ericsson and…

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Rooftop Solar Systems in Melbourne Green the Grid

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 02:02:57 +0000

Solar energy will play a transformative role in sustainably fueling Australia’s energy grids of the future, paving the way for Melbourne to embrace cleaner and renewable power sources. Amongst data center operators in Australia, Equinix is at the forefront in solar energy generation with its recent deployment of a 1MW rooftop solar system at its ME1 International Business Exchange® (IBX®) data centre in Melbourne. It was an honour to have the Hon. Lily D’Ambrosio MP, Minister for Climate Action, Energy and Resources and the State Electricity Commission, and Nina Taylor MP, Labor Member for Albert Park, preside over the…

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To Get AI Right Tomorrow, You Need Cloud Adjacent Storage Today

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 13:02:14 +0000

The business value that AI offers is clear, and enterprises are scrambling to capture that value before the competition. To do that, they’ll have to rethink their IT infrastructure. The conventional compute and storage solutions they’ve relied on up until now simply aren’t up to the task of supporting AI. A successful enterprise AI strategy requires a data architecture built specifically for AI. This architecture must be able to support different AI workloads, including training workloads that require massive compute capacity and GPU availability and inference workloads that require ultra-low latency. Incorporating cloud adjacent storage practices into your data architecture…

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Digital Evolution: Taking an Iterative Approach to Transformation

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 13:00:13 +0000

Businesses are at various stages of digital transformation and have achieved different levels of success in reaching their destinations. It’s been a massive and often costly undertaking for them. If your digital transformation hasn’t progressed as far as you’d like, my colleague introduced three digital transformation success factors in a recent blog. Achieving a digital transformation has been about reaching a specific destination or milestone. What we’re seeing now is a transition to a more iterative approach. Companies can be more efficient, reduce costs and achieve competitive advantage with a focus on improving the value of digital investments over time…

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Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud for AI

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 13:00:52 +0000

Now that generative AI has gone mainstream, enterprises are investing heavily in AI and developing their AI strategies. In fact, IDC predicts that annual spending on AI—including generative AI—will go from $175.9 billion in 2023 to $509.1 billion in 2027, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.4%. As the generative AI industry expands, organizations are increasingly using AI models created by others instead of building their own AI models from scratch. Many key players in the industry have developed large language models (LLMs)—both commercial and open source—that are available to enterprises. Some are general, while some are designed…

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What’s Driving the Digital Economy in the Nordic Countries?

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 08:00:07 +0000

When we mention data centers in the Nordic countries, many people tend to focus on the climate and the landscape. They think data center operators primarily invest in the region because of the colder temperatures that enable energy-efficient cooling and the wide availability of land that’s well suited for renewable energy projects. While these factors certainly help, it would be a mistake to forget about everything else the region has to offer. The Nordic countries are poised to become a new digital hotbed within Europe because of their unique combination of robust digital infrastructure and a deeply ingrained culture of…

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To Get AI Right Tomorrow, Build Your Ecosystem of Partners Today

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 12:00:39 +0000

The possibilities for AI are exploding as companies explore new AI use cases—from translation tools to video surveillance to drug discovery. But launching an AI initiative is complex, and many enterprises aren’t sure where to begin or who to work with to get the outcomes they want. To succeed with AI, you need the right strategy and the right execution. As we speed into a future where AI is embedded everywhere, it’s important to consider many ingredients in the recipe for AI success—everything from your IT infrastructure to the partners and service providers you work with. Traditional infrastructure wasn’t designed…

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Protect Against Future Threats With a Programmable Backbone Network

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 14:00:02 +0000

Modern distributed infrastructure increasingly demands more flexible, dynamic networks. And with network threats becoming more frequent and costly, organizations need a backbone network that’s highly secure and reliable. As IT architectures evolve and next-generation technologies are embedded into more of our infrastructure, networking is evolving too. The backbone network plays an essential role in digital infrastructure. As the core network that interconnects various networks around the world, it is foundational to your entire infrastructure, helping to ensure seamless connectivity. With increasing use of automation, software-defined networking (SDN) and AI, we’re seeing a transformation of backbone networks into more dynamic, programmable…

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How to Do Private AI

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 12:00:58 +0000

While the potential benefits of AI speak for themselves, enterprises need a measured, strategic approach to pursue those benefits without placing their valuable intellectual property at risk. This is why many businesses are starting to build their own AI models, host those models on private infrastructure, and use only proprietary datasets to train them. This concept is known as private AI. Many enterprises now recognize that when they feed sensitive data into public AI services such as ChatGPT, that data gets trained into the model. In turn, this means the data could be exposed to anyone who uses the model…

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Delivering Future-Fit Cloud Architecture for Greater Agility

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 23:00:06 +0000

In today’s hyperconnected landscape, businesses worldwide need to reinvent themselves with digital-first strategies to increase opportunities and close profit performance gaps. CIOs are facing tremendous pressure to balance enterprise-wide agility and digital transformation, while juggling an increasingly distributed workforce, complex IT ecosystems, increasing IT/OT convergence, and inflation. As businesses become increasingly interconnected, they are under strain to ensure secure and efficient data exchange and collaboration – which has repercussions on data sovereignty, privacy, interoperability and compliance. There is also escalating pressure in dealing with data explosion, cyber security threats, ensuring the consistency of the customer experience across multiple touchpoints, and…

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Data Centers Enable Our Digital World—and Thriving Communities

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 02:00:44 +0000

Most people don’t think about data centers in the course of their day-to-day lives. Even as they use the internet for entertainment, directions, banking, shopping and more, they don’t consider that there are physical buildings somewhere that enable all of that. The term “cloud computing” actually has some believing all of that “magic” is happening somewhere out in the atmosphere. Since today is International Data Center Day, it’s the perfect opportunity to share the integral role data centers play in our modern society and economy. Data centers enable everything from content streaming and social media to automated manufacturing and global…

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Network Latency vs. Compute Latency

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 12:00:44 +0000

When we say the word “latency,” most people have a specific definition in mind: the delay that occurs while a system waits for a packet to finish moving over a network. This definition is technically correct, but it’s also incomplete. There are multiple types of latency, and this definition only accounts for one of them: network latency. As digital infrastructure has expanded to circle the globe and applications have become more distributed, it’s understandable that many people would be so focused on solving for network latency that they’d fail to consider any other kind. We believe it’s time for a…

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Digital Infrastructure 101: Our Top 7 Posts to Teach You the Basics

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 12:00:21 +0000

The scope of digital infrastructure continues to expand as businesses develop and deliver innovative digital products and services. IT leaders need to build a solid foundation of digital infrastructure to support participation in the digital economy and ensure exceptional customer experiences. This can include positioning IT infrastructure in a vendor-neutral colocation data center with cloud on-ramps to improve latency and strengthen resiliency with direct, private connections to cloud providers. Doing so sets them up to re-architect their services for global digital delivery and allows them to access the ecosystems and capabilities they need to thrive in an environment of…

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GPS-Based Timing Isn’t as Reliable as You Think—Here’s What to Do

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 12:00:09 +0000

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) play an integral role in our digital lives. Anyone who uses a smartphone for personal navigation is likely familiar with one of these systems, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the U.S. or Galileo in Europe. However, the impact of these satellites extends far beyond navigation. In addition to providing precise positioning data, GNSS signals are a source of precise timing. A wide range of modern digital applications depend on GNSS timing to work properly, and interruption of these signals can have significant consequences, as highlighted in a recent New York Times article….

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Overcoming Web3 Bottlenecks with Equinix Digital Services

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 23:00:14 +0000

Web3 promises to transform the way we interact, transact and collaborate online — poised to redefine the rules of engagement for a more equitable, efficient and resilient global ecosystem. One of the key issues that web3 aims to solve is the centralization of the Internet. Web3 envisions a more decentralized and democratized internet, where users have greater control over their data and digital assets. By leveraging blockchain, smart contracts and decentralized finance (DeFi), web3 seeks to reverse the trend of internet privatization and shift power back to individuals. Interconnection and digital infrastructure are essential for the development of web3…

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How AI Will Shape the Future of SD-WAN

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 12:00:45 +0000

In recent years, SD-WAN has become a well-established technology in enterprise networking, offering greater flexibility, scalability and cost effectiveness than traditional WANs relying on MPLS connections. As a result, the SD-WAN market has been growing and is expected to continue growing for the next several years. According to Gartner®, “the SD-WAN market is forecast to generate a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.6% in end-user spending from 2022 through 2027. There are plenty of compelling reasons why the SD-WAN market continues to blossom. Traditional MPLS-based networks can be more costly and time consuming to set up—sometimes requiring months to…

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Tapping into AI Model Marketplaces to Unlock Value: Part 1

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 12:00:57 +0000

AI has undeniably gone mainstream. Enterprises and technology vendors are eagerly looking for opportunities to use it to drive greater revenue, improve customer experiences and achieve other key business outcomes. But everything you need to succeed with AI isn’t necessarily within the four walls of your organization. AI often involves a complex ecosystem, including not just the various technologies but also the data sources and AI models. On the technology side, an AI solution ecosystem might include AI chips, systems and accelerators; data management and MLOps middleware; and AI platforms and services. But this ecosystem isn’t just the hardware, software…

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What Is Colocation? How Does it Enable Modern Digital Infrastructure?

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:00:00 +0000

In the digital economy, the companies that best manage their data will be the ones that thrive. That said, modern data management is a complex, multifaceted endeavor. Businesses must account for: Acquiring the right data—from internal systems, business partners and customers Segmenting and prioritizing data based on latency and security requirements Moving the right data at the right speed to balance performance and costs Storing data in the right locations—securely and cost-efficiently Processing data in the right locations Keeping data protected, whether it’s in use, in transit or at rest These points illustrate why business leaders often consider their data strategy a core element of their…

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Responsible IT Asset Disposal Drives Sustainability & Business Value

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 07:00:44 +0000

Today is Earth Day, with this year’s theme being “Planet vs. Plastics.” This is an opportunity to pause and reflect on how we can make smarter decisions about the materials we use—whether that means plastics, metals or others—to reduce our impact on planetary and human health. In the IT industry, responsible asset disposal is an important part of this equation. To keep up with the rapid pace of innovation and new customer demands, today’s businesses are transitioning to higher-density solutions and upgrading to the latest and greatest versions of memory, disks and processors. As this happens, the question becomes what…

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Get the Gbps Speed You Need to Transfer Big Data to AWS Cloud

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 17:35:28 +0000

Businesses must be able to scale their connectivity on demand to meet precise bandwidth requirements for running various types of workloads. AI modeling, massive data ingestion, autonomous driving (AD) testing, and other modern use cases are driving up demand for higher connection bandwidth to ingest, filter and analyze massive volumes of data—whether on-premises or in the cloud. Without adequate bandwidth, uploading and filtering data can take weeks or months before companies can begin to analyze it for critical insights. Starting today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced AWS Direct Connect 25 Gbps hosted connections are available to customers for private connectivity…

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Lisbon: A Digital Gateway Enabling Growth and Resilience

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 07:00:30 +0000

Subsea cables have existed for more than 150 years, but demand continues to grow. TeleGeography predicts that $11 billion in new cable systems will go into service between 2023 and 2025. Where this growth is happening is also important. Operators are adding capacity on established routes, but they’re also investing in new cables to emerging markets. This two-pronged approach will spur digital growth in new places while also making global digital infrastructure more resilient. As extreme weather, geopolitical conflicts and other threats arise, having more cables across more routes will provide redundancy and ensure the continued growth of our digital…

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How We Worked to Build a Better Future in 2023

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 12:00:30 +0000

Equinix recently launched our 2023 sustainability report. Our Future First sustainability strategy is designed to help us meet our long-term responsibilities to the planet, to our employees and the communities in which we operate, and to all the stakeholders who expect us to operate with integrity and transparency. While there will always be more to do going forward, today is an opportunity to pause and recognize how far we’ve come. In 2023, we played a leading role in balancing the growth of the digital economy against the environmental challenges facing our planet and communities. Lowering emissions and addressing the urgent threat…

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Fortify IT Security with Better Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 12:00:51 +0000

Identity and access management (IAM) is a framework that businesses use to address how they manage digital identities. An IAM framework includes technologies, policies and business processes that support better visibility into who users are and more control over what resources they can access. While it may seem a bit abstract, IAM is a critically important issue for organizations given increasing cybersecurity threats, pressure to protect corporate intellectual property, and regulatory scrutiny. IAM asks questions such as: How do we manage the unique identities of our users and devices? How do we authenticate those identities to ensure they have the right credentials? Who…

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Simplify virtual networking with integrated services from Equinix

Wed, 01 May 2024 12:00:10 +0000

Hybrid multicloud architectures give enterprises the flexibility and choice to put workloads where it makes the most sense—where they have the security, control and performance they need. That’s why hybrid multicloud has become the dominant architectural model, with 89% of organizations embracing multicloud and 73% using a hybrid approach that includes both public and private clouds. To thrive in this hybrid multicloud world, organizations need technology solutions that enable greater agility, fast global reach into new markets, and high-performance connectivity to essential partners and service providers. Virtual networking solutions have become indispensable, helping companies quickly connect to the right partners…

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How to Ensure Observability in Your Multicloud Environment

Wed, 08 May 2024 12:00:22 +0000

There’s a central conflict at the heart of cloud computing: Enterprises want flexibility and simplicity that they can only get from the public cloud, but they may have to sacrifice control and observability to get it. A lift-and-shift migration into a single cloud could help provide better control, but most enterprises now recognize the importance of a multicloud environment. When they start to integrate multiple clouds and services, that’s when things start to get really difficult. Working with multiple clouds and other service providers could mean managing various bespoke toolsets for observability and performance management. These tools would all reside…

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Protecting Data Centers Against Extreme Weather and Energy Instability

Tue, 14 May 2024 12:00:41 +0000

To enable global digital connectivity, data centers have proliferated in every corner of the world. Today’s distributed data centers have also become more interconnected, providing the foundation for our modern digital economy and society. At the same time, new threats to these data centers have also arisen. These threats include extreme weather, power shortfalls, malicious attacks and political instability. Couple these threats with the fact that our world is now more reliant on digital infrastructure than ever before, and the challenge becomes clear: Data center operators must do everything we can to make our facilities more reliable. Threats to data center…

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Mining: Technology and Innovation Vital to Managing through a Changing Landscape

Thu, 16 May 2024 09:05:03 +0000

Since 2021, we’ve been reporting on the mining industry to better understand the sector, the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, and the role technology will play in the future of mining. In our latest Equinix Mining Technology Report, it’s clear the global business landscape is experiencing significant change. With the ongoing geo-political tensions across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, we continue to experience economic volatility, which unsurprisingly has taken its toll on business confidence across many global markets, impacting most industries. As such, it’s important that we continue to provide a comprehensive view of the latest thinking and…

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Equinix Announces 2023 Global and Regional Partner Award Winners

Tue, 21 May 2024 07:00:55 +0000

Digital business is growing faster than ever as organizations rely on their trusted partner community to recommend and deliver customized offerings that will enable them to succeed. Over the last year, we have seen an increase in partners using Platform Equinix® to more closely collaborate and innovate on new offerings and services. The Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2024, a global market study published by Equinix, shows that organizations now connect with 30% more business partners in twice as many locations. The report predicts that by 2026, 80% of G2000 companies will interconnect with 4+ Hyperscale Providers and 30+ SaaS/business…

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Efficiency vs. Sustainability for Data Centers

Tue, 28 May 2024 12:00:45 +0000

Energy efficiency has become an unexpected hero in the colocation industry. If you look back a decade ago, there was very little interest in improving energy efficiency, and very little consensus on where to put it on the priority list. This old paradigm has changed. Getting more “juice from the squeeze” is now considered just as important as getting more oranges. In fact, it’s become so important that many people now use the terms “efficiency” and “sustainability” interchangeably. In reality, these are two separate but related initiatives. Data center operators must pursue both concurrently to responsibly meet the needs of…

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Tapping into AI Model Marketplaces to Unlock Value: Part 2

Thu, 30 May 2024 13:02:08 +0000

As organizations explore new opportunities with AI, the industry is rising to meet the need for more data, better models and the infrastructure to support it. Companies often need external data as well as AI foundation models to help them build their AI solutions. But AI is challenging, and many projects don’t make it to the finish line. According to 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, on average organizations abandon over one-third of their AI/ML projects before they enter production, with IT infrastructure performance the main driver of project abandonment. To change this, businesses are realizing that…

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Equinix Supports Malaysia’s Digital Future with New Facilities in Johor and Kuala Lumpur

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 23:00:54 +0000

Malaysia boasts a vibrant IT infrastructure and holds a strategic location at the heart of Southeast Asia. With extensive footprint across Asia-Pacific, Equinix entered Malaysia lately with the official opening of two state-of-the-art International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in Johor (JH1) and Kuala Lumpur (KL1). These dual metro facilities allow businesses in Malaysia to interconnect with over 10,000 organizations around the world, including 2,000 networks and 3,000 cloud and IT companies, which is essential to business success in today’s digital-first world. Recognizing the importance of ecosystems and interconnection, both global and local content, fintech, gaming and AI companies have made the strategic…

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What Is Data Center Heat Export and How Does it Work?

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 11:59:42 +0000

Digitalization is accelerating, which means every aspect of our lives produces increasing amounts of data. At the same time, the increased demand for enormous amounts of processing power to train AI models, implement digital transformation initiatives and operate always-on digital businesses is driving the need for higher-density racks of CPUs and GPUs that run constantly and produce residual heat. Data center operators focused on running sustainable operations have already taken steps to allow for higher temperatures in their buildings that align with the latest standards. In 2022, Equinix became the first colocation data center operator to expand temperature ranges to…

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How the European Data Act Could Impact Your Multicloud Strategy

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 07:00:29 +0000

Earlier this year, the European Data Act went into force. The stated goal of the Act is to set new rules that “define the rights to access and use data generated in the EU across all economic sectors and…make it easier to share data.” The Act is especially noteworthy at a time when enterprises increasingly rely on multicloud infrastructure to optimize workloads across different priorities. Ensuring the free flow of data between clouds is a prerequisite for a successful multicloud strategy, and it’s something that many businesses struggle to do on their own. In previous blog posts, my Equinix colleagues and…

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Building a Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation: Migrate to Efficient Data Centers

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 12:00:43 +0000

Sustainability has become both a business imperative and a social responsibility. Leading organizations are investing in foundational sustainable infrastructure to fuel responsible business growth. Not only is improving efficiency and reducing carbon emissions important for the planet and future generations; it can also increase your competitiveness and help future-proof your business. Hundreds of new regulations and pacts, including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in the EU and the SEC Climate Related Disclosures in the US, are driving greater interest in environmental sustainability by mandating that companies work to improve and accurately disclose emissions and other climate-related metrics. In addition,…

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Protecting Data Centers Against Emerging Cybersecurity Threats

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 12:02:45 +0000

In Part 1 of this blog series, my colleague Arno van Gennip discussed the integral role that distributed, interconnected data centers play in our digital society, and how the evolution of data centers has coincided with new and evolving threats. He focused specifically on operational threats like extreme weather conditions and unstable energy grids. While it’s essential for data center operators to acknowledge and plan for these threats, it’s equally important to consider the human angle—new security threats caused by malicious attackers and geopolitical conflict. In this follow-up blog, I’ll describe some of these threats and explore what data center…

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The Economic Benefits of Cloud Adjacent Storage

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 12:00:37 +0000

The value of business data is undeniable: Effectively using their data can help organizations deliver a better customer experience, understand market signals, design innovative products and services, and more. For these reasons, businesses that optimize their data architectures will realize competitive advantage. As data volumes are only expected to continue growing, the importance of that optimization will also increase. Public cloud infrastructure can provide the scalable capacity needed to keep up with massive data growth. However, public cloud services aren’t right for every workload. Many businesses need both scalability and on-premises-like control. A recent report from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG)…

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Top 3 Liquid Cooling Myths Debunked

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 12:00:06 +0000

As data-intensive capabilities like AI and machine learning (ML) become more prevalent, data centers are innovating to address evolving requirements. AI necessitates more powerful chips and AI accelerators—all of which demand a lot of power to deliver optimal performance. In turn, chip density is driving increased data center rack density, with some AI solutions climbing to over 100 kW per rack in just the last few years. All of this generates more heat, so we need to look at advanced cooling technologies to enable these compute-intensive workloads. Liquid cooling has reemerged as an important cooling solution to support high-density data…

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3 Ways to Modernize WANs

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 12:00:03 +0000

Time to market is a non-negotiable when operating in today’s digital economy. Companies must be agile enough to quickly pivot in response to evolving market dynamics and flexible enough to scale up or down on demand. So, if you’re trying to upgrade or modernize your wide area networks (WANs) with standard approaches, you might run into challenges. Waiting six to twelve months to get new connections up and running introduces the risk of getting left behind by your competitors. Businesses use WANs to connect users to applications, services and other resources across business locations, colocation facilities, cloud service providers and…

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Guide to Storage for AI – Part 1: Types of Storage in an AI Pipeline

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 12:00:51 +0000

Data management is one of the most important aspects of designing an end-to-end AI solution, in addition to factors like your AI infrastructure stack and AI algorithms. Data for AI can be multimodal, varying from small files like documents to very large objects like videos—and storage systems need to be able to handle it all. In an AI pipeline, multiple types of storage workloads exist with different capacity as well as different latency and throughput requirements, depending on the AI phase in the pipeline. In this first part of our guide to storage for AI, we’ll dive into the storage…

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Empowering Sustainable Digital Infrastructure in Asia-Pacific

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 23:00:59 +0000

The Asia-Pacific region is witnessing digital transformation at an extraordinary scale, with data centers as the backbone of this rapid digital growth. As the reliance on interconnected ecosystems and data-centric technologies becomes integral to everyday business and personal activities, the imperative for seamless and environmentally responsible digital infrastructure has intensified. In an era where the digital economy’s energy demands are surging, the adoption of efficient and sustainable solutions has transitioned from a mere option to an absolute necessity. At Equinix, we are acutely aware of the urgency of reaching climate neutrality and are dedicated to demonstrating how digital interconnectivity and…

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Why You Need a Multicloud Networking Strategy Now

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 12:00:14 +0000

Ninety-four percent of organizations are now using multiple public clouds, according to a recent survey by TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group. While many companies started out years ago using a single cloud provider, over time they added more clouds to take advantage of the strengths of each cloud and the best solutions for their business needs. Thus, many organizations, without intending to, have found themselves in a multicloud environment. Integrating cloud solutions that were introduced ad hoc can be quite a challenge. Multicloud networking—that is, networking between different cloud environments to facilitate the transfer of data—has become a necessity driven by…

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Building a Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation: Virtualize Networking Infrastructure

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 12:00:29 +0000

Sustainability is becoming a bigger driver of IT buying decisions, thanks to increasing regulation on climate reporting as well as growing consumer and investor demands. Environmental responsibility is an imperative for businesses now, and IT operations can be a big contributor to a company’s environmental impact—sometimes the biggest contributor. According to a report from S&P Global Market Intelligence, the number of organizations that have implemented or are developing formal targets for reducing environmental impact is on the rise. Some already have target dates for reaching net-zero carbon emissions. And half see IT operations as accounting for most or all of…

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Bypassing the Red Sea Bottleneck Could Lead to Big Opportunities

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 07:00:05 +0000

In an Equinix blog from 2021, we reviewed the factors affecting demand and consumption of internet content in the Middle East and their role in growing the region’s digital economies. We also highlighted the importance of the region as the primary corridor for intercontinental connectivity between Asia-Pacific, East Africa and Europe—albeit narrowly concentrated through the Red Sea and Egypt. Recent attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and the resulting subsea cable breaks have prompted renewed focus on building terrestrial and hybrid cable systems to enable a greater diversity of pathways for traffic passing through the region. There are many…

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How to Optimize GPU Utilization

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 12:00:48 +0000

For decades, CPUs have been the workhorse of the IT industry. Newer versions have added more processing power, but their basic architecture has remained unchanged. They still perform compute operations serially, completing one job before moving on to another. More recently, the introduction of GPUs has completely redefined what enterprises can accomplish with their compute hardware. Unlike CPUs, GPUs perform parallel operations. This helps them provide the very high throughput needed to process massive datasets. AI model training is one example of a data-driven use case that’s well-suited to run on GPUs. So much of the AI progress we’ve seen…

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One Day, This Blog Post Could Help Heat Your Living Room

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 12:00:54 +0000

Everything you do on the internet depends on servers running in interconnected data centers, and those servers inevitably create heat. Equinix is working to turn that heat into a valuable resource by exporting it to homes and businesses in our communities. We invited The B1M, the world’s largest video channel for construction, to take a closer look at data center heat export in action. The following video will take you inside Equinix PA10, our innovative data center in Paris. You’ll see how we’re using heat export to help with everything from growing strawberries in a rooftop greenhouse to heating a…

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Step Inside Equinix PA10 in Paris: 11 Stunning Photos

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 14:19:16 +0000

The Equinix PA10 International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) is part of our Saint-Denis campus and is our 10th data center in Paris. It provides global and local business and a partner alike with the ability to connect directly and securely to the world digital economy. PA10 was recently featured in a collaboration with The B1M, the world largest video channel for construction focusing on the how we’re using heat export to help with everything from growing strawberries and tomatoes in a rooftop greenhouse to heating a swimming pool being used in the upcoming Paris Summer Olympics. Covered by 100% renewable energy, PA10…

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4 Ways to Optimize Application Performance with Multicloud Networking

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 12:00:58 +0000

When businesses develop cloud applications, they typically start with one cloud for simplicity’s sake. However, almost all of them will end up doing some form of multicloud, for different reasons: They may want to ensure they’re getting the right mix of cloud services from different providers. They may want to take advantage of the experience their developers have with a particular cloud. They may even end up doing multicloud unintentionally by connecting with SaaS providers that are multicloud themselves. Regardless of why a business adopts multicloud, the question then becomes how to do it better. Effective multicloud networking can help ensure your end…

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Major Streaming Events Don’t Have to Break the Internet—and Here’s Why

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 07:00:48 +0000

The Olympic Games are a celebration of greatness in sports. Athletes participating in this year’s Games have worked for years to fine-tune their abilities, and now it all comes down to performing at their best over the next several weeks. Outside the Games themselves, there’s a similar story happening with broadcasters entrusted to deliver the action to millions of fans around the world. As a streaming event, the Olympics Games are unique. Everything about them is big, from the amount of content to the size of the global audience: The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris will feature 329 medal events across…

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Building a Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation: Virtualize Networking Infrastructure

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 12:00:29 +0000

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Chill Out with Liquid Cooling: Top Use Cases for Next-Gen Workloads

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 12:00:05 +0000

Liquid cooling technology is quickly growing in demand thanks to its ability to support a variety of cutting edge, compute-intensive workloads. In fact, more than a third of enterprise data centers are expected to employ some form of liquid cooling by 2026, according to a recent survey of IT professionals. That’s nearly double the number who reported using it in early 2024. With the rise of high-performance computing (HPC) and AI, the industry is seeing increased demand for compute power as well as denser data center deployments that use more power and emit more heat. Traditional air-cooling methods don’t have…

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6 Advantages of Cloud Adjacent Storage in Latin America

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 12:00:15 +0000

As organizations in Latin America embrace digital transformation, they’re increasingly adopting technologies like AI, ML and IoT to drive innovation and business growth. These emerging technologies involve large datasets and can put heavy demands on existing IT infrastructure. A strategic approach to data storage in modern enterprises often includes both public and private infrastructure. In a recent survey of business and IT leaders in Latin America, Frost & Sullivan found that 70% of Latin American companies say that a successful, competitive business requires a strategic, seamless hybrid or multicloud environment. And 48% of surveyed companies plan to adopt multicloud within…

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Ready-to-Run AI Deployment With HPE and Equinix

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 12:00:08 +0000

AI presents both challenges and opportunities for enterprises. They must navigate complex technologies, maintain rigorous data privacy and security, ensure scalability and manage costs effectively to harness AI’s full potential. Further, enterprises need the right tools and AI infrastructure to fast-track their AI initiatives. Business leaders are at various stages of deploying AI enterprise-wide, and some have yet to start. While the potential benefits of AI speak for themselves, enterprises need a measured, strategic approach to realize those benefits without placing their valuable intellectual property at risk. Many enterprises are developing AI strategies and transitioning to a private cloud instead…

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Guide to Storage for AI – Part 2: Where to Put Your AI Data

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 12:00:54 +0000

As organizations develop their AI strategies and design new AI solutions, figuring out where and how to store data for AI is crucial. Data storage decisions influence the performance, availability, cost and security of data. And the success of an AI project can depend on having the right data in the right place when you need it. In part 1 of our guide to storage for AI, we covered the different types of storage needed across an AI workflow. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some best practices for choosing where to store your data for AI. 5 best practices for…

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5 Considerations for Choosing Data Center Locations

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 12:00:56 +0000

Today’s IT leaders think a lot about critical workloads that generate revenue. However, not all of them think much about where they should run said workloads and the associated digital infrastructure. This could be a costly mistake. All enterprise workloads—even those running in the cloud—are hosted on physical servers somewhere. Where those servers live can have a big impact on performance, cost, resilience, compliance, security and more. Enterprises need to contemplate many variables as they locate their digital infrastructure, and few locations can meet every requirement a business might have. That’s why working with a global digital infrastructure provider like…

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IP-WAN vs. SD-WAN

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 12:00:42 +0000

For today’s enterprises, their network infrastructure is their lifeblood. It allows them to connect their IT assets around the world, and connect with the partners and customers that matter to their business. It’s no wonder so many of them are looking for ways to improve performance across those networks, while also optimizing costs, resilience, scalability and flexibility. These businesses have different networking technologies to help them achieve this goal. In recent years, the software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) has been among the most prominent of these technologies. Even today, it’s clear that the SD-WAN era isn’t over: IDC predicts that the…

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What’s Driving the Resurgence of Private Cloud?

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 12:00:04 +0000

The death of private cloud has been overstated. While many enterprises have pursued public cloud exclusively in recent years, some have learned the hard way that a simple lift-and-shift approach isn’t right for every workload. That’s why IDC predicts that spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure—a term that includes private cloud—will grow at 12.6% CAGR between 2023 and 2028, ultimately reaching $48.2 billion. Many enterprises see private cloud as a way to get the best of both worlds: The benefits of public cloud, including infrastructure agility and elasticity The control of private infrastructure, helping them avoid potential drawbacks such as security concerns and…

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4 Ways to Mitigate Risk with Multicloud Networking

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:00:13 +0000

Recent events have highlighted the importance of resilient digital infrastructure. Many companies have learned the hard way that they must be proactive about remediating risk and ensuring continuity. Working with the right partners can help, but it’s ultimately up to them to ensure their own systems will be ready when and where they need them. Public cloud services may not be perfect, but they can play an important role in reducing risk and improving resilience. They offer built-in scalability and geo-redundancy by default, and they make it easy for enterprises to diversify their infrastructure. But again, it’s up to cloud…

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Physical vs. Virtual Data Center Migrations

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 12:00:11 +0000

At some point in your IT career, you’re inevitably going to be called on to migrate equipment or business software systems. It can be a complicated and stressful process, and if you get it wrong, it could disrupt your company’s operations. In my career as an operational IT manager, I’ve led several migrations, and I’ve seen many more in my role at Equinix supporting customers as they build their future-looking IT systems in our interconnected, cloud adjacent Equinix IBX® colocation data centers. Moving critical IT assets and equipment quickly and smoothly requires detailed planning. In many cases, there’s not one…

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Supercharge Your Multicloud Strategy with Seamless Integration of Private & Public Clouds

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 12:00:16 +0000

At Equinix, the power of ecosystems is central to our business model. That’s why we’ve focused on building our colocation footprint in the global markets that are home to dense ecosystems of service providers and enterprises. We work to give our customers the services they need to quickly interconnect with ecosystem partners across the globe. That said, we don’t only advocate ecosystem partnerships for our customers; we also prioritize them for ourselves—as evidenced by Broadcom naming Equinix a VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) Pinnacle Partner in the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program. We’ll work with Broadcom to help our mutual enterprise…

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Ready for a Simpler Approach to Multicloud Networking?

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 18:59:37 +0000

The challenges enterprises face around network infrastructure are clear: They need to connect easily with multiple clouds for many reasons, including enhanced resilience, cost optimization, compliance, scalability, and the ability to quickly integrate different environments following M&A activity. They need the flexibility to change those connections as their business needs change, including adding capacity to support growing applications. And they need to do all that without sacrificing high performance, security or cost efficiency. With all these different factors to account for, it’s no wonder so many enterprise IT teams are looking for ways to simplify multicloud networking. Let’s look at…

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Aligning Cloud Agility and On-Premises Control

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 12:00:05 +0000

Today’s business leaders recognize that having agile and scalable digital infrastructure is a competitive advantage. By running the right workloads in the right places, enterprises can fully leverage demanding solutions like AI, meet customer expectations, and keep pace with an increasingly complex cybersecurity and regulatory landscape. Large enterprises have unique business and workload requirements concerning compliance, data sovereignty, performance and latency. They continue to invest in the modernization of critical workloads with specific and stringent needs. However, not all critical workloads are suitable for or ready to be moved to the public cloud. Enterprise customers are driven to move away…

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How Liquid Cooling Enables the Next Generation of Tech Innovation

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 12:06:14 +0000

There’s no doubt that AI is changing the face of the digital economy and business leaders are thinking about how to find the right IT infrastructure to support their company’s AI goals. At the same time, data center providers are keeping pace through innovation, achieving higher levels of performance, efficiency and sustainability, to adapt to changing demands and challenges. Liquid cooling is one such innovation. According to Gartner®, “Liquid cooling uses a liquid, such as water, or a refrigerant, rather than air, to cool the data center. This allows the cooling solution to be brought closer to the heat source,…

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Building a Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation: Access Sustainable Ecosystems

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 12:00:02 +0000

Companies are paying more attention to the importance of sustainability initiatives, as regulations increase around the world and consumers and business partners demand greater accountability for sustainability claims and targets. While many organizations now have decarbonization targets and see sustainability as a business imperative, they don’t always know what practical steps will help them achieve those goals. IT infrastructure can represent a substantial portion of a company’s carbon emissions, so designing a sustainable infrastructure foundation is critical to creating a sustainable business. There are several aspects to consider—from where you choose to put your infrastructure to the companies you choose…

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What the EU Artificial Intelligence Act Means for Your AI Strategy

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 07:00:00 +0000

The European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (the Act) took effect on August 1, starting a 24-month countdown until full enforcement begins for most of the regulations. The Act is one of the first binding, comprehensive AI legislations, and its impact will be felt far beyond Europe. Multinational businesses running any AI workloads in the EU will need to comply. Also, the Act will likely serve as inspiration for future AI regulations in other jurisdictions, just as the GDPR did for data privacy. While there could be greater fragmentation in the global AI regulatory framework as countries try to move AI…

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On-Premises vs. Colocation

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 12:00:38 +0000

I have been part of several private data center builds, and in my current role, I help many customers adopt Platform Equinix® to expand their footprint. My first foray into colocation came after the third time someone cut the communication cabling into the industrial park that our headquarters and on-premises data center were located in. On top of that, every time there was a big electrical storm, the local power distribution grid would go down, sometimes for hours. As the business expanded, and reliance on key IT systems increased dramatically, we needed a better answer to ensure reliability for our…

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What Is Cloud Adjacent Storage?

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 12:00:15 +0000

Many businesses have adopted a cloud-first strategy to support and deploy their applications. As such, they’ve expanded into a multicloud posture to maximize elasticity and support global operations. But this strategy has some drawbacks, specifically around predictable costs, security, and more importantly, the data that needs to be generated and stored. No single cloud provider is right for every workload, and while most enterprises recognize the benefits of multicloud, they often struggle to fully realize those benefits. If these businesses don’t approach the cloud with a carefully considered strategy, they may not be able to get insights and visibility into…

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Dell PowerStore on Equinix Metal: High-Performance Storage as a Service

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 12:00:57 +0000

Tackling today’s significant data storage challenges requires a robust data storage and management strategy to overcome obstacles such as acceleration of data growth, high storage costs and rising regulatory requirements. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to storage given the wide range of complex enterprise workloads. Public cloud storage can be inexpensive to set up but often results in higher costs down the road, and it can offer limited enterprise-class features. Private storage infrastructure, on the other hand, can increase security and control and reduce costs over the long run. When it comes to building foundational digital infrastructure, companies have many choices—and most…

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Including Private AI in Your Digital Infrastructure Strategy

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 12:00:05 +0000

Digital transformation has been at the center of business strategy for the past decade. It involves using digital technologies to fundamentally change how a business operates and delivers value. The concept represents a culture shift so significant that the term has evolved from digital transformation to digital business. A digital business doesn’t just go through a one-time transformation; it adopts a continuous innovation mindset that is able to adapt to rapidly changing business requirements and operating environments. The Impact of AI Simultaneously, there have been rapid advances in AI. These two worlds collided in 2023 as business leaders were introduced to…

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From Data to Trust: Achieving Digital Transparency with Hybrid Infrastructure

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 23:00:44 +0000

In an era where the digital landscape is rapidly evolving, the quest for authenticity and reliability in the information we consume has never been more critical. As we delve into the complexities of our interconnected world, we find ourselves at a crossroads where the integrity of data is often questioned. This is largely due to the fact that many artificial intelligence (AI) systems operate as “black boxes”, making it challenging to understand how decisions are made. This lack of transparency complicates accountability and trust, fostering skepticism and fear about the potential consequences of these technologies. This trust deficit underscores…

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What Is an Edge Data Center?

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 12:00:29 +0000

The CIO of a fast-growing SaaS company recently told us that the organization was starting to break the limits of their current infrastructure. Their platform—used by thousands of customers for real-time data analytics—was seeing more complaints about slow response times during peak usage hours outside of their default market. “Every time we get a traffic spike, we’re hit with performance issues,” the CIO said. “It’s frustrating. We’ve optimized everything we can in our core data centers, but our customers in more remote regions are still experiencing latency and performance issues. We’re losing deals because of it, and it is…

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Building a Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation: Deploy Sustainably at the Edge

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 12:06:42 +0000

While companies fast-track the adoption of cutting-edge, energy-intensive technologies like AI to gain new insights and drive business growth, they’re also focused on building a more sustainable digital infrastructure foundation for their businesses. Balancing these priorities is imperative. Sustainability regulations and reporting are on the rise globally, and more customers and partners want to work exclusively with suppliers that prioritize all aspects of sustainability: social, economic and environmental. IT infrastructure can significantly contribute to a company’s overall environmental footprint, extending beyond carbon emissions. By prioritizing sustainability across their complete value chain, businesses can not only reduce their carbon impact but…

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Are Public Cloud Costs Breaking Your Budget?

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 12:01:14 +0000

It’s been a couple years since my blog post about the hidden costs of cloud computing. Since then, major cloud providers have signaled their intentions to do something about the problem of high data egress fees, inspired by the new European Data Act and the possibility of similar regulations in other jurisdictions. It’s worth revisiting the topic now to see what’s changed and what hasn’t. It’s true that some major cloud providers have announced they’re removing data egress fees, but as a recent report from Data Center Dynamics points out, this may only apply in certain situations, such as when…

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How Data Centers Use Water, and How We’re Working to Use Water Responsibly

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 12:00:14 +0000

The decisions that go into designing a new data center will stay in place for many years to come. For instance, the cooling solutions we put into a new data center often determine how the facility will consume vital resources such as water and energy. Equinix is committed to using water responsibly, which means we include a number of considerations about the local water context as we design our data centers, and we operate them efficiently. Last year, we were designing a new data center project in an area where the public had concerns about water stress. The facility was…

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4 Ways to De-Risk Data Storage and Optimize Cloud Workloads

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 12:00:21 +0000

Whenever we speak with our customers, they tell us that data storage is a top concern. Data is the lifeblood of any organization, and many of them are in the habit of retaining all their data. As the volume continues to grow exponentially, organizations need to be confident their data is secure and easily accessible by applications and workloads. Doing this in complex hybrid multicloud environments is especially challenging. With data volumes rapidly increasing, businesses require high-performance, scalable and cost-effective storage solutions to harness AI and other data-intensive technologies. As innovation accelerates, access to vast amounts of data is crucial…

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Is Your Global Network Resilient? 3 Ways to Ensure Connectivity

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 12:00:18 +0000

Recently, the IT leadership team at a large global bank was sharing worries about the impact of regional geo-political events and subsea cable cuts on their network’s resiliency. Since several of the bank’s mission-critical applications depend on a high-performance network, they had decided it was time to deploy secondary and tertiary network backbones to boost resiliency. The concerns of this bank aren’t unique; in fact, network resiliency is critical for organizations across industries. A fast, secure network keeps applications working and ensures business continuity. Most enterprises have distributed users and applications across the globe. To stay competitive and protect their…

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To Modernize IT, State and Local Agencies Need a New Approach

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 12:00:59 +0000

Recently, we met with the CIO of a major U.S. city. When asked about his vision for the future, he made one point very clear: He wants the city to get out of the data center business. He knows that shifting this burden would free him to focus on what really matters: Delivering better service for citizens. We’ve heard the same thing from other state and local agencies throughout the country. They recognize the need to build for the future, but they know they can’t do that with their legacy infrastructure hanging around their necks. Their on-premises data centers lock…

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To Get AI Right Tomorrow, Modernize Your Network Today

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 12:00:07 +0000

Imagine a large regional healthcare provider that wants to make more data-driven decisions aligned to their mission of providing compassionate care. They start exploring AI initiatives to enable more personalized patient experiences and better patient diagnostics. The organization’s IT leaders have already adopted a hybrid multicloud architecture and experimented with some AI services in the cloud. However, as soon as they start to assess the infrastructure requirements for successful large-scale AI solutions, it’s clear that the healthcare system’s aging network is a limitation. They’re already struggling with application latency, so launching new AI applications would put further strain on the…

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What Are Green Bonds? How Are They Used in the Data Center Industry?

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 12:10:39 +0000

Most businesses recognize the importance of reducing carbon emissions and increasing efficiency in their operations. However, one area that is often misunderstood is how projects that drive sustainability progress are financed. Green bonds are one example of a financing mechanism that can help companies align their financing needs with their sustainability strategy. Green bonds can serve as an important tool in a business’s capital structure while allowing debt investors to support projects with clear environmental benefits. By tapping into the green bond market, organizations can access a broader pool of capital from potential investors. Green bond issuers may also benefit from…

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Inside a High-Performance Data Center: Part 1—Compute, Storage and Networking

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 12:00:26 +0000

Data centers may appear unassuming from the outside, but inside, they hold the infrastructure that makes our digital world work. As the volume of data increases, it’s becoming one of the most valuable resources in the modern world. More storage and processing power are needed, so the data center industry is growing. AI and edge computing are also driving a need for more data centers around the world. High-performance data centers like Equinix IBX® data centers house compute, storage and networking equipment, as well as power and cooling systems. They also serve as a neutral meeting place for the world’s…

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3 Key Insights into the Role of the Philippines in the Digital Rise of Southeast Asia

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 03:13:14 +0000

Southeast Asia is rapidly emerging as a global digital hub, with countries across the region making significant strides in digital transformation. Among these digitalizing markets, the Philippines stands out; ending 2023 as the fastest-growing economy across Southeast Asia at a rate of 5% — just shy of the government’s target of 6% to 7%. Should projections hold, the Philippines is expected to once again show significant growth in 2024, demonstrating its resilience despite various global economic pressures. At the core of this development lie three pivotal elements that are shaping the digital domain of the Philippines. The nation is swiftly…

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Has Your Business Outgrown the Public Cloud? Consider Hybrid Infrastructure

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 12:00:54 +0000

Businesses of all types and sizes are rethinking their relationship with the public cloud. This even includes the cloud natives: companies that have grown up with the convenience and scalability of platforms like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. As these cloud native companies scale and mature, many of them start to feel like they’ve outgrown the public cloud—at least for certain use cases. They’re discovering that hybrid infrastructure offers unique advantages that complement and even enhance their cloud strategies. Many of them are using colocation data centers as the foundation for their hybrid infrastructure. Working with the right colocation partner,…

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What Is a Cable Landing Station?

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 12:00:41 +0000

The world is becoming a more connected place, and we have subsea cables to thank for that. Any time you connect with other parts of the world over the internet—whether it’s to communicate with loved ones, shop from a favorite brand or stream global events like the Olympics—that data traffic almost certainly crosses subsea cables to reach you. In fact, you may even have accessed this very blog post via subsea cables. The way these cables move data across vast oceans in mere milliseconds is an engineering marvel, but it wouldn’t count for much without a way to reliably get…

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Don’t Just Migrate Data Centers—Evolve to a Future-Proof Platform

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 11:59:53 +0000

Picture this: The CIO of a major airline has a vision for making some big changes to her organization’s IT infrastructure. After decades of running a private, on-premises data center at company headquarters, it’s time to evolve their infrastructure strategy. The company is eager to elevate customer experiences and improve operational efficiency, and they know that legacy infrastructure and technical debt are holding them back. The CIO is passionate about getting out of the data center business and migrating the airline’s digital infrastructure to a global colocation provider that can help them connect with key clouds, network services, SaaS…

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4 Ways a High-Performance Data Center Could Help Your Business

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 12:00:27 +0000

CIOs, CTOs and other technical leaders are a diverse group with different backgrounds and priorities. But there’s one thing that makes them alike: They all have better things to do with their time than manage a data center. These leaders have long looked to colocation services to help offload this unwanted chore, giving them more time to focus on their core responsibilities. However, not all colocation data centers are equal. By deploying in a high-performance data center, businesses can get benefits that extend far beyond space and power. In fact, the right colocation partner can help them tackle some of…

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Is Your Data Center Slowing You Down?

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 07:00:30 +0000

In our rapidly changing digital world, businesses must adopt advanced technologies to avoid falling behind the competition. To make the most of those technologies, they need to increase digital infrastructure capacity quickly and ensure they have a reliable power supply for that infrastructure. At the same time, businesses must take tangible steps to ensure that increased energy consumption doesn’t derail their sustainability priorities. Doing all this can be challenging, but doing it with legacy on-premises data centers is essentially impossible. With the right digital infrastructure, businesses can reframe these challenges as opportunities. Colocation services empower companies to move away from private…

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Which Data Centers Are Right for Your AI Workloads?

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 12:00:56 +0000

Most people recognize that AI can’t happen without data centers. But not everyone knows that what we call “AI” isn’t just one process happening in one place. It’s a series of interrelated workloads distributed across different types of data centers in different locations, and there’s often nuance required when it comes to determining which workloads should go where. These AI workloads can be divided into three main categories: AI model training: How organizations develop their models. This involves processing massive volumes of data in order to establish pattern recognition. AI inference: How organizations apply their models. This involves making predictions based on…

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Deploying State-of-the-Art AI Infrastructure at Speed

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 12:00:50 +0000

AI technology is evolving at lightning speed, revolutionizing how companies use their data for business insights. As AI reshapes industries, organizations are facing huge hurdles to build the right supporting infrastructure that provides flexibility, security, privacy, and predictability around performance and cost. Data is, after all, the most precious resource companies have. They need a way to incorporate it into their AI strategy without placing it at risk. Launching emerging AI solutions comes with hefty IT requirements. In addition to the right AI models and algorithms, organizations need: Powerful GPU hardware for AI compute The latest in data center power and cooling…

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Ready to Implement Hybrid Infrastructure? Learn 3 Steps to Get Started

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 12:00:47 +0000

If you’re like many business leaders today, you’re thinking of moving away from a cloud-first strategy. You may be doing so for different reasons, such as avoiding higher-than-expected costs, addressing concerns around privacy and compliance or ensuring the flexibility to deploy the right workloads in the right locations. You may have heard that hybrid infrastructure can help with these and other cloud challenges. If so, you’re likely wondering what the first step in your hybrid infrastructure journey would be. In our previous blog post, we established that both cloud natives and traditional enterprises are converging on a hybrid infrastructure strategy. We…

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Responsible AI Starts with Transparency

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 12:00:17 +0000

AI models are already driving how decisions get made in enterprise settings, but there’s potential for them to do even more. Companies are looking for opportunities to apply AI to optimize every aspect of their operations, and they know they need to do it before the competition does. One challenge preventing more AI adoption is a lack of transparency. Many modern AI models are essentially black boxes; no one can truly explain why they return the results they do. This fact limits the responsible application of AI across industries. For example, AI can help doctors make informed diagnoses quicker, but…

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Inside the Haunted Data Center

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:33:30 +0000

After five years working at Equinix data centers in Ashburn, I was ready for a change. A position opened in the new data center at Strawberry Hill Manor, and I jumped at the chance. I’d heard the old stories about Strawberry Hill, but I consider myself a rational thinker. I wasn’t going to be scared away. Right away, there were signs our new facility wasn’t like other data centers. For one thing, building a data center inside a sprawling Gothic villa from the 1700s was an odd choice. Apparently, the company got a great deal on the property after the…

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Inside a High-Performance Data Center: Power, Cooling and Exterior Features

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 13:00:33 +0000

Data centers are becoming an increasingly important part of our world since they hold the infrastructure that makes the digital world work. High-performance data centers like Equinix IBX® data centers not only house key infrastructure elements like compute, storage and networking equipment; they also provide power and cooling equipment to keep everything operating smoothly. Whether a company is focused on AI, sustainability, multicloud adoption, geographic expansion, digital transformation or all of the above, data centers are the foundation. But they can be mysterious to outsiders, so in this two-part blog series, we’re giving you an inside view. My previous blog post…

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How to Get AI-Ready in Europe

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 08:00:22 +0000

In my many conversations with Equinix customers, a common theme has emerged: Many of them understand the potential of AI but don’t feel they’re truly ready to capitalize on it. They’re often struggling to get the powerful hardware they need to support AI workloads in all the right places. Or, they may need help making sure they’re getting the full power of that hardware. Organizations around the globe are facing these same challenges, but there are certain factors unique to Europe that could make AI adoption especially difficult. Let’s consider a few of these and what you can do to…

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5 Ways to Future-Proof Your Business with High-Performance Data Centers

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 13:00:20 +0000

Most business leaders know they need the right digital infrastructure in the right locations. But they can’t plan just for today; they need to prepare for whatever the future might hold. This isn’t easy to do, because they don’t know what the future will hold. They have to be ready for anything, and they need data centers that can help them do that. Legacy on-premises data centers don’t provide the flexibility needed to future-proof a digital business. Upgrading these data centers is expensive and time-consuming. By the time you complete one upgrade, your needs will have changed again, and you’ll…

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What Is Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) in Data Centers?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 13:00:33 +0000

Data centers play a key role in our modern digital society, so it’s no surprise that people are paying more attention to how data centers consume vital resources such as water and energy. Data center operators like Equinix are dedicated to using these resources responsibly. In order to do that, we must be able to measure and report that use accurately. This is where water usage effectiveness (WUE) can help, especially if there’s better understanding of the context and limitations of its use. WUE is a metric used to quantify how efficiently a data center uses water. It compares the…

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What Is a Hyperscale Data Center?

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 13:00:46 +0000

Where is the cloud? It’s a simple question, but one that relatively few people stop to ask. This is despite the fact that cloud computing plays a key role in essentially every aspect of our modern digital lives. Contrary to popular belief, the cloud doesn’t just exist out there in the ether. It’s true that end users can access it from almost anywhere, but that doesn’t mean that the cloud itself is everywhere. In reality, the cloud is made up of interconnected servers and other infrastructure running inside physical data centers. Specifically, cloud providers rely on one particular kind of data…

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What Are Agentic AI Workflows?

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 13:00:06 +0000

Although generative AI still feels new and innovative, we’re already approaching the two-year anniversary of the launch of ChatGPT. It’s safe to say that we’re now firmly in the GenAI era. In fact, it’s been long enough that some people may be starting to wonder whether GenAI has lived up to the considerable hype, and if not, why not? There’s no question that GenAI is capable of great things, but it isn’t enough to enable many enterprise-class use cases. Current GenAI workflows are limited in several different ways. That’s why a new class of AI, known as agentic AI, is…

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Inside a Digital Fortress: Touring an Equinix Data Center

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 13:00:43 +0000

Data centers: They’re something most people don’t think about every day, but they’re the foundation of the technologies we all rely on. Data centers house the infrastructure that makes everything from financial trading to online gaming to digital healthcare possible. While they might operate out-of-sight and out-of-mind for the average person, they’re the backbone of our digital world. Equinix recently had the opportunity to partner with the popular YouTube channel – Linus Tech Tips for an amazing, behind-the-scenes tour of one of our Toronto facilities. Linus Sebastian, co-founder of Linus Media Group, provides a fascinating and educational close-up look at…

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How Can You Future-Proof Your AI-Driven Data Strategy?

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 16:00:09 +0000

Think of your enterprise AI strategy like a rocket. You can have the best design and the brightest minds behind it, but without the right fuel, it’ll never leave the launchpad. The fuel that AI needs is data, and the good news is that enterprises certainly no longer have to worry about finding enough AI data. Now, it’s about getting the right data, and using it in the right ways. Datasets are growing, both in volume and complexity. We’re capturing data in ways we wouldn’t have thought possible before. Take manufacturing, for example: 15 years ago, factories tracked production levels and…

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How AI Infrastructure Supports Training, Inference and Data in Motion

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 13:04:53 +0000

The rapid growth of AI data—across training and inference workloads and all points in between—is increasing demand for high-performance compute infrastructure. Further, complex and data-intensive AI applications require hybrid multicloud connectivity to enable faster data transfers between critical workloads. Enterprises are struggling with outdated on-premises data centers that lack compute capacity and power, high-density cooling capabilities and the scalable infrastructure required to support AI workloads. They’re navigating a complex AI landscape driven by specific business needs and data residency, privacy and sovereignty considerations. While public clouds may be an option for hosting AI projects, concerns about privacy, vendor lock-in and…

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Infrastructure Matters: How AI-Ready Data Centers Can Kickstart Innovation

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 13:00:28 +0000

Data is the fuel for AI, and your AI success depends on it. For years, enterprises have faced growing volumes of data and increasing data complexity. While nearly every business is eager to get up to speed with AI, many feel they’re not ready to capture AI’s potential. Infrastructure is a big piece of that puzzle, since AI requires the most reliable, secure, interconnected, high-performance infrastructure on the market. The best way for enterprises to effectively leverage all their data for AI is to employ state-of-the-art, high-performance infrastructure that can meet their needs both now and in the future. This…

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Protect Your Sensitive Data: The Top 3 Use Cases for Private AI

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 13:05:25 +0000

Picture a large international bank that wants to employ agentic AI to detect fraud and offer more personalized financial advice to their customers. With AI, the bank can continuously monitor transactions in real time and use AI-powered robo-advisors to provide financial recommendations. But because of regulatory considerations in their industry and the sensitivity of financial data, they must prioritize data privacy and sovereignty in any enterprise AI initiative. They don’t want to miss out on the opportunity with AI, but they also can’t risk exposing sensitive data or intellectual property. Since the AI boom began, industries that require greater control…

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How Secure Connectivity Helps Make AI Real and Future Proof

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 13:00:25 +0000

With the accelerating evolution of AI and its voracious appetite for data, connecting AI workloads and data is more critical than ever. Doing so privately and securely is a given, as is the need for high performance and low latency. As businesses expand their operations, their sources and volume of data increase in parallel. They rely on an increasing number of service providers and industry partners to help fast-track their growth, and they must be able to connect with those partners and providers on demand. They need to consider several factors as they plan their AI-ready network infrastructure, such as: Best-fit…

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Cloud Rebalancing: What You Need to Know About Data Center Density

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 12:58:43 +0000

As companies optimize their IT environments to balance price and performance, many are considering moving some workloads out of the cloud. An IDC report from June 2024 found that about 80% of survey respondents “expected to see some level of repatriation of compute and storage resources in the next 12 months.” There are several factors driving this change: escalating cloud costs, security and privacy concerns, unmet expectations, fear of vendor lock-in and the need for more compute power. Whatever the reasons, organizations are relocating some workloads to on-premises and colocation data centers. For many enterprises, this is a move “back”…

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Emerging Tech Trends in Australia: What to Expect in 2025

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 02:29:42 +0000

In 2024 the pace of technological change has been relentless, and 2025 is set to be no different. Organisations and leaders across industries must stay ahead of these shifts to unlock the full potential of emerging technologies, and overcome some of the challenges they present, to drive growth and manage risk. At Equinix, we remain dedicated to enabling this continued evolution by providing resilient digital infrastructure and the services that organisations need to thrive. As we look to 2025, here are four trends expected to shape Australia’s business and technology landscape, from advances in cybersecurity to the nation’s potential emergence as…

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Why You Need Data Governance in Your Enterprise AI Strategy

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:02:16 +0000

A future-proof AI strategy can position enterprises to capitalize on the business value of their data for years to come. However, they also need to ensure they don’t lose control over that data in the process. That’s why data governance is an essential part of any effective AI strategy. With the right approach to data governance, you can ensure data privacy and avoid unexpected regulatory penalties. If data is the fuel that moves your enterprise AI strategy, then you must use the right data in the right places. For one thing, emerging regulations may include requirements to track the lineage…

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4 Digital Infrastructure Trends in Asia-Pacific for 2025

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 02:10:32 +0000

As we wrap up 2024, technological change continues to accelerate. Business leaders know that staying ahead means quickly adapting to these changes and harnessing them to drive growth. At Equinix, we’re committed to helping you navigate this evolution with resilient digital infrastructure and essential data center services. Let’s explore four key trends that can transform how you do business in the Asia-Pacific region in 2025 and beyond. Trend 1: Enterprises are adopting hybrid AI infrastructure While the initial AI boom rode the wave of public cloud-based large language models (LLMs), we’re seeing a significant shift in how businesses approach AI deployment. Many…

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There to Here, Here to There: Infrastructure Is Everywhere

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 13:00:08 +0000

IT infrastructure has gone mainstream. As 2024 comes to a close, it’s now widely understood outside the IT industry that data centers play a vital role in everyday life. They provide critical infrastructure that enables everything from online shopping and financial transactions to healthcare, digital communication, social media, emergency services, transportation and much more. While data centers have been around for a long time, we need them more than ever in today’s data-driven world. Perhaps you remember this quote from the popular children’s book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss: “From there to here, from…

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How AI is Influencing Data Center Infrastructure Trends in 2025

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 13:03:57 +0000

Enterprise AI is still in its infancy, with emerging use cases poised to drive fundamental shifts across industries that are comparable to the transformative effects of the internet, mobile and cloud technologies. The internet changed everything about how business was done. AI is going to change everything about how business is done. It’s just that fundamental. What we’re seeing is a similar pattern to the dot-com era, where there are the companies trying to capitalize on the early wins and others that are in it for the long term. Those with a long-term view are taking a more structured and…

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Government Agencies Must Modernize Their Data Strategies

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 13:00:01 +0000

In our many conversations with public sector agencies, we’ve noticed an interesting trend in recent years: We still hear from agency CIOs and CTOs, but we often find ourselves working with chief data officers as well. The role itself isn’t new, but CDOs are increasingly responsible for guiding their agencies’ digital infrastructure priorities. It’s no secret what’s driving this shift. New technologies are emerging that make data more valuable than ever—but only if agencies have the infrastructure needed to properly capture, store, process and move that data. At the same time, new threats are emerging that put data at risk. This…

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Interconnection: The Backbone of AI-Ready Data Centers

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 13:03:41 +0000

AI is helping humanity tackle all kinds of real-world problems, from fraud detection to customer service optimization to healthcare research and treatment. It’s revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of diseases like cancer by improving cancer detection, drug development and personalization of care, while accelerating medical research. IT infrastructure is at the heart of this work. For instance, AI requires significant compute power to analyze huge volumes of data from across numerous hospital systems and healthcare institutions. The many participants in the healthcare ecosystem need ways to securely integrate and exchange all this data. And compliance with regulatory and privacy requirements…

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Can the Arabian Peninsula Become a Global Digital Crossroads?

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 08:05:43 +0000

My previous Equinix blog post detailed new infrastructure projects intended to meet international demand for diverse telecommunications routes through the Middle East, bypassing the Red Sea. In that blog post, I also related some of the geopolitical, telecom regulatory, technical and commercial hurdles that must be overcome to realize the vision of terrestrial diversity at appropriate scale. But there’s an important perspective not covered in that previous post: how the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations in particular—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—stand to benefit from addressing these challenges. Can we identify the key factors that would help…

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The Intelligent Age: Bridging the Visible and Invisible in a Tech-Driven World

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:00:55 +0000

Introduction:25 years as the leader in data centers …

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How Financial Firms Can Get AI-Ready

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 13:00:01 +0000

When it comes to AI in financial services, we can divide things into two generations: The present (classical AI) The future (generative and agentic AI) Today, classical AI is widely used across the industry. In fact, banks have been using it for decades now. In the early days, they called it by different names, including “machine learning” and “business analytics.” Over the years, they’ve gotten very good at using predictive models for use cases like fraud detection and risk modelling. As the next generation of GPUs are deployed, classical AI will evolve fast, and models will be able to process much larger datasets…

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Unveiling the Hidden Material That Weaves Together Our Digital Lives

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 08:00:11 +0000

For the majority of people, the internet is fully integrated into our daily lives. In the 30+ years since it became publicly available, it has revolutionized communication, healthcare, education, business operations, entertainment and so much more. Today, the internet is so deeply embedded in our lives and work that it feels intangible. But there’s a hidden physical world behind all our digital experiences—a world of fiber-optic cables, routers, switches, firewalls, satellites, subsea cables, and, of course, the data centers where much of the world’s technology infrastructure lives. These material elements, along with the teams of engineers who keep them operating,…

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Run Your AI Inference at the Edge to Unlock Insights Faster

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 13:00:45 +0000

Businesses are advancing their AI strategies quickly, from accumulating knowledge to training models. Now that training models are more mature, vertical-specific and trusted, we expect companies to spend more time on AI inference, particularly at the edge. Edge computing for AI inference enables real-time decision-making for use cases across many industries. Processing data locally, in proximity to data sources, reduces latency, ensures compliance and allows organizations to react immediately to AI inference insights. This is crucial for sectors such as healthcare, transportation and manufacturing, where milliseconds matter. Running AI inference at the edge also increases overall efficiency, enhances data privacy and…

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How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek—Again

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 13:08:12 +0000

More than a decade ago, we started our How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek series. The idea was to help more people understand the terminology used by those of us who think about data centers every day. Over the years, How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek has been among the most popular series on this blog. Even today, many people are still reading posts from the very early days of the series, written way back in 2013. We’re glad that people are still interested in those older blogs, but the industry has changed so much since…

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How to Implement Network Automation in Your Cloud Native Environment

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 13:00:39 +0000

Modern organizations often operate environments that include multiple locations, connections and clouds, thus leading to networking complexity. Automating the deployment and configuration of these networking resources enables teams to manage infrastructure as code (IaC), deploy consistently across environments and improve agility while maintaining rigid security requirements. In a cloud native environment, administrators must rethink how they design networks for applications and services. They need to consider the dynamic provisioning and scaling of the resources that their applications use, how to communicate with those resources through service meshes and how to automate security for all components on the platform. To successfully implement…

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Top 5 Observability Tools for Hybrid Multicloud Environments

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 13:23:30 +0000

Getting all your cloud providers, environments and platforms to work well together can be extremely difficult. You have to contend with inconsistent monitoring and logging practices, integrate and correlate data from various silos, and manage different configuration settings. You also have to ensure low latency and high performance, balance costs, and maintain consistent security and compliance across environments. Thankfully, all these challenges can be addressed with a well-thought-out strategy that hinges on the tools you use. Third-party monitoring and observability tools provide insights into your environments’ complex functions and behaviors. A well-rounded observability tool can help you address the common…

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A Guide to Virtual Firewalls for Multicloud Environments

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:00:23 +0000

Ensuring network security is a must for every enterprise, but in the evolving landscape of distributed hybrid multicloud IT environments, security has gotten a great deal more complicated. Meanwhile, network security threats are on the rise and have become more sophisticated: Everything from data leaks to ransomware attacks to DDoS attacks and malware threaten the security of enterprise assets. For the typical global company, infrastructure is spread across many locations, from core infrastructure to edge data centers around the world, as well as many domains, including multiple clouds and SaaS solutions. The potential attack surface for such companies is huge….

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GPUs Don’t Matter if Your Data Isn’t Ready

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 13:00:44 +0000

These days, it seems like everyone in enterprise IT is talking about GPUs, and thinking about how to get the GPU capacity (and associated power and cooling) they need. It’s easy to see why: GPUs are becoming more powerful and enabling advanced use cases that never would have been possible before now. While GPUs have been groundbreaking for AI development, they don’t have to be the centerpiece of every enterprise AI strategy. Most organizations don’t need to train models from scratch; instead, they can leverage pretrained models from providers like Hugging Face and fine-tune them for their specific needs. This…

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Balancing the Equation: How Enterprise IT Leaders Can Deploy AI Without Derailing Sustainability Goals

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 13:06:17 +0000

As enterprises look to capitalize on AI, there are many infrastructure challenges they’ll need to address. They’ll need to store and manage large volumes of data. They’ll need scalable compute to process all that data. And they’ll need high-performance networks to move that data between processing locations. As AI workloads continue to drive greater processing requirements, many enterprises are looking to deploy powerful GPU hardware to keep up with those requirements. In turn, they’ll need to deploy those GPUs inside data centers that can support higher rack density and provide advanced cooling technology. These high-density data centers will have higher…

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How to Tackle Data Center Density Challenges During Cloud Repatriation

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 13:00:41 +0000

Escalating cloud costs, privacy and security concerns, fear of vendor lock-in: These are just a few of the reasons why companies are moving workloads out of the cloud. As organizations optimize their IT environments, some are moving workloads back to the data center, while others (think: cloud natives) are making their first foray into a hybrid infrastructure model. Cloud repatriation, or cloud rebalancing, makes sense if you’re looking to reduce overall spending and get more control over your infrastructure. Partnering with the right provider means you can have the best of both worlds—taking advantage of relevant public cloud offerings while…

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How Life Science and Healthcare Organizations Can Get AI-Ready

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 14:58:43 +0000

The rise of AI and data-driven insights has brought significant transformation to medical research and patient care. In the life sciences, from pharmaceutical manufacturers to biotechnology companies to genomics researchers, we’re seeing unprecedented breakthroughs thanks to largescale data analysis. Healthcare providers, in turn, are rethinking care delivery, offering more personalized medical treatment and disease prevention. Increasingly, these sectors are merging, as data-driven research in the life sciences influences and shapes direct patient care. The life science and healthcare ecosystem is responsible for a deluge of data that’s increasing exponentially every year. Sources can include: Data from genomics, proteomics and other omics…

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Efficiently and Sustainably Transform the Enterprise with AI

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 13:00:10 +0000

For modern enterprises, implementing AI can be revolutionary. For instance, one major pharmaceutical company is using AI to accelerate drug development and ultimately get safe, effective drugs to patients more quickly. But, like any other enterprise pursuing the transformative power of AI, they first had to consider how it might impact their sustainability strategy. AI workloads are often compute intensive, so companies must strategize for how to get the compute capacity they need in an efficient manner. Implementing AI and meeting sustainability goals can sometimes be at odds with each other. Many enterprises are learning that their legacy data centers…

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Demystify AI Complexity by Partnering with Industry Leaders

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 12:01:25 +0000

As enterprise AI initiatives take off, IT leaders are under increasing pressure to use AI to maximize competitive advantage. However, embarking on this journey presents hurdles for even the best. While in some ways AI is just like other workloads, it also comes with unique challenges: Data management complexities Data privacy concerns Lack of in-house AI expertise The need for increased power densities and advanced cooling capabilities The need for high-performance access to clouds and services Distribution of infrastructure to enable edge inference Need for increased network capacity to handle data transfer to and from AI workloads Imagine a pharmaceutical company that tasked their CTO with figuring…

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Connect Workload and Data Silos to Future-Proof Your Network

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 12:00:39 +0000

In today’s fragmented digital landscape, businesses face a common challenge with their multicloud strategies: connecting workloads and data across increasingly complex environments, including public clouds, colocation data centers and on-premises data centers. Distributing modern cloud applications and data across multiple environments creates silos that traditional networking cannot support. Siloed environments introduce limited interoperability, inconsistent management and connectivity challenges. This in turn leads to performance issues, high operational costs and security risks. Further, AI is intensifying the need for seamless connectivity. Both training and inferencing require secure and lightning-fast data transmission capabilities to ensure low latency. Unless these issues are addressed, networking could…

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Future-Proof Your Enterprise AI Strategy with Your AI Factory Powered by NVIDIA DGX

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:34:49 +0000

The AI landscape is rapidly evolving, transforming how companies operate, compute and innovate. 2023 was a year of discovery, with generative AI in the spotlight. In 2024, organizations focused on AI model training and applying practical GenAI use cases. And now that we’re a few months into 2025, we’re seeing the shift in focus from AI model training to model tuning and inference in real time to fuel a new wave of AI agents that can reason through complex problems. In early 2024, I wrote about how the Equinix fully managed private cloud service would enable enterprises to easily acquire…

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How to Do Agentic AI Inference in a Multicloud, Multi-Model World

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 12:00:51 +0000

As the age of AI progresses, agentic AI is maturing quickly. According to Gartner®, agentic AI is on the top of the list of the Top Technology Trends for 2025. AI agents are rapidly enhancing the capabilities and efficiency of AI inference, and we’re seeing more use cases for them across business domains, from HR to marketing to finance to IT. In IT, for instance, agentic AI makes the enterprise application software stack more autonomous and flexible, as multiple agents from different providers collaborate and share information. There are three major categories of AI agents, according to Accenture: Utility agents: Automate…

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How Data Centers Can Use Alternative Water Sources

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 12:19:45 +0000

Fresh water is a vital resource that’s essential for life. As communities grow, they must carefully manage their limited supply of drinking water against the growing demand from new residents and businesses, and the effects of climate change. As a global service provider, Equinix keeps this delicate balance in mind any time we decide to build a new data center. We want to be a responsible member of every community we become a part of, and among other things, that means using water in a responsible manner. In addition to measuring and improving water efficiency, one important aspect of responsible…

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What India’s Digital Economy Needs to Continue Thriving

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 07:01:11 +0000

The explosive growth of India’s digital economy is attracting global attention and driving huge investments from data center service providers, both Indian and international players, and cloud service providers. Private equity funds are also bringing in capital to participate in the growth. At the same time, India’s role as a digital corridor is becoming increasingly vital, bridging Asia-Pacific, Australia, Europe and the Middle East. There are multiple drivers of this growth: Rising household incomes and the expanding middle class are causing increased digital consumption across entertainment, e-commerce, education and financial services. The country’s high demographic dividend, with 40% of the population…

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Digital Plumbing: The Infrastructure Behind Cat Videos

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 12:00:09 +0000

Cat videos rule our online world—and that’s no joke. Since the early days of flip phones and social media, cat photos and videos have been wildly popular. And cat content isn’t just for our amusement. Research shows that it’s good for our health, helping people feel more energetic and positive, and reducing negative emotions. While there’s not much information on exactly how much internet traffic is dedicated to cat content today, we can assume it’s a lot. Tens of thousands of cat videos are added to YouTube daily. Not to mention the billions of cat videos on social networks. Cat…

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What Is Federated AI?

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 12:00:15 +0000

Businesses in all different sectors are excited about the opportunities that AI presents. But they also recognize there are challenges they must overcome to capitalize on those opportunities. Many of the biggest challenges involve creating an AI-ready data strategy. These include: Keeping sensitive data protected and within prescribed borders to address the complexities of the current geopolitical landscape Finding enough data to train accurate, comprehensive models Sharing AI model weights with partners without sharing the underlying raw data Processing massive volumes of data quickly and efficiently Moving data between distributed processing locations without delay Overcoming all these challenges at once certainly won’t be easy. Fortunately, there…

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Unlocking Network Insights: The Power of Generative AI in Observability

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 12:00:54 +0000

As digital infrastructure has become more complex, observability tools are playing a very important role in giving companies insight into the state of their IT systems. IT operations teams are increasingly flooded with monitoring data from across the IT stack. Observability solutions help them organize all that data so they can design and deploy infrastructure components more efficiently, as well as predict and remediate issues faster. While IT monitoring is nothing new, in today’s highly complex hybrid multicloud environments, observability solutions offer a more sophisticated approach that gives context to the data being collected and delivers more meaningful insights. Gartner®…

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How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek: Cooling

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 12:00:21 +0000

In our How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek series, we aim to answer all the questions you’ve always wanted to ask about data centers—as well as the ones you never even thought to ask. In this edition, we’ll be tackling the critical issue of data center cooling. As servers run in data centers, they inevitably create heat, and they must be cooled in order to continue functioning properly. It’s a straightforward issue of thermodynamics, but it’s an issue that data center operators are obsessed with solving in the most efficient way possible. We do this for two simple…

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Enabling the Intelligent Age in West Africa

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 07:00:26 +0000

In March 2024, several of West Africa’s subsea cables were knocked offline by an underwater rockslide. According to the Internet Society, 13 African nations experienced connectivity issues, ranging from degraded services to near-total internet outages. The cable damage demonstrated how reliant we’ve become on digital connectivity. Countries that lost internet access experienced disruption across nearly every aspect of society, from financial services to telecommunications. It was a stark reminder that the internet is made up of real physical infrastructure, and that when something happens to that infrastructure, the internet may not work as intended. This idea is similar to one that…

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4 AI Use Cases for Federal Government

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 12:00:25 +0000

Today’s agencies are being asked to serve citizens better in an ever-changing world while making the most of their resources. Most leaders recognize that AI will be part of the answer to this challenge. However, in order to capitalize on the full potential of AI, agencies will likely need to change the way they capture, process, store, transfer and protect their data. For this reason, the chief data officer (CDO) role is becoming increasingly important in the federal government. CDOs are charged with developing the full lifecycle of their agencies’ analytics strategies, along with choosing the technology to do so….

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How AI Changes Your Network Infrastructure Requirements

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 12:00:52 +0000

As companies progress through the various stages of AI maturity, they continuously discover new infrastructure requirements. One such requirement is transforming their networking infrastructure to run AI workloads on GPUs. Given their significant investment in acquiring and managing GPUs, companies need to ensure these servers are constantly running—without connectivity interruptions, latency challenges or bandwidth issues. Traditionally, Ethernet has been the go-to choice for CPU networking. However, the high-performance computing demands of processing AI workloads across large, distributed GPU clusters have raised the bar for performance, scalability and efficiency. Applications such as natural language processing, computer vision, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS),…

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Rising in the Intelligent Age: Milan’s Tech Revolution

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 07:00:50 +0000

Every day, we interact with digital technologies that simplify and enrich our lives—helping us work more efficiently, learn faster and shop smarter. And it’s not just consumer digital experiences that have changed our world. Advancements in high-speed connectivity, AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) have led to groundbreaking innovation in every industry, from manufacturing to healthcare to transportation. Much of the technology that has transformed our world feels invisible and intangible. But behind the scenes, physical IT infrastructure and human talent have been essential elements of the digital revolution. All the cutting-edge technologies that define the digital era require…

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How Digital Infrastructure Can Help Build a Brighter Future

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 12:00:01 +0000

Today is Earth Day, a chance for us all to pause and recognize the collective power we have to build a better tomorrow for our planet and the people who populate it. The theme of Earth Day 2025—”Our Power, Our Planet”—is a reminder that the solutions we need to ensure a resilient future already exist; they just need to be put into action. This idea resonates deeply in the data center world, where it’s increasingly important to balance digital innovation with environmental responsibility. Pursuing alternative energy sources and efficiency initiatives is no longer optional; it’s essential for the future of…

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It’s Not Just Data Centers: Networks Are Critical Infrastructure, Too

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 07:00:51 +0000

Data centers have become just as essential to society as water treatment facilities and power plants. It’s gratifying to see that governments around the world not only recognize this fact, but that they’re acting upon it, as the UK did when it designated data centers as critical national infrastructure. It’s important to recognize that data centers are only one piece of the digital infrastructure equation, and they don’t operate as data islands. Our digital world is inherently interconnected, and many of the applications we rely on don’t run out of a single data center. They require many distributed data centers…

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The Hidden Benefit of Data Centers: Warming Communities, Not Just Servers

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 12:00:58 +0000

Private and public companies, including data centers, are under the microscope regarding environmental sustainability. Investors, customers and employees alike want to know what businesses are doing to protect the environment and use natural resources more efficiently. There are many ways to employ innovative practices that support cleaner, more efficient operations and contribute to the daily life of community members. Many people are aware of the global sustainability strategies that companies often pursue, such as increasing their renewable energy coverage. However, the sustainability initiatives that directly benefit residents and businesses in local communities might not be as well-known. Data centers, like many…

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Powering a Sustainable Future: Energy Innovation for the Digital Era

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 12:00:20 +0000

We’re entering the intelligent age, where technologies like AI and the internet of things (IoT) are driving groundbreaking advancements across industries. Alongside these data-driven, power-consuming innovations, there’s growing demand for energy to power not just technology but also manufacturing, transportation and residential needs. Global electricity demand is forecast to reach 31,000 to 36,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030, and then to roughly double to between 52,000 and 71,000 TWh by 2050. As energy demand increases, we have an opportunity and mandate to build reliable, sustainable, scalable energy infrastructure that can support our collective future. Across the globe, we’re in the midst…

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What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and Where Should You Do It?

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:00:02 +0000

For years now, we’ve been hearing that “data is the new oil.” It’s practically become a cliché. But even oil needs to be refined and shipped before it can be used as fuel. So, what will it take to turn data into fuel that drives business value? New large language models (LLMs) promise to completely redefine how enterprises draw value from their data. These LLMs were trained on much larger datasets than organizations would have been able to handle in the past; therefore, they contain a much wider array of insights than older models. But while the potential of LLMs…

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Solve Network Limitations to Achieve Your Multicloud Potential

Thu, 01 May 2025 12:00:29 +0000

Using multiple public clouds is considered mainstream among enterprises, yet many Infrastructure teams struggle to manage their multicloud strategies effectively—for valid reasons. To start with, every cloud service provider (CSP) has its own networking architecture and connectivity framework that enterprise Infrastructure teams need to learn, support and manage. Other contributing factors include challenges with connectivity, security, management complexity, performance, reliability, interoperability and integration. Has your experience with multicloud networking been filled with complexity that’s distracting, disruptive and costly? Undoubtedly, managing cloud infrastructure and multicloud networking can be hard, but it’s possible to eliminate some of the complexity. If you attended our…

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Why Enterprises Need Sovereign Cloud Today

Tue, 06 May 2025 12:00:26 +0000

In my role at Equinix, I often hear from global systems integrators (GSIs) who are trying to figure out how to help enterprises capitalize on cloud services while also limiting risk. Increasingly, this means they’re looking to apply the power of cloud to help their customers succeed with AI. So much of what makes public cloud services great is ironically what could make them problematic from a sovereignty and privacy perspective. Their global reach can be very helpful in certain situations, like when enterprises need to replicate data across regions to ensure geo-redundancy. In other situations, enterprises need to be…

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The Digital Pulse of Latin America: Brazil’s Rise as a Global Tech Innovator

Wed, 07 May 2025 12:00:55 +0000

Digital technologies have transformed the way we live, work and play over the last few decades. We’ve now entered an intelligent age defined by the rise of AI, with its enormous promise for providing deeper insights and greater efficiency in everything from manufacturing to healthcare diagnoses to entertainment. The rapid advancement of intelligent digital technologies, enabled by high-speed connectivity and IoT sensors, requires foundational physical infrastructure that’s often invisible to users. Cutting-edge technologies are also powered by people—skilled technicians who design and operate servers, storage devices, network cables and devices, processing chips, power and cooling equipment, and much more. This year,…

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How Tech SMBs Can Transform Service Delivery With Hybrid Multicloud

Thu, 08 May 2025 12:00:41 +0000

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) may have similar business objectives and challenges to multi-billion-dollar enterprises, but that doesn’t mean they’re just a scaled-down version of those bigger businesses. There are noticeable differences from economic, cultural and management perspectives, with the added dimension of fewer dedicated resources across functions. One similarity between these two groups is a focus on increasing technology investments to strengthen customer relationships and scale growing operations. Tech spending is on the rise among SMBs with 76% spending more on technology than the prior year, according to the 6th edition of the Salesforce Small & Medium Business Trends…

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The New Cloud Calculations: How AI is Reshaping Infrastructure Decision-Making

Tue, 13 May 2025 12:00:41 +0000

If you’ve been around the tech world for long enough, you’ll remember the dawn of the Information Age. It was a time of boundless enthusiasm: The birth of the internet felt like something truly new and exciting that was going to fundamentally change every aspect of our lives. Now, we’re moving into a new era, one defined by knowledge, not just information. We call this era the Intelligent Age. If the previous age was about democratizing access to information, this new one is all about the things we can accomplish with that information by processing and analyzing it. As a…

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Data Sovereignty and AI: Why You Need Distributed Infrastructure

Wed, 14 May 2025 12:00:36 +0000

The volume of data that enterprises need to manage continues to grow exponentially, while regulations around data locality, residency and sovereignty simultaneously continue to multiply across jurisdictions worldwide. Companies must be vigilant about keeping up with rapidly evolving national and regional policies around who can access specific data; how it’s collected, processed and stored; and where it’s accessed from or transferred to. It’s getting more complicated every day. Effective data governance is essential to ensuring AI transparency and compliance with emerging regulations. This means considering what’s required to access the data and knowing exactly which path data will follow to…

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Without Interconnection, It’s Just a Data Center

Thu, 15 May 2025 12:00:06 +0000

Today’s enterprises have an impressive array of digital use cases to help them make more informed decisions, serve customers better, uncover hidden competitive advantages, and much more. But they can’t pursue these opportunities in a silo. They need to interconnect with many different partners and service providers to access the infrastructure, services and data that these use cases demand. Doing that inside their legacy on-premises data centers would be challenging, to say the least. Leading digital infrastructure providers like Equinix have invested consistently in building data centers that are better equipped to support high-performance hardware and advanced applications. These facilities…

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Equinix 2024 Partner Award Winners: Demonstrating Excellence

Tue, 20 May 2025 07:00:48 +0000

Companies focused on fast-tracking AI innovation realize that DIY infrastructure is not an option. They require seamless access to the right clouds, technology and global connectivity, which can only come from collaborating with the right partners and participating in relevant ecosystems. Further, to realize greater value from their data, they often need to run workloads in a hybrid multicloud environment, whether training or fine-tuning AI models in public or private clouds or running inference on data at the edge. For Equinix partners, that means connecting their customers with flexible, high-performance AI environments, such as our AI-ready data centers, with industry-leading…

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Why You Need a Hybrid-First Strategy

Wed, 21 May 2025 12:00:20 +0000

Since commercial cloud offerings went mainstream roughly 20 years ago, businesses have explored a variety of architectural strategies to optimize their use of it. From its earliest days, cloud computing promised to reduce costs and increase infrastructure flexibility and scalability. It would free businesses from having to run their own data centers and allow them to focus instead on their core business and innovation. Because of these expected benefits, many businesses began to adopt cloud-first strategies in the 2010s, hoping to accelerate cloud adoption. A growing number of cloud-native companies were launched, SaaS applications proliferated, and migration to the cloud…

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AI Ecosystems 101: Choosing Data, AI Model & AI Infrastructure Providers

Thu, 22 May 2025 12:00:50 +0000

The excitement around launching new AI services and applications is at an all-time high. But with the fast pace of change in the AI market, getting new AI projects off the ground can be complex. AI comes with risks and uncertainty, and organizations want to make sure their AI investments will pay off. As companies navigate AI complexity and prepare for the future, building and connecting to a robust AI ecosystem is crucial. As the AI market grows, AI ecosystems are expanding quickly to meet the needs of enterprise AI. A plethora of new AI service providers have emerged in…

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3 Reasons AI Inference Belongs at the Metro Edge

Tue, 27 May 2025 12:00:52 +0000

IT leaders spend a lot of time these days thinking about how to get the right infrastructure to support their organizations’ AI goals. Not all of them think about where to deploy that infrastructure, but getting the location right is just as important. This is especially true when it comes to AI inference workloads. Not all organizations have the resources or desire to train their own AI models, which means that not all organizations have to worry about deploying their own training infrastructure. They have other options for acquiring models, including using an AI model marketplace or collaborating with partners…

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Cut Complexity to Enable Flexible Hybrid Multicloud Networking

Wed, 28 May 2025 12:00:24 +0000

The vast majority of enterprises are pursuing a hybrid multicloud strategy, but optimizing deployments for cost, performance and security can be complex. It requires constantly adapting to change, including emerging competitive threats, new technologies, shifting customer preferences and greater regulatory complexity. As these changing conditions arise, businesses need to reevaluate where they host their workloads to ensure they’re meeting their requirements around security, performance and cost-efficiency. Even if you start with the best of intentions, it’s easy to fall into vendor lock-in. Moving workloads from one cloud to another or splitting workloads between clouds can cause operational headaches, so it…

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Networking Choices: A Guide to Connectivity Options in Colocation Facilities

Thu, 29 May 2025 12:00:58 +0000

In a data-driven world, connectivity is everything: It’s the way companies exchange value with business partners, the way service providers deliver applications and services to customers, the way remote employees collaborate, the way consumers connect and share information across great distances. In fact, networking underpins almost everything about modern society and business. From an enterprise perspective, it’s fundamental for operational efficiency, innovation and business resilience. Multicloud environments across infrastructure and software providers have become the norm for enterprises, and every company is now operating in an increasingly AI-driven reality. Change only seems to be accelerating, and businesses therefore need lots…

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How Direct Cloud-to-Cloud Connectivity Solves Diverse Networking Use Cases

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 12:00:41 +0000

Because many organizations run distributed infrastructure across clouds, on-prem and colocation to support their applications, moving data between these disparate environments has become very complex. Each application has different networking requirements for performance, privacy and scalability. I regularly speak with customers across industries who tell me they need more flexible network infrastructure. They may need to move significant volumes of data between clouds or from private infrastructure to a public cloud without using the internet. This is especially true for AI-related workloads that consume massive amounts of data sourced from industry and AI ecosystem partners. Further, some businesses require redundant…

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Digital Plumbing: The Infrastructure Behind Video Calling

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 12:04:31 +0000

Video calling has gone mainstream: It’s now as common as traditional phone calls once were, often replacing them in both personal and professional communications. Apps like Zoom, Facetime, WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams are woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. Not only that, but video calling has become a crucial technology for bringing remote colleagues together and getting real-time feedback. In just a few decades’ time, the internet has made it possible to chat, call or videoconference with friends, family and colleagues anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. But few people stop to think about the…

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4 Steps to Implement SASE for Secure Multicloud Networking

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 12:00:51 +0000

Hybrid multicloud has become the norm in today’s business world, and this means that enterprises are asking more of their networks. They not only need to move data quickly between different cloud and on-premises environments, but also keep that data protected wherever it ends up. Gartner® coined the term “secure access service edge” (SASE) to describe this convergence between networking and security. SASE is a concept that combines SD-WAN access with secure gateways and zero-trust tools, all hosted in the cloud and consumed as a service. It’s meant to reflect the dynamic, distributed nature of today’s organizations and the security…

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Jakarta’s Digital Transformation Begins Here: 12 Photos from Equinix JK1 Data Center

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:00:04 +0000

Indonesia’s Growing Digital Economy Indonesia is rapidly becoming a regional digital powerhouse. With over 200 million internet users and a young, tech-savvy population, its digital economy – projected to reach $140 billion by 2025 – is booming, driven by industries like e-commerce, fintech, and cloud computing. Jakarta’s strategic location also connects it to other regional economies like Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, making it an ideal base for enterprises expanding in Southeast Asia. To meet Indonesia’s rising digital infrastructure needs, Equinix has launched its first AI-ready data center JK1. Located in the city’s Central Business District in Jakarta, where much…

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How AI Managed Solutions Drive Performance and Reliability

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 12:00:44 +0000

Companies are investing heavily in AI hardware, software and technology tools; maximizing value is a top priority. That means ensuring the highest performance and reliability of their AI environments, including the orchestration layer, hardware, and building management systems like power and cooling. When businesses integrate AI and new technologies into their operations, they encounter numerous challenges finding the necessary space, power and cooling for their data-intensive AI workloads. Attempting to scale traditional infrastructure is not the answer if they want to run AI on-premises. Alternatively, a high-performance, colocation data center environment is another option for deploying AI at scale. AI-ready data…

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Why Unified Observability Is the Future of Infrastructure Management

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 12:00:40 +0000

Most organizations use a mix of physical equipment and digital services in their technology infrastructure—everything from computing hardware, industrial sensors and building cooling systems to cloud, SaaS and virtual networking services. Managing these increasingly complex hybrid environments has become a sizable challenge. Often, infrastructure is spread over many systems and locations—public and private, physical and virtual, on-premises and remote. To further complicate matters, different teams have traditionally managed information technology (IT), which focuses on processing, storing and transmitting data, and operational technology (OT), which focuses on physical equipment, sensors and building management (including data centers). Often, IT and OT teams…

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On or Off the Cloud: 7 Questions to Help You Decide

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 12:00:05 +0000

Many IT leaders are reconsidering their approach to cloud. You may sometimes hear this process called “cloud repatriation”, but that terminology isn’t entirely accurate. With only a few exceptions, enterprises aren’t ditching the cloud altogether. Instead, they’re evaluating individual workloads on a strategic, case-by-case basis to see which ones might be better suited to run outside the cloud. That’s why the term “cloud rebalancing” better describes what’s actually happening. This rebalancing process is an important part of your organization’s wider hybrid multicloud strategy. It’s about finding where each workload belongs and then finding the best way to get it there….

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The Rise of AI in Canada: Building Momentum for the Intelligent Age

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 12:00:05 +0000

When you think of Canada, you may not think of it as an AI powerhouse. Yet, it’s home to renowned AI experts and hosts R&D labs for some of the biggest brands, research institutions and universities. Similarly, when you think of AI, you may not think of physical infrastructure like servers, cables, power and cooling. Yet, this equipment is essential to meet AI’s significant compute power, storage and networking needs, as are the skilled technicians who design, build and keep data centers up and running continuously. Canada is home to both. This blog is the fourth in a series about how…

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Beyond Clouds: Why Your AI Strategy Needs an Edge Perspective

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 12:00:22 +0000

We’ve entered the intelligent age, in which vast quantities of data are being put to work with AI to improve products, boost efficiency, enhance healthcare and transportation, and provide more personalized experiences. Emerging AI use cases like autonomous vehicles, healthcare monitoring, smart manufacturing and precision farming promise to make our lives and our world better. As GPUs become more affordable and accessible, AI is likely to become ubiquitous, with businesses of all sizes taking advantage. But to achieve all the benefits of AI-driven insights and efficiencies, companies need the right IT infrastructure in the right places. For cutting-edge AI use…

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10 Signs Your Multicloud Network Needs a Tune-Up

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 12:00:25 +0000

Multicloud environments have become the enterprise norm, but using multiple clouds has introduced a great deal of networking complexity. While companies are scurrying to take advantage of hybrid multicloud infrastructure, not least to further their strategic AI initiatives, they increasingly find themselves at odds with network architectures that weren’t designed for multicloud environments. Without effective multicloud networking, a lot can go wrong: Operational inefficiencies leading to higher costs Service unreliability leading to poor user experiences Security vulnerabilities and data loss Regulatory risk and non-compliance In an IT world increasingly dominated by data-driven decision-making, reliable low-latency multicloud connectivity is essential. It’s the thing that can make…

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The Internet Works for Enterprise Connectivity—Until It Doesn’t

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 12:00:26 +0000

While there are many forms of connectivity available to consumers and businesses, the internet has become ubiquitous—essentially a utility that’s vital for daily life. For enterprises, the public internet can become the predominant corporate WAN backbone, gradually replacing and augmenting private MPLS networks. The growth of cloud and SaaS applications over the past decade accelerated this shift to internet-based networks as many enterprise software systems migrated to as-a-service offerings. Because of how available and cost-effective the internet is for enterprise connectivity, organizations make a lot of assumptions about its reliability and performance. Often, they assume it’s reliable and performant enough…

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Redefining the Edge: Setting New Standards for AI Infrastructure

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 12:55:31 +0000

The rapid advancement of AI is transforming industries. Today’s businesses need decision-making speed, operational resilience and personalized experiences to maintain competitive advantage. They also need to meet changing consumer and enterprise expectations for acceptable performance. Proximity-based AI infrastructure at the edge is essential for meeting these rising standards. The AI landscape is evolving, from training AI models in centralized locations to a more distributed paradigm that includes workload inference at the edge. It’s due in part to the rise of agentic AI inference, which makes decisions at the edge and relies on low latency. Newer AI models are more specialized and…

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AI Centers of Excellence Drive Better Governance and Cost-Efficiency

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 12:00:12 +0000

In the early days of cloud, shadow IT proliferated. Different teams acquired different services, with no centralized oversight. Over time, leaders saw the drawbacks of this approach, including unpredictable costs, compromised performance, and data privacy issues. IT teams began to take back control, and a centralized cloud function became the norm. Today, this pattern is repeating itself with AI. Until recently, most enterprises took an ad hoc approach, where different teams pursued AI as they saw fit. This led to many of the same problems mentioned above and made it difficult for businesses to move AI from proof of concept…

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Preparing for Takeoff: How Aviation Companies Can Get AI Ready

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:00:15 +0000

AI is quickly becoming a game changer for the aviation industry. Global air traffic has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, and industry revenues and profits are at record highs. Key players such as airports, airlines, travel aggregators and global distribution systems are collecting vast quantities of data that’s both rich with possibilities and complex to manage. AI has the potential to transform customer experience, improve safety and security, drive operational efficiency, boost profitability and much more, but businesses need a robust AI strategy and data governance approach to capitalize on that potential. While the aviation industry is experiencing record demand and revenues,…

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How Do You Know a Workload Has Outgrown the Cloud?

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 12:00:44 +0000

Enterprise IT leaders choose cloud infrastructure for many reasons, mostly related to speed and flexibility. While the benefits are undeniable, public cloud services also have their challenges. For some workloads, enterprises may decide that the benefits aren’t worth the hassle. Businesses often reevaluate cloud infrastructure during periods of growth. As businesses expand, they need to expand their cloud services as well. This can lead to issues around cost, complexity and security. Moving workloads out of the cloud is one way to help address these issues.

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To Manage Cloud Sprawl in the AI Era, Choose the Right Networking Strategy

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 12:00:34 +0000

Enterprise IT infrastructure needs to continually evolve as new technologies enter the market, placing pressure on IT teams to remain agile and adapt quickly. In many cases, the right networking strategy can either hinder or accelerate innovation. In today’s technology paradigm, a trio of forces is at play: cloud proliferation, explosive data growth and the acceleration of AI initiatives. As cloud environments sprawl across both enterprise-owned and outsourced IT infrastructure and data proliferates in more places, networking becomes a critical enabler for realizing the value of AI.

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What Is the Future of Network Modernization?

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Technologies like AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) are transforming what’s possible with data and putting pressure on enterprise networks to deliver higher bandwidth, lower latency and greater resiliency. For emerging technologies, networks play a vital role, moving data from its original source to enterprise servers, clouds, AI models, service providers and users distributed around the world. Traditional centralized infrastructure simply isn’t designed for today’s connectivity needs; it can’t provide the flexibility and performance modern applications require. For many organizations, that era of networking is already long gone. Enterprise networks that were once static, physical infrastructure have been evolving…

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The Latency Tax: How Centralized Processing Is Costing Your AI Initiatives

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 13:25:47 +0000

As emerging AI use cases like autonomous vehicles, continuous health monitoring and real-time fraud analysis enter the mainstream, businesses increasingly need ultra-fast data processing close to where data is generated and used. Meanwhile, data privacy concerns, data sovereignty laws and other regulations are motivating them to keep data as close as possible to the source. With the rapid growth of AI as an essential enterprise technology, companies have begun recognizing the importance of edge deployments in their overall IT architecture. Those that have relied on the cloud or an on-premises data center are experiencing the limitations of centralized processing models…

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Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 15:59:40 +0000

Equinix commends the Trump Administration for releasing “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan” and for issuing the accompanying Executive Order on “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure.” This important framework directs numerous executive activities which will help ensure the United States maintains leadership in artificial intelligence, a critical national and economic security imperative. The Administration’s plan recognizes that winning the AI race cannot happen without enabling the U.S. data center industry to meet robust AI driven demand and we greatly appreciate seeing many of our policy recommendations reflected in the plan. In particular, we applaud the focus…

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Embodied Carbon: The Unseen Emissions That Enterprises Can’t Ignore

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 12:00:48 +0000

Across the world, businesses are looking to reduce carbon emissions as part of their sustainability strategies. In today’s tech-driven world, it’s especially important for them to consider how their digital infrastructure impacts these efforts. Almost all digital technology relies on data centers, and data centers—like any physical product we use—have emissions baked into them during the resource extraction and manufacturing processes. Emissions that are released when materials and components are manufactured are known as “embodied carbon.” Even though many business leaders acknowledge embodied carbon, measuring and addressing it can be challenging. That’s because they often lack reliable emissions data related…

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Building the Digital Backbone for Southeast Asia–India Trade

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:54 +0000

Southeast Asia (SEA) is experiencing significant digital growth. The region’s digital economy grew by 55% in the two years leading up to 2024, reaching $89 billion. Rapid digital transformation in the SEA region and India is supported by young, tech-savvy populations, rising internet penetration and strong government backing for digital initiatives. At the same time, these two economies are becoming…

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Digital Plumbing: The Infrastructure Behind Rideshare Apps

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 12:00:23 +0000

Ridesharing has quickly evolved into yet another technology that many of us take for granted. Just point, click and enter a few details to get you on your way quickly, right? Not quite. Rideshare apps interact with numerous other technologies and databases, all connected by networks that run on digital infrastructure. Believe it or not, ridesharing—in a more rudimentary form—existed as far back as World War I, when the US government required people to carpool to conserve rubber for the war. However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that carpooling became commonplace, due to record-high gas prices resulting from the oil…

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What Is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)? How Will it Enable the Future of Agentic AI?

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 12:00:21 +0000

Traditional AI inference is based on static large language models (LLMs) that can’t see past their training cutoff dates. If something isn’t in the training dataset, then as far as the model’s concerned, it simply doesn’t exist. In contrast, AI agents can pull real-time data from multiple external sources. These agents actively seek out new information in response to environmental changes, without the need for human intervention. Agentic AI opens a wide range of new applications across industries, from real-time patient monitoring in healthcare to high-frequency trading in financial markets. In these use cases, AI agents can connect to data sources…

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How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek: Networking and Connectivity

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 12:00:29 +0000

Connectivity is so deeply woven into the fabric of everyday life that we largely take it for granted. Life before the internet is a distant memory for most people, and unimaginable to younger generations. For our hyper-connected culture to be possible, businesses and consumers need a way to exchange data, often very quickly and securely. Data centers serve as a vendor-neutral place for this data exchange to happen in real time. Behind the scenes of our interconnected world, there’s a wealth of technology and infrastructure enabling the information networks we rely on. This includes everything from physical cables, routers and…

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7 Scenarios Where Private Connectivity Beats the Internet

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 12:00:03 +0000

Data is a vital resource in modern business, and companies have a wide variety of networking options to help them put that data to work. Those choices can positively or negatively affect business operations, costs, security, and customer and employee experiences. Widespread use of the internet as an enterprise networking solution isn’t surprising, given that it’s inexpensive and widely available. However, there are situations where the internet isn’t the best tool for the job and more specialized solutions are needed. In such cases, companies need to explore alternatives that offer better performance, security and observability. Private connectivity solutions like dedicated cross…

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3 Multicloud Network Designs for Simplified Multicloud Connectivity

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 12:00:02 +0000

As multicloud environments became the standard enterprise architecture, many organizations adopted a hodgepodge of networking tools and cloud-native solutions to connect their public cloud environments and private infrastructure and other services. These combinations of what are often vendor-specific networking solutions tend to overly rely on the public internet, and taking this approach can lead to a fragmented mess of different protocols, security policies and monitoring tools. Unfortunately, this haphazard approach to multicloud networking has led to a lot of network management complexity. IT teams lack unified control and visibility into their networks. Network performance and reliability can be substandard because…

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Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery vs. High Availability

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 12:00:39 +0000

Business disruptions are inevitable, a hard reality that every organization must face in today’s unpredictable world. As digital and information technologies play a more central role in core business operations, minimizing these disruptions and keeping critical workloads online is essential for long-term business survival. Whether you’re dealing with cyberattacks, natural disasters, supply chain issues, geopolitical risks or core infrastructure failures, IT outages can significantly impact not only the bottom line but also your data, reputation and customer experiences. A data breach, for instance, could expose sensitive customer data and lead to fines or other punishments for regulatory noncompliance, as well…

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Groq and Equinix Partner for Low-Latency AI Infrastructure in Europe

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 07:05:18 +0000

Enterprises in Europe face unique challenges when executing their AI strategies. Like their counterparts in other regions, they’re increasingly operating across complex hybrid multicloud environments and supporting distributed data sources and workloads. But on top of that, they must also meet stringent compliance, security, resilience and of course sustainability requirements. To address these challenges and provide low latency for inference workloads, companies pursuing AI in Europe need access to AI infrastructure in Europe. This helps to ensure proximity to data sources while also empowering them to apply the appropriate privacy and governance controls. The demand for AI-ready infrastructure in Europe inspired…

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Securing Critical Infrastructure for the Public Sector

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 12:00:25 +0000

Federal agencies are investing in modernizing their digital infrastructure. They need more data center capacity and new capabilities to keep up with data growth and meet demand for advanced technologies like AI. However, these investments can have unintended consequences: They make an attractive target for state-sponsored hacker groups and other cybercriminals. Just like criminals have traditionally targeted banks because that’s where the money is, today’s cybercriminals are targeting data centers because that’s where the data is. Data has become an asset with tremendous value, and agencies need a strategy that accounts for the risks facing their data and applies the…

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Designing the Best AI Infrastructure for Drug Discovery

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 12:00:53 +0000

Drug discovery is a foundational part of business for a pharmaceutical company, one that can unlock new revenue streams and safeguard an organization’s future. However, finding and developing new drugs has traditionally been a costly, time-consuming process involving a lot of regulatory approvals. According to Deloitte, in 2024, research and development (R&D) for a new drug cost an average of $2.23 billion USD. It takes twelve to fourteen years to develop a new drug, so reducing this timeline by even one year could save $159 million per drug. Over a major pharmaceutical pipeline, savings could reach greater than $15…

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Equinix Is a Leader in the 2025 IDC MarketScape for Data Center Colocation Services

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 12:00:22 +0000

While AI has been in the spotlight for some time, the reality is that IT teams need to run a wide variety of distributed mission-critical workloads and applications. It’s also vital that they ensure secure data access and storage for efficient business operations, data sovereignty compliance and the best possible customer experience. Increasingly, IT groups are involved with supporting AI model training on premises and in the cloud, as well as data inference at the Metro Edge, where users and devices are generating massive amounts of data that must be managed according to specific local and regional laws and…

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Multicloud Network Complexity: 3 Ways to Simplify Your Network and Reduce Costs

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 12:00:56 +0000

While hybrid multicloud adoption has surged, the networks that connect these environments haven’t always kept pace, leading to a patchwork of solutions that increase complexity and costs. Outdated network designs tend to overburden IT staff with network management, reduce operational efficiencies and create poor user experiences. Further, the technical debt of poor network design tends to increase over time, leading to hidden IT costs. In today’s complex IT landscape, network leaders are under increasing pressure to deliver high performance while keeping costs in check. The key to achieving both? Simplification. By reducing unnecessary complexity across your network infrastructure, you can…

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From Türkiye to Central Asia, New Digital Silk Routes Are Forming

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 07:05:04 +0000

To many, the term “Silk Road” evokes exotic images of camel trains and ancient cities. In reality, there was no single Silk Road; there were multiple land and sea routes used to transport goods between east and west. In addition to silk, these goods included spices, tea, porcelain and precious stones. Now, there’s a digital equivalent to the Silk Routes forming between Asia and Europe. Just like the merchants of old moved physical goods, today’s businesses spur digital economic growth by moving public internet and private IP network traffic between continents. In previous blog posts, I detailed telecommunications routes through the…

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AI Transformation Starts with Distributed Infrastructure

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 16:15:22 +0000

Over the past several years, enterprise leaders have seen glimpses of what’s possible with advanced technologies like large language models and agentic AI. If you’re one of them, you’re likely planning how to accelerate AI adoption. Today’s emerging AI use cases aren’t just an evolution of this technology—what we’re seeing is revolutionary. It’s reshaping how decisions are made, how products are built and how businesses compete. AI is also redefining what infrastructure needs to do. Compared to traditional IT, AI workloads demand significantly more power, lower latency and better ecosystem access. You won’t meet those requirements with a few upgrades…

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Validate Your IT Infrastructure to Prevent Missteps

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 12:00:56 +0000

These days, continuous change and increasing complexity are constant variables for IT teams. Whether they’re supporting the expansion of the business, new product or solution offerings, AI training and inference, or proof-of-concept (PoC) testing, managing the financial and operational risks associated with solving infrastructure challenges is crucial. As IT infrastructure continues to evolve in lockstep with businesses, IT teams must also meet expanding requirements for seamless connectivity and compute power to ensure low latency, high performance and scalability. Companies may need to make CAPEX investments in hardware, add new network service providers for hybrid multicloud connectivity, or migrate applications from…

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Infrastructure Neutrality: The Foundation for AI Success

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 12:00:16 +0000

Enterprise AI transformation demands more than just advanced algorithms and large datasets: It requires infrastructure that can adapt, scale and evolve with your business needs. As organizations rush to implement AI solutions, many find themselves constrained by vendor lock-in, limited connectivity options and inflexible infrastructure choices that hinder rather than help their AI ambitions. Infrastructure neutrality is an essential foundation for distributed AI success. Unlike traditional single-vendor approaches, neutral infrastructure platforms give you the freedom to select best-of-breed solutions, integrate diverse technologies and maintain control over your AI strategy. This flexibility is critical as AI workloads increasingly need to run…

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How to Fast-Track AI Innovation Without the Headaches

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Every day, AI and other emerging technologies make the headlines. IT leaders across industries are under pressure to put AI initiatives in motion—and fast. Whether the goal is improving operational efficiency, elevating customer experiences or accelerating decision-making, AI offers incredible promise while also introducing considerable technical complexity. With or without AI, though, companies are increasingly encumbered by technical complexity. As data volumes increase astronomically, managing, protecting and getting value from enterprise data has become more costly and difficult. It’s a problem that’s been brewing since the beginning of the digital age. Meanwhile, most organizations operate a hybrid multicloud architecture distributed…

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How to Enable Flexible, Scalable AI with Private Cloud

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 12:00:03 +0000

Today’s business leaders recognize the transformative potential of enterprise AI use cases, but capitalizing on these use cases isn’t always easy. Enterprises are at varying stages in their AI journeys, each with unique challenges and infrastructure requirements based on their level of AI maturity. Some businesses have just started to implement AI and are still determining what infrastructure they need. Others have progressed further—deploying accelerated computing infrastructure and clearly defining their data sources—and are now looking for ways to take their AI initiatives to the next level. With such diverse starting points, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for AI infrastructure. Businesses…

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The Edge Computing Reality Check: Debunking Technical Misconceptions

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 12:00:52 +0000

Huge quantities of data are being produced and consumed by internet of things (IoT) sensors, consumer electronics and devices everywhere. Cutting-edge technologies require companies to use all this new, real-time data alongside existing static datasets where they reside today. As organizations explore new data-driven opportunities, the use cases for edge computing are growing across industries: Remote health monitoring Autonomous vehicles Live multiplayer gaming Predictive equipment management Personalized shopping experiences For these latency-sensitive initiatives, data must be processed closer to the source, which means companies need infrastructure at the edge. So, how do you deploy and manage that infrastructure? Using centralized data centers or relying exclusively on…

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Privacy Without Compromise: Building Secure AI Infrastructure That Performs

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 12:00:48 +0000

Enterprise AI promises unprecedented innovation, but it also introduces complex privacy challenges that can’t be solved with traditional security approaches. As organizations deploy AI across distributed environments, they may think that they face a critical choice: sacrifice privacy for performance or accept compromised AI capabilities to maintain data control. However, this is a false choice. Privacy without compromise is achievable when you use AI infrastructure that was built with security and data governance embedded from the ground up. Privacy cannot be an afterthought—it must be built into the very foundation of infrastructure. The key lies in understanding that privacy isn’t…

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Distributed AI Infrastructure: Accelerating Innovation at Scale

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 11:55:55 +0000

AI opportunities are proliferating while simultaneously becoming more distributed and dynamic. Businesses need distributed AI infrastructure located everywhere their data lives to connect that data with compute and decision-making tools securely, and with speed, flexibility and ease. As the next wave of AI innovation unfolds, integrating real-time intelligence and AI automation with multicloud workloads will support faster inference and edge-to-cloud connectivity. To meet the demand for these evolving requirements, Equinix is offering new solutions to provide the extensive, intelligent connectivity businesses need to move data and inference closer to users. With Equinix Distributed AI, companies can deploy the infrastructure they…

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Powering India’s AI Future: 8 Photos Inside India’s New High-Performance Data Hub in Chennai

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 07:44:57 +0000

India’s Digital Economy Boom India is racing toward a $1 trillion digital economy by 2027-2028, and artificial intelligence is driving much of that growth. With enterprises and hyperscalers demanding infrastructure that can handle AI workloads at scale, the need for purpose-built, interconnected data centers has never been more critical. Chennai, already home to a thriving tech ecosystem, is emerging as a key player in this transformation. To support India’s AI ambitions, Equinix has opened CN1—its first International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Chennai. Located on nearly six acres in Siruseri’s tech corridor, this $65 million facility connects directly to Equinix’s…

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Agriculture Ecosystems Use Data to Help Feed the World

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:15 +0000

I often travel to the world’s top technology hubs, but my grandmother’s 100th birthday brought me back to rural Iowa. For me, it was the first trip to my family’s roots in decades. The first thing that struck me was the corn. Not haphazard rows, but fields so dense, uniform and precise they almost looked inorganic. You could sense the forces at work. Soon after, I found myself at the kitchen table of a family friend who ran a farm, talking not about weather or yields but about autonomous tractors, subscription-based equipment, genetically enhanced seeds and AI-driven fertilization. It rivaled the…

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Top 3 Myths about Data Center Operating Temperatures

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 12:00:14 +0000

As the pace of digital innovation accelerates, data centers play an ever-more critical role in communication and connectivity, digital experiences and economic growth. The demand for data center capacity is increasing because of data growth, AI and other high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Consequently, data center power consumption is also on the rise. Since 2010, global electricity demand for data centers has roughly doubled. This trend means that energy efficiency is a critical focus area for data centers as we move into the future. To operate responsibly, data center providers are exploring ways to achieve the greatest possible energy efficiency…

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Expansive Partner Ecosystems: The Multiplier Effect for Enterprise AI Success

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 12:00:08 +0000

As enterprises race to implement AI at scale, a critical truth is emerging: Success isn’t just about having the right technology—it’s about having the right partners. The most successful AI deployments aren’t built in isolation but thrive within expansive partner ecosystems that bring together cloud providers, model builders, hardware innovators and specialized service providers on neutral, interconnected infrastructure. The complexity of modern AI workloads demands capabilities that no single vendor can provide. From GPU optimization and model selection to data sovereignty and real-time processing, enterprises need access to best-of-breed solutions that can work together seamlessly. As we explored in our blog on distributed AI infrastructure, the ability to distribute AI workloads across…

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Digital Plumbing: The Infrastructure Behind Streaming Music

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 12:00:38 +0000

Throughout history, making and sharing music has been a core part of the human experience. But, like nearly every other aspect of our lives, digital technology has fundamentally changed the way we experience music. Because of streaming music apps, we can select exactly what we want to hear, when and where we want to hear it. In fact, the major apps like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music all boast libraries of more than 100 million songs, with more added all the time. Streaming apps also make music a more social experience. This could mean sharing and co-creating…

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AI’s Engine Room: Inside the High-Performance Data Centers Powering the Future

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 12:00:42 +0000

Business leaders are working to implement AI strategies that help their organizations operate smarter and more efficiently. But even the people tasked with capturing the business value of AI don’t always understand the technical elements enabling that value. As impressive as today’s machine learning algorithms are, they’re not magic. They’re built upon real hardware running inside real data centers. In fact, many organizations are facing an infrastructure mismatch: The data centers that served them well in the past haven’t kept up with the demands of emerging AI workloads. Enterprises need high-performance data centers designed with AI in mind. Let’s look at…

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How Agentic AI Is Disrupting Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 12:00:06 +0000

Is your IT architecture positioned to meet the robust connectivity requirements of an AI-driven future? AI is already compelling enterprise leaders to rethink conventional wisdom around how business data is stored, transmitted and accessed, and more importantly, where IT infrastructure should be located. We’re moving toward a future that involves more autonomous agents making business decisions, and this will fundamentally change enterprise architecture. Systems of record, which hold a company’s critical data, remain crucial. They safeguard precious information, support regulatory compliance and enable organizations to perform AI model training efficiently and cost effectively. Systems of engagement, the applications users interact with,…

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What Is a Neocloud?

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 12:00:12 +0000

Since the launch of large language models (LLMs) in late 2022, the AI boom has been building momentum, and IT infrastructure solutions and services have been evolving to accommodate it. Behind every great AI breakthrough, there’s technology infrastructure: servers, specialized processors, storage systems and networking. As AI adoption increases and enterprises explore how to effectively use it in their businesses, the demand for compute power keeps rising. In addition to growing demand for GPUs, manufacturing bottlenecks, supply chain disruptions and geopolitical issues have impacted the availability and cost of specialized AI hardware. Enterprises thus face the twin challenges of determining…

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Without Interconnection, It’s Just a Cloud

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 12:00:40 +0000

Today’s IT leaders don’t need to be told the benefits of hybrid multicloud. They’ve learned from experience that no single cloud can be as good as all the clouds. They also know that to take advantage of services from different cloud providers, they need to avoid vendor lock-in and maintain control over their cloud data. While the value of hybrid multicloud is clear, businesses often find it difficult to get the secure, high-performance connectivity they need to capture that value. They need networking solutions that can move data across multiple clouds and on-premises environments whenever the need arises, including: Moving small…

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How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek: Security and Reliability

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 12:00:03 +0000

Because of the essential role they play in our modern digital society, protecting data centers has become more important than ever. Businesses need to feel confident that their data centers will be available whenever they need them. Even a short outage could cause serious disruption and degrade the user experience. Data centers also make an attractive target for criminals. Data is a valuable asset, and it needs to be protected accordingly. This is challenging because modern applications often rely on distributed infrastructure. Businesses need to be able to move data wherever it’s most useful and valuable, without placing it at…

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AI Is Only as Strong as Your Hardware; Here’s How to Get it Right

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 12:00:32 +0000

In the race to adopt enterprise AI, many companies are focused on building high-quality models. But models aren’t the only thing that matters. In fact, the quality of your models and the value you get from them are directly tied to the hardware you use to implement them. You need powerful compute hardware to train or fine-tune your models, but also hardware at the edge for low-latency inference workloads. Until recently, implementing distributed AI hardware was something most businesses didn’t need to worry about. Only the very largest organizations had the budgets to pursue advanced machine learning. Now that AI…

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How To Get Started Right With Distributed AI

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 12:00:31 +0000

Before investing in AI infrastructure, it helps to pause and look at how the balance of data, compute and intelligence is shifting. In working with companies just starting their AI journey, we’ve seen clear patterns in what separates early success from later struggle. The location of data, the pace of expansion to the edge and the diversity of models and partners all shape what “doing AI right” really means. It starts with building a foundation for distributed AI. Edge use cases are on a meteoric rise. As models become smaller, smarter and more domain-specific, inference is increasingly happening closer to…

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Designing for Sovereign AI: How to Keep Data Local in a Global World

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 12:00:48 +0000

Data sovereignty is no longer optional—it’s defining the future of enterprise architecture. As organizations race to scale AI, data control has become a principal challenge. Concerns about data privacy and security have been growing, with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA forcing organizations to implement better data governance policies. Some countries are now enacting laws that require data generated within their geographical borders to be stored and processed there too. With data sovereignty laws gaining traction in more parts of the world, companies are becoming more attentive to where their data is stored. And the data challenges don’t stop there: Organizations…

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Powering Mexico’s Digital Future with State-of-the-Art Technology Infrastructure

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 12:00:54 +0000

As digital transformation in Mexico accelerates and companies continue exploring opportunities with AI, there’s a growing need for critical IT infrastructure to power the country’s digital economy. Mexico is experiencing uninterrupted digitalization across virtually every economic sector, necessitating reliable data center infrastructure and unprecedented high-speed connectivity. Just like in other parts of the world, many of the prevalent emerging technology use cases in Mexico require compute infrastructure in edge locations, closer to end users and data sources. Whether you’re delivering real-time personalized experiences to retail customers, implementing predictive maintenance on manufacturing equipment or deploying an AI-powered chatbot to support banking…

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The TradFi-DeFi Convergence: Stablecoins Signal a New Era for Banks

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 12:00:36 +0000

The future of the financial sector is unfolding as cryptocurrency enters the mainstream. Up to this point, the world of highly centralized traditional finance (TradFi) has been quite distinct from the chaotic but innovative early days of decentralized finance (DeFi), which relies on blockchains and cryptocurrency. When most people think of TradFi, they associate it with large banks and institutions governed by regulation and consumer protections. TradFi is seen as fundamentally reliable and low risk. DeFi, on the other hand, feels more volatile, complex and confusing, and it seems much riskier since it’s largely unregulated and unpredictable. That said, advocates…

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3 Ways Companies Are Using SD-WAN to Modernize Their Networks

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 12:00:13 +0000

Common WAN designs adopted over the last 20 years cannot support how businesses operate today. They were built for centralized applications and predictable traffic. Instead, enterprises need to ensure fast, secure, high-bandwidth connectivity from branch offices to other corporate locations and clouds. Further, employees are generally more mobile. Enterprises need a connectivity solution that gives hybrid workers a consistent experience–wherever they are. Enterprises transitioning to hybrid or multicloud IT strategies can benefit from SD-WAN solutions that offer connectivity to cloud networks via cloud on-ramps. This trend and others like it support incorporating SD-WAN into enterprise network architectures. There are several…

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4 Reasons Multicloud Networking Is So Difficult

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 13:00:40 +0000

Within the definition of “cloud computing,” cloud service models can be boiled down into three main categories: Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Infrastructure as a Service. While these aren’t new concepts, it’s important to remember that “the cloud” is really just someone else’s technology that’s offered “as a Service.” This means that you’re beholden to the decisions that your chosen cloud provider makes. These decisions can impact how your workloads function, how well they perform and how easily they interoperate with other environments. This is especially true when choosing multiple clouds. In fact, multicloud networking may be…

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GPUs vs. CPUs: Demystifying Hardware Processors

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 13:00:40 +0000

While GPUs get most of the attention these days, CPUs have been and will continue to be a mainstay among enterprise IT hardware. But they were not designed to support the heavy processing requirements of AI workloads that have evolved over the past few years. As a result, many new types of processing units, such as GPUs, have emerged, with more on the way. AI providers also continue to develop new technologies that enhance how existing processors function. In my most recent blog post, I wrote that selecting the right AI hardware starts with asking the right questions; this applies…

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Is PUE Dead? Are There Better Ways to Measure Data Center Efficiency?

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 13:00:08 +0000

Data center efficiency is top of mind for IT leaders and industry observers alike, thanks to increased AI adoption and data center density. Higher density simply means that today’s data centers consume more energy in the same physical footprint. Denser workloads are also driving a shift toward liquid cooling, which raises the question of how this shift will impact global data center efficiency. To continue progressing toward their sustainability goals, business leaders need their data center workloads to run as efficiently as possible. Like everything else in the business world, we can’t truly understand data center efficiency unless we can…

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From Proof of Concept to Production: Advancing AI Adoption

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 13:00:12 +0000

Everything you read these days gives the impression that every company, except perhaps yours, is advancing their AI initiatives quickly and successfully. The reality is that companies are at different stages of AI adoption and experiencing varying degrees of success. According to Lenovo’s CIO Playbook 2025 with research insights from IDC, 46% of organizations surveyed globally are either in the early stages of development or implementation, or supporting various pilot projects/use cases. The most successful companies are progressing by running AI proofs of concept (POCs). It’s a lower-risk approach compared to moving straight into live production. It allows companies to…

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3 AI Use Cases Advancing the Automotive Industry

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 13:00:21 +0000

According to some predictions about when fully autonomous vehicles would be available, we should all own at least one by now. That’s obviously not the case—yet. But automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have made tremendous progress, thanks to AI accelerating advances in capabilities, including design, user experience, navigation, safety, predictive maintenance, and driver wellness monitoring. What’s exciting is that we’re still in the early stages of development. Today, most cars operate at Level 2 or Level 3 of SAE International’s Levels of Driving Automation (autonomous emergency braking or accident-avoidance systems, respectively). But auto OEMs have developed Level 4 (driverless, but…

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Digital Plumbing: The Infrastructure Behind Online Shopping

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 13:00:16 +0000

The holidays are officially here, and that means a lot of people are shopping online. Each year, online shopping seems to occupy a larger share of holiday sales worldwide. For the 2024 holiday shopping season (November 1 to December 31), online sales reached $1.2 trillion globally and $282 billion in the U.S. This represents a 3% global year-over-year (YoY) increase and a 4% YoY increase in the U.S. For consumers, though, online shopping isn’t about statistics; it’s about convenience. You can shop for gifts online anywhere, anytime, whether you’re relaxing at home after work or passing time in a doctor’s…

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3 Ways High-Performance Data Centers Mitigate Risk

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 13:00:35 +0000

In today’s digital world, a business’ data is among its most valuable assets. Threats against that data are threats against the business itself, and leading data center providers take these threats seriously. As Adam Fletcher, CISO of Blackstone, once said: “Cybersecurity isn’t about avoiding risk, it’s about managing it intelligently. The future belongs to leaders who make cyber resilience a competitive advantage.” The 2025 Annual Outage Analysis from Uptime Institute found that data center outages decreased for the fourth consecutive year. However, this doesn’t mean that threats against data centers have dissipated. Indeed, the report notes that data center operators…

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Edge AI Inference Isn’t All at the Edge

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:00:04 +0000

AI has gone mobile. On-device intelligence is being integrated into built-in smartphone applications for voice assistance, image enhancement, predictive typing and translation. It’s in social media, music streaming, finance, healthcare and retail apps. AI-powered conversational assistants like ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot have exploded in popularity. And it doesn’t stop with what’s on your phone: AI is also in industrial IoT sensors, smart home devices, autonomous vehicles and remote healthcare devices. All these AI-powered technologies require AI inference at the edge. So, it’s not surprising that edge AI is trending. The global edge AI market is expected to grow…

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What Is Network as a Service (NaaS)?

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 13:00:59 +0000

Computer networking has come a long way since the early days of static, hardware-centric networks. In the past, networking required companies to make big investments in physical equipment and offered limited central control. As the internet and cloud computing grew in popularity, organizations began to evolve toward software-defined networks that were more agile, dynamic and programmable. That’s because they wanted their networks to deliver some of the same benefits as cloud: flexible deployment, high scalability, simplified management, automation and more. With the shift to software-defined technologies, networks have become more complex than they used to be. Before cloud computing, an…

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Beyond GenAI: The Rise of Agentic AI and Physical AI

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 16:45:48 +0000

Many people think of AI as a monolith. But what we call AI is actually a series of related technologies, each of which is evolving alongside the others. Generative AI has been in the public consciousness for several years now, but it’s merely one example of a transformative AI technology. Other emerging technologies will not replace generative AI; instead, they will build upon each other to unlock new capabilities. Upcoming enterprise AI use cases will rely on a mix of different AI technologies. In a recent interview with Savannah Peterson from The Cube, Equinix Chief Digital and Innovation Officer Harmeen Mehta described how C-suite leadership can leverage AI in their innovation cycles, using technologies like predictive and prescriptive AI in addition to generative AI:

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How AI Creates Competitive Advantage Beyond Productivity Gains

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 13:00:34 +0000

While generative AI initially grabbed the headlines, new AI technologies have continued to emerge, transforming how businesses operate, innovate and compete. The possibilities for building competitive advantage with AI are seemingly endless. Early adopters of AI, such as healthcare and financial services companies, are achieving significant breakthroughs as organizations in other industries start to build momentum. Other businesses are leveraging agentic AI workflows in combination with the right data sources to do more with the same resources, improving operations and producing better outcomes. But over the long term, the strategic value of AI will be much more than simple productivity…

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Why AI Workloads Need More Than Just GPUs

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 13:00:55 +0000

While many people are aware that companies use massive datasets to train AI models, they don’t always consider the infrastructure implications of this fact. It’s true that enterprises need GPUs to process all that training data, but there’s much more to AI infrastructure than just GPUs. For one thing, legacy data centers typically lack the power, cooling and connectivity capabilities needed to make the most of GPUs. To overcome these shortcomings, enterprises can deploy GPUs inside high-performance data centers instead. There’s also much more to AI than just training workloads in a few core locations. Today’s AI workloads are inherently…

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What Is an Interconnection Hub? It’s Where Digital Ecosystems Connect

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 13:00:08 +0000

The adoption of hybrid multicloud architecture has become the backbone of modern enterprise IT. It enables organizations to achieve agility, scalability and resilience. A global survey of senior IT leaders conducted by Foundry reveals that 50% of enterprise application workloads now run in multicloud or hybrid cloud environments. This shift highlights the strategic importance of robust networking solutions. These solutions enable optimized placement of compute, data and network resources and ensure connectivity with a range of cloud, IT and network service providers, as well as technology partners. Organizations often find themselves facing requirements to comply with rapidly evolving data…

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Your IT Stack Wasn’t Built for Agentic AI: The Fix? An AI Agent Hub

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:00:45 +0000

AI is rapidly transforming software development. Not long ago, humans wrote all code manually, but now, AI generates an increasing share—from basic coding assistants to agentic systems that can plan, execute, evaluate and iterate toward a goal. Traditional software is static and deterministic; it can only be updated via software release cycles. In contrast, agentic AI-powered software is autonomous and adaptive, responding to context, making probabilistic inferences, dynamically solving problems, preventing failures and optimizing infrastructure to reduce costs. This evolution toward AI-powered software makes user interfaces (UIs) more flexible and user-friendly since they can accept natural input (speech, images, mixed…

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In 2026, We’ll Build the Future of AI—Together

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 14:43:58 +0000

As we approach the end of the year, it’s only natural to pause and reflect on everything that happened in the last 12 months. For me, 2025 was filled with excitement, change and personal growth. I took the role of Chief Customer and Revenue Officer at Equinix in July. In the months since, I’ve dedicated myself to learning everything I can about our business and listening to what customers have to say. Joining Equinix felt like being drafted onto a winning team. I found myself surrounded by people who are intensely proud of everything this company has accomplished—and rightfully so….

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The Overlooked Benefits of Colocation: Efficiency and Sustainability

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 13:00:24 +0000

It’s no secret that data centers are important. They play an essential role in the digital economy and our modern society. We can see this illustrated by the fact that companies around the world are investing millions to get the data center capacity they need. But it’s also clear that not all data centers were created equally. Businesses choose different kinds of data centers for different purposes, and get different results. Many companies are choosing colocation data centers, forgoing a do-it-yourself approach that can be difficult and costly. When they choose colocation, they typically do so to avoid downtime, make…

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Why AI and HPC Demand a New Class of Data Centers

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 13:00:38 +0000

AI has been a major driver in the evolution of compute infrastructure, creating huge demand for GPUs and AI accelerators. But AI workloads aren’t the only ones that require high-density, high-performance compute (HPC). Major financial institutions use HPC for simulations that model the probability of various outcomes. In the aerospace and automotive industries, computational fluid dynamics uses HPC to simulate how liquids and gases move and interact with surfaces. HPC is also used in applications ranging from weather prediction and climate modeling to genomics and bioinformatics. Before long, it’s likely that a large portion of compute will be high performance….

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From Multiple Clouds to Multicloud: The Next Evolution in AI Networking

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 13:00:30 +0000

The concept of multicloud is nothing new. For more than a decade now, IT leaders have recognized the advantages of acquiring infrastructure and services from more than one cloud provider. These advantages include everything from flexibility to cost-efficiency to risk mitigation. Today, it’s clear that the early promise of multicloud hasn’t fully paid off yet, and that’s largely due to networking challenges. Many enterprises are still struggling with the complexity of multicloud networking, and this often leads to limited mobility between clouds. In the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report, 86% of organizations said they are using multicloud. However,…

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Why Last-Mile Connectivity Remains a Hidden Barrier to Network Success

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 13:00:58 +0000

Enterprise network teams have never faced more pressure to move quickly than they do today. Hybrid multicloud architectures demand seamless connectivity across clouds, partners and data centers. Distributed AI workloads require low-latency paths to inference endpoints in proximity to data sources. And business leaders expect network infrastructure to keep pace with application deployment timelines that are measured in days, not months. As teams pursue these requirements, there are two persistent challenges that continue to slow even their most sophisticated network strategies: discovering and connecting to the right service providers and ensuring last-mile connectivity between enterprise locations and the digital ecosystems…

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How to Build a Future-Ready Hybrid Multicloud Networking Strategy

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 13:00:32 +0000

Today’s enterprises rely on a variety of cloud services to enable groundbreaking digital experiences for their customers. However, these experiences are not set in stone: Customers have changing expectations, while enterprises have changing business priorities. This means that the way they use cloud services has to change as well. To make the most of everything that different cloud providers and environments have to offer, these enterprises must ensure flexible, scalable hybrid multicloud networking. This means preventing vendor lock-in and avoiding physical network infrastructure that’s difficult and expensive to adapt. As enterprise IT leaders work to implement a flexible, future-ready multicloud networking…

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Simplify Secure Multicloud Connectivity for Distributed Environments

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:00:25 +0000

Hybrid multicloud environments are now mainstream. Ensuring connectivity with various cloud, IT and network service providers and technology partners is essential for these complex environments. In a global survey of IT leaders conducted by Foundry, 45% of respondents point to security as a top driver as they strive to meet regulatory requirements and protect sensitive data across distributed environments. For more than three decades now, when designing their network security systems, IT teams have relied on the core principles of the CIA Triad–Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability–as the foundational doctrine for securing information systems and managing risk. In the modern era…

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Ambition Isn’t Enough: Data Center Sustainability Requires Action

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 13:00:41 +0000

With enterprise adoption of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) accelerating across all sectors, demand for IT infrastructure is at an all-time high. As businesses’ IT requirements expand to accommodate emerging technologies, so does the environmental impact of their digital footprint. That’s why the energy and resource intensity of digital infrastructure has been gaining more visibility. To meet growing demand and ensure our AI future is powered responsibly, we’ll need wide-ranging solutions, including optimizing data center efficiency. Data centers play a vital role not only in hosting essential infrastructure that powers the digital economy but also in partnering with organizations to…

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What Does Enterprise-Ready Quantum Computing Look Like?

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:00:23 +0000

With AI rapidly transforming industries, enterprise leaders are alert to other emerging technologies that could have a similar impact. Quantum computing is one example of such a technology. It represents the next frontier in advanced computing and promises breakthroughs in processing power for complex problems. However, enterprise access to quantum computing has traditionally been limited by extremely high hardware costs and a steep learning curve. Until recently, universities and research labs owned and hosted most quantum computers for research. But that’s beginning to change. Quantum computing has matured, and businesses are now using it to support various use cases across…

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The Future of Autonomous Networking: How AI Is Redefining Connectivity

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:00:18 +0000

Generative AI isn’t just another workload; it’s driving a fundamental shift in how enterprises design and manage their network infrastructure. While traditional applications may reside neatly in one location, GenAI models demand immense compute power and access to massive datasets in many distributed locations. Manual network provisioning and management will not be able to keep pace with these demands. Enterprises are discovering that they need a new approach to network management if they hope to capitalize on the GenAI opportunity. In a world where AI innovation is progressing exponentially, businesses need networks that can adapt instantly to changing traffic patterns…

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The Data Problem Behind Agentic AI, and What You Can Do About It

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 13:00:25 +0000

While agentic AI is still an emerging technology, it’s gaining traction quickly. We’re already seeing a wide variety of use cases, including: Software engineering tools like GitHub Copilot Coding Agent that automates planning, coding and validation, accelerating development pipelines Business process automation solutions like Salesforce Agentforce to automate tasks and handle complex scenarios across sales, marketing and operations Customer support services like Klarna’s AI customer service assistant, resolving issues like refunds in under two minutes In fact, customer service agents are familiar to many consumers already. “By 2029, agentic AI will autonomously resolve 80% of common customer service issues without human intervention, leading…

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Digital Plumbing: The Infrastructure Behind Dating Apps

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 13:00:13 +0000

As we approach Valentine’s Day, many people are searching for love—or just companionship—and many of them are using dating apps to help in that search. About 360 million people regularly use dating apps, and these apps now drive total global revenues of more than $6 billion. Tinder remains the dominant dating app, but only controls about 30% of total revenues. There are still plenty of competitors, including niche apps that focus on alternative dating experiences. In fact, the average user regularly engages with at least two different services. This means that users are already well-positioned to drop the apps that…

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Your Network Wasn’t Built for Agentic AI: The Fix? Secure Agent Enclaves

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:00:26 +0000

Enterprises are entering a new phase of AI adoption, one in which intelligent behavior emerges from the collaboration of multiple autonomous agents rather than a single model or service. By combining generative AI with agentic architectures, organizations can build applications that coordinate tasks, make decisions and refine outcomes through constant collaboration. Most enterprises will take a distributed approach to agentic AI, meaning that their agents will run across different cloud and on-premises environments. However, running agentic systems in a multicloud architecture leads to significantly higher risk and complexity. As new agents emerge across different environments, their networking policies, security controls…

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What 500,000 Interconnections Reveal About the Future of Enterprise Connectivity

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 08:05:26 +0000

Equinix has passed a significant milestone in our efforts to shorten the path to boundless connectivity for businesses. Across our global footprint, we’ve surpassed 500,000 interconnections. This means more than half a million direct, private network connections between businesses. But every one of these is more than just a connection. Together, they signify more than 500,000 ways to accelerate innovation and elevate user experiences. Interconnection is foundational to today’s digital economy, and we’ve built the world’s most trusted interconnection foundation to help customers scale, integrate and innovate faster. According to Synergy Research Group, our 500,000+ interconnections account for nearly one-third…

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To Overcome Data Sprawl, Use the Right Data Patterns

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:00:46 +0000

Data is almost certainly the most valuable asset enterprises have. It’s the intellectual property that differentiates them in market, powers customer relationships and fuels decisions that drive growth. Most enterprise leaders intuitively understand how important data is, and most enterprises start out with solid data management strategies. However, this can change over time. Today, most enterprises have diverse public and private environments, leading to cloud sprawl. This includes big-name hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, but also SaaS providers, networking and security specialists, AI-specific neoclouds and more, all providing real value to the organization. According to one survey,…

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5 Steps to Solving Latency in 2026

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 13:00:01 +0000

IT leaders have been contending with latency for decades. While the basic problem hasn’t changed, solving it is more important than ever. That’s because applications have steadily grown more sensitive to latency. With the advent of agentic AI, this trend will accelerate. In the past, enterprises only had to support human users, and humans aren’t as sensitive to latency as machines are. Over time, enterprises began working with machine-to-machine architectures and adopted hybrid multicloud environments where latency was a performance bottleneck. Now, AI agents are connecting with each other and performing tasks at machine speed. Even very small delays could…

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How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek: Compute and Storage

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:00:36 +0000

These days, people are paying more attention to data centers and the role they play in our modern digital society. They’re asking questions about how data centers use resources like energy and water, and how they can do so more efficiently. But, with so much focus on how data centers work, it’s easy to overlook why they exist. Simply put, data centers exist to host and connect compute and storage hardware. The capabilities they provide help keep that hardware running to its full potential. In turn, digital enterprises rely on this hardware to help them innovate and serve customers better. Rather…

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A Best Practices Guide to Updating Legacy Network Architectures

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 13:00:30 +0000

Today’s businesses can choose from more advanced networking solutions than ever before, in more places than ever before. But this doesn’t necessarily translate to better networks across the board. That’s because many organizations have networks that they’ve pieced together over time, often using outdated components and architectures designed to serve applications that are no longer in use. When enterprises build piecemeal networks like this, there’s no high-level strategy to optimize for performance, flexibility and reliability across the company’s distributed operations. As the digital business landscape changes with the emergence of agentic AI and other groundbreaking technologies, these companies won’t have…

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Modern Fraud Prevention Requires Scalable, Low-Latency Connectivity

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 13:00:26 +0000

Financial crime, such as payment fraud, account takeover and money laundering, is more than just a drain on the global economy. For banks and other financial enterprises, it can lead to lower customer satisfaction, damage to reputation, and heavy regulatory fines. In fact, global penalties for failing to comply with anti-money laundering (AML), know your customer (KYC), sanctions and customer due diligence (CDD) regulations totaled $3.8 billion in 2025. Banks and their partners have been using machine learning and predictive analytics as part of their fraud detection efforts for many years now. However, financial fraud is a constantly evolving threat,…

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How to Modernize DDI Services for Hybrid Multicloud Architectures

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 13:00:31 +0000

If you’ve worked in IT for long enough, there’s a good chance you’ve had the following experience: You: “It’s not DNS… There’s no way it’s DNS…” Narrator: “It was, in fact, DNS.” Because of course, it’s always DNS. It’s so familiar that it’s become a meme for those of us in the industry. However, knowing what to do about it isn’t easy, and the emergence of hybrid multicloud only adds to the complexity. Enterprises have traditionally managed DNS, DHCP and IPAM as separate solutions, each deployed, managed and updated manually over time. While this model was sufficient in more static environments, it’s misaligned…

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What Are Internet Exchanges? Why Do They Matter Today?

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:00:08 +0000

The internet is among the marvels of the modern world, and it enables important use cases for enterprises and consumers alike. Despite how ingrained it’s become in our society, the general public still has very little understanding of what “the internet” actually is and how it works. For the uninitiated, it’s easy to think of the internet as a monolithic global entity. We all use it for different purposes, and we access it via different devices, but it still feels like we’re connecting to the same thing. It’s a nice idea, and it says a lot about how much smaller…

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What Is an AI Factory?

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:16:32 +0000

Enterprise leaders recognize the promise of generative and agentic AI, but they don’t always understand how to get the infrastructure they need to enable these technologies. They may understand that it involves deploying high-performance computing inside AI-ready data centers that help the hardware run at its full potential. But they may not know how to acquire the right hardware or find the data center capacity they need. For that matter, many of these leaders have already been looking to get out of the data center business. They’re tired of the high CAPEX costs and complexity involved with running a data center, and they understand that their time and efforts would be better spent elsewhere. They’d prefer to focus on how AI can…

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Equinix and Palo Alto Networks Partner to Enable AI You Can Trust

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 11:55:50 +0000

Agentic AI brings together multiple agents, models and distributed datasets across a broad ecosystem of AI platform providers. In this environment, adaptability becomes the differentiator, enabling enterprises to continually optimize cost, performance and user experience. Currently, developers in different enterprise functions are developing their own AI applications in isolation. This can result in inconsistent security policies across different applications, reduced flexibility to change model providers due to data lock-in, higher infrastructure and data egress costs, and lack of consistent monitoring, control and user experience.

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Equinix at NVIDIA GTC: Looking Back on a Year of AI Acceleration

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:00:45 +0000

Another edition of NVIDIA GTC is almost upon us. I couldn’t be more excited about what this event represents, for the industry as a whole and specifically for us at Equinix. It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year since we announced Equinix AI Factory accelerated by NVIDIA at last year’s GTC. This fully managed, enterprise-grade AI infrastructure solution represented our bold vision for the future of AI, and the role that Equinix and NVIDIA would play in enabling that future together. In the months since, our vision for the future of AI started to become reality. We saw growth…

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What Does Enterprise AI Infrastructure Really Require?

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:53:10 +0000

Enterprise AI is no longer an experiment. Across financial services, telecom, life sciences and beyond, organizations are moving from exploring “what AI can do” to building the infrastructure that lets it perform reliably, at scale, and close to the data that makes it useful. The hard questions are no longer about models. They’re about infrastructure: where AI workloads run, how they connect to data and partner ecosystems, and how enterprises manage distributed deployments without losing control. NVIDIA GTC 2026 is where those questions surface in full force. At Booth #1030, Equinix is in the middle of that conversation, demonstrating how…

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A Guide to Responsible Water Use in Data Centers

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:00:18 +0000

As demand for data center capacity continues to increase, many people are concerned about how data centers consume water, and how that consumption may impact their own communities. At Equinix, we are dedicated to being responsible stewards of water, and this includes making thoughtful decisions about how and where we consume it. To achieve this, we’re pursuing a multifaceted approach that includes: Evaluating the water context of each new site to determine if the area is facing water stress and if local water planning efforts indicate it would be sustainable and responsible to use water for cooling in that location. Then,…

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Looking Back on a Year of AI Acceleration

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:00:45 +0000

Another edition of NVIDIA GTC just passed. I couldn’t be more excited about what this event represents, for the industry as a whole and specifically for us at Equinix. It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year since we announced Equinix AI Factory accelerated by NVIDIA at last year’s GTC. This fully managed, enterprise-grade AI infrastructure solution represented our bold vision for the future of AI, and the role that Equinix and NVIDIA would play in enabling that future together. In the months since, our vision for the future of AI started to become reality. We saw growth in the…

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The Heartbeat of the Digital World Runs on People

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:55:04 +0000

International Data Center Day is an opportunity to celebrate the facilities that make our modern digital world possible, but it’s equally important to recognize the people that keep those facilities running. Data centers are the heartbeat of our digital world, but it’s people who keep that pulse healthy and strong. All of the digital experiences we enjoy on a daily basis, from streaming music to video calling to shopping online, are only possible because of an invisible army of data center professionals. They manage complex systems and equipment that most other people never even think about. When you push a…

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Connectivity Without Compromise: How Organizations Can Ensure Digital Sovereignty

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:00:46 +0000

Today’s business leaders are facing pressure to spur growth, expand into new markets, adopt AI quickly and reduce regulatory risk. To do all this, they must maintain control over their data, their infrastructure, and the services they acquire from providers. Many organizations know that they rely on digital infrastructure that they don’t fully control. They must address this problem to balance their need for control over their digital infrastructure against other business priorities.

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To Modernize in 2026, Government Agencies Must Pursue Resilient Innovation

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:00:34 +0000

Following last year’s surge of budgetary and personnel cuts, government agencies are placing increased emphasis on efficiency and modernization. Establishing a modernization roadmap to replace their legacy proprietary methodologies is an important first step toward achieving operational resiliency. During some recent self-assessment activities across much of the federal government, agencies have been grappling with the realities of technical debt. They’ve accumulated this technical debt over decades, but recent periods of high turnover and disruption have exacerbated the problem. Now, agencies face the challenge of overcoming technical debt to modernize their IT infrastructure and take advantage of emerging technologies. This is why…

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How to Solve for Distributed Data in the AI Era

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:00:48 +0000

As enterprises work to prepare their AI strategies, there are still many unknowns they have to account for: They don’t know exactly which AI use cases they’ll pursue in the future. They don’t know how they’ll scale up each AI workload, how much it will cost, or where the resources to scale AI will reside. They don’t know which ecosystem partners they’ll work with to execute their AI strategy. They can’t know how technology will evolve and improve in the future. Most importantly, they don’t know exactly where all their data is, what data is appropriate or eligible for AI use, and what’s needed…

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Digital Plumbing: The Infrastructure Behind Filing and Paying Taxes

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:00:58 +0000

We’re approaching mid-April, which for readers in the U.S. means that the deadline for filing income tax returns is right around the corner. Other countries have different deadlines and processes, but it’s safe to say that nobody enjoys paying taxes, regardless of where they live. Fortunately, digital technology exists to make things a bit easier. In our Digital Plumbing series, we aim to demystify the infrastructure that underlies everyday digital experiences. Whether it’s finding a date for Valentine’s Day, streaming the hot new album or just watching cat videos, these experiences wouldn’t be possible without data centers, network connectivity and…

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India’s Digital Gateway: Mumbai Gears Up to Meet Growing AI Demand

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 06:00:54 +0000

India’s digital economy is growing rapidly, fueled both by innovative homegrown companies and multinationals invested in the country’s future. But it’s clear that the best is yet to come. The same growth we’ve seen in recent years will continue to accelerate, and the country’s digital economy is well on its way to crossing the $1 trillion mark by 2030. There are many different factors that will drive this growth: Demographics: About two-thirds of all Indians are under 35, and these youths typically grew up using digital technology in every aspect of their lives. Widespread mobile adoption: About 85% of Indian households reported…

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Core Banking Modernization Trend Sees Clients Moving IBM Z Mainframes to Colocation at Equinix

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:00:12 +0000

For banks, the public cloud is a natural fit for their digital front end. By building cloud native apps with Kubernetes, APIs and microservices, they can support modern developments like mobile and open banking. However, the public cloud typically isn’t right for their core back-end applications. Most banks still run these apps in on-premises data centers, which they own and have struggled to keep up to date with the latest demands for efficiency, power supply, and cooling technologies. Over the years, banks have struggled to apply a clear strategy to their digital infrastructure, often accumulating multiple data centers across many…

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How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek: Managed Services

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:00:32 +0000

These days, it seems like everyone’s talking about data centers, but almost no one understands what they really do. Our How to Speak Like a Data Center Geek blog series breaks down how modern data centers actually operate and why it matters. One common misconception surrounding data centers is that they’re just a big box for storing servers. While it’s true that data centers provide the space, power and cooling needed to host hardware and keep it running properly, that’s certainly not all they do. For instance, some colocation data center operators provide fully managed IT services inside their facilities, including…

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Brazil: From Regional Leader to Global AI Infrastructure Hub

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:00:28 +0000

The next wave of AI won’t be built everywhere. It will be built in certain markets that can deliver three critical advantages at once: High-performance global connectivity Clean energy availability A thriving digital ecosystem Together, these form what we can think of as the AI infrastructure trifecta: the foundation for any region looking to compete in the next phase of AI. This shift is creating a clear divide. Markets that meet these criteria will become global AI hubs while others risk falling behind. Brazil is emerging as one of the markets on the right side of that divide. Brazil’s data center industry is projected to…

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When Does Enterprise AI Outgrow Its Network Infrastructure?

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:00:52 +0000

Enterprise networks were never designed for AI. For decades, networks functioned as “dumb pipes”: static infrastructure that moved data from point A to point B. They were slow to provision, difficult to adapt and largely invisible until something went wrong. That model is now breaking down. To support AI workloads at scale, the network can no longer be a passive transport layer. It must become part of the execution fabric itself. AI-driven environments constantly optimize for lower latency, cost-efficiency, data locality, security and more. These decisions are increasingly made by autonomous systems, with no direct human intervention. To support these autonomous systems, networks…

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