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 outcomes for customers.

Cindy Liu (CL), Sophie Ben Sadia (SBS)

CL: Sophie, please bring us up to speed on your career to date.

SBS: I joined Equinix in May this year, bringing more than 20 years leadership experience building high-performing sales, marketing and operations teams across various geographies. I was most recently Vice President, Channels & Alliances and the Edge Computing Leader, for Schneider Electric Secure Power Division for the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Russia and South America regions. Prior to Schneider Electric, my last position was in Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise as Vice President of Sales for France Regions.

I am French and I am based in Singapore. I have lived in Asia for almost 12 years.

CL: What attracted you to Equinix?

SBS: There were three things that attracted me to Equinix. Firstly, Charles Meyers, our CEO, has put partners at the heart of our go to market strategy as a key part of Equinix’s growth engine. With an ambitious 50% target coming from the channel in the next few years, it is exciting for me to be a part of this journey.

The other factor was the culture fit. At Equinix, we strongly believe the culture determines our success. It is driven by our people who put customers at the center our company values, which we call the Magic of Equinix. One of the Magic values that really resonates with me is Find a better way, which aligns with my personal motto to challenge myself to strive for excellence and always have fun within the work by supporting each other and celebrating success.

And finally, I am a true believer in and I was very impressed by Equinix’s Future First sustainability strategy and commitment as the world’s digital infrastructure leader to harness the power of technology to create a more accessible, equitable and sustainable future. We are making good progress towards the sustainability goals as we strive to become the greenest place to operate with 100% clean and renewable energy and to be carbon neutral by 2030.
 
CL: Describe the importance of partners to Equinix?

SBS: Equinix is never the whole solution, we cannot do everything by ourselves. It is essential that we team up with partners who can bring their own services and competencies into a solution. The relationship with our partner community is symbiotic and our goal is to make that relationship as integrated and effective as possible.

With the digital transformation acceleration, our ecosystem is getting larger and richer. More digital leaders are seeing the impact of connecting to multiple ecosystems, including improving their value to end customers. We are very much complementing each other. For instance, our partners can tap into Platform Equinix® to deliver value added services to our joint customers.

CL: What do you love about working with partners?

SBS: Sustainability is also very much true for building long term collaboration, it is core to my philosophy with partners. Joining forces and collaborating to create innovative and sustainable solutions for our customers. And like any meaningful relationship, partnerships require patience, effort and commitment to build and nurture trust.

CL: What are some of your upcoming priorities for partners in the Asia-Pacific market?

SBS: We have two priorities in Asia-Pacific with our partners. The first is to increase awareness of all the changes within our partner community to show the extent of the support available. From the new team structure and new tools such as the Partner Direct Quoting tool, to products that are partner first.

The second is ensuring alignment with partners on our target opportunities such as the hybrid multicloud architecture or edge computing, and how to grow those opportunities by defining the joint solution and value proposition. For instance, our partners can leverage Platform Equinix to trailblaze innovation and create value added outcomes for customers.

CL: What are a few things you want partners to know about?

SBS: First of all, we have a portfolio that is very relevant to the current digital transformation trends. We are helping our partners to extend their addressable market with our data center services and digital engagement model. Our interconnection service is the glue of our ecosystem, Equinix Fabric™ is a great example. And we are providing digital infrastructure services that offer a new virtual consumption experiences across compute, network and storage.

We are also committed strategically to evolving a partner-first mindset, which means that we are on a multiyear journey to create joint value propositions with partners. In doing so, we have concrete commitments in four areas: building a new organization dedicated to supporting partners, enhancing our tools such as Partner Central Portal to further empower our partners, creating partner-first products and finally integrating partners into Platform Equinix.

Some of our partners have seen tremendous growth through their collaboration with Equinix. When they integrate their offerings into Platform Equinix they expand their market reach, drive booking success and harness more possibilities.

And the good news is that this is only the beginning. We have several other improvements planned for 2021 and beyond, from additional marketing automation for self-service to content syndication and more.

CL: Sounds like a very exciting time ahead for your Sophie. Now, can you tell us a fun fact about yourself that people might not know?

SBS: I have more bottles of wine as a wine oenophile – 800 bottles in fact – than the total amount shoes, bags and accessories I own!

And now that my wine collection secret is out, I’ll close with a thank you to our partners. I look forward to helping build even more success together for the benefit of our customers into 2021 and beyond.
 

The original article was first published here.