Equinix wants to be the customers’ Partner of Choice in their digital transformation journey

India offers immense opportunities in the data centre space and Equinix tries to leverage it using its experience in this field and with help from its partners. But it being a little complex proposition, Equinix helps partners by providing a lot of use cases and white papers to let them incorporate their expertise into the solutions of partners in the right manner.

During a chat with VARINDIA, Jules Johnston, Senior Vice President, Global Channels, Equinix shares about Equinix's business in India and contribution of the channel business in it -
 

Could you throw some light on Equinix business focus in India?
Equinix is a globally connected series of some 250 + data centres around the world offering digital services. We announced our initial investment in India in September 2021 with the acquisition of GPX India. These were our first two data centres in Mumbai.

In terms of investment, last year we announced an additional $86 million investment for our third data centre in Mumbai and $125 million investment to open a data centre in Chennai. On August 10th of this year, we announced another $42 million investment for the creation of our fourth data centre in Mumbai. We are excited about expanding our global presence in India to support our customers’ needs and are committed to creating 500 IT professional jobs in Bangalore as part of our continued growth and presence.

How do you see this market from a data centre opportunity perspective?
India represents a huge opportunity for partners and customers who are looking at how they can take advantage of technologies and digital transformation, how they move to hybrid multi cloud architectures, and how they achieve their sustainability objectives, etc. There’s a huge opportunity in India right now; some 40% of enterprises have said they are committed to a hybrid multi cloud strategy and are already on that path. But 86% - 90% of enterprises still want to be on that trajectory. The opportunity for partners and VARS is to fill that needs gap and deliver the kind of services that can help customers transform to the cloud.

Which are some of the major partnerships you have signed in India?
Equinix is very fortunate to have inked some very strong global partnerships with hyperscalers. So we are already working with AWS, Microsoft and Google and they have their Onramps in Equinix locations. With these hyperscalers having direct Onramps with Equinix, customers who are already on our platform can use public cloud very easily.

We also have very strong global partnerships with some of the biggest technology companies like Dell, HPE and VMware and we recommend their architecture. For example, HPE GreenLake with Equinix enables customers to more completely define their hybrid cloud operations strategy. Recently, at the HPE Discover event, HPE announced that it is pre deploying their equipment in Equinix data centres, which will enable partners to be able to recommend it to a customer. Customers on the other hand will be able to take advantage of radically shortening time to provision services.

How do you partners contribute to building Equinix business in this market?
Partners in every market, and certainly in India, will need to first help their customers understand where they are on their digital transformation journey and then add value to every stage in that journey. As enterprises take their journey to optimise the core network, and after they decide what ecosystem partners they need to be connected to, and what their edge strategy will be, partners can come and provide the needed advisory, technology, and the necessary hardware and software procurement around that. Additionally, partners can provide workload application assessments in order to make the best recommendations to their customers.

Which are the target verticals for Equinix?
The cloud is a horizontal play for any enterprise that wants to thrive in the digital economy. But particularly in India, we are expecting that financial services and payments & ecommerce applications will have a fast mover advantage with the data centre capacity and services that we bring to India. Another vertical is education that has swiftly moved to online platforms. India is home to more than 25 home grown OTT companies and about seven international over the top entertainment companies. That is a vertical that will absolutely gravitate towards these services. So financial, ecommerce, education and OTT are the key target verticals for us. We tailor different use cases for different verticals, while also make training and education available to our partners.

Message to the Partners 
“We are excited to bring not just the Equinix data centre offerings, but the unique digital services offerings that customers are talking about. So, if we have bare metal offerings, network edge solutions, we will have those available to you in a way that we haven’t had in India before. Besides, partners can also layer their managed services and digital services on top of these offerings. So it’s a great opportunity for you to take your business to new heights.”