Equinix Expands Cloud Partnership With VMware
Data center expert will support VMware Cloud on Dell EMC through its ECX Fabric
Co-location and data center expert Equinix will now support VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, a hybrid cloud platform whose initial release in the United States was one of several hybrid cloud-related announcements VMware made this week at its VMworld 2019 show in San Francisco.
The Lowdown: VMware is leaning on technology and channel partners like MSPs and systems integrators as it aggressively expands its cloud capabilities. The company essentially wants to enable any application to run on any device from any cloud, and is supporting a range of operating models, including partner-managed environments.
The Details: VMware and Equinix, which have been partners on cloud solutions since 2013, will together develop offerings based on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, which includes the VMware Cloud Foundation running atop Dell EMC’s VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure and includes Dell EMC services, including data protection, backup and disaster recovery, and bursting. As a fully managed service, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is designed to bring the benefits of cloud – including flexibility, simplicity, and lower costs – to on-premises infrastructures.
Equinix will help enable this through its Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) interconnection service – based on software-defined networking (SDN) principles – on Platform Equinix. Enterprises also will be able to tap into the ecosystem of partners around ECX Fabric and Platform Equinix.
The Impact: The initial idea that enterprises would move all of their business into the cloud to take advantage of the simplicity and economics has faded as businesses have increasingly adopted a hybrid cloud approach, leveraging both their on-premises environments and public cloud strategies. That has given rise to the need to be able to manage and move workloads between private data centers and public clouds as well as between clouds. A private and secure interconnect between those environments is key, and that job often falls to MSPs and other channel partners.
A recent study by Equinix found that interconnections between enterprises and cloud and IT providers will grow 98% a year through 2021 as business accelerate their digital services plans and move workloads to third-party cloud platforms.
Background: VMware and Equinix are no strangers. Along with working together on hybrid cloud infrastructures for the past six years, Equinix partnered with VMware last year to enable hybrid cloud deployments using AWS Direct Connect from Amazon Web Services. Equinix provided private connectivity to VMware Cloud on AWS through AWS Direct Connect via its IBX data centers around the world.
The Buzz: “The industry’s rapid adoption of hybrid cloud architectures for enterprise IT infrastructure is enabling higher levels of agility, security, and availability than ever before,” VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said. “Equinix and VMware have been partners for several years, serving a majority of Global 2000 joint customers. Our newly expanded partnership will enable our mutual customers to gain the benefit of the Equinix enterprise capabilities and the world-class VMware Cloud on Dell EMC solution.”
“By working together to offer hybrid cloud services, Equinix and VMware look forward to delivering the digital foundation for enterprise transformations in a cloud-first world,” Equinix CEO Charles Meyers said. “Together with VMware, we’re reinventing hybrid cloud infrastructures based on the breakthrough VMware Cloud on Dell EMC service to deliver against today’s security, performance, and availability requirements. Customers will soon be able to combine VMware’s world-class compute, storage, and networking technology with the strength of our global interconnection platform – making hybrid multicloud a reality for digital businesses.”
“Digital businesses require IT transformation, and a complete end-to-end workload modernization plan that enables full automation and continuous optimization of applications,” said Rick Villars, research vice president of data centers and cloud at IDC. “Shifting to an interconnected, hybrid cloud model that enables optimal placement and easy movement of workloads across multiple shared and dedicated cloud environments based on latency, resiliency, and data security requirements is the critical first step in this transformation. Solutions like VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, integrated with the Equinix interconnection platform, provide businesses with a well-connected, hybrid cloud-ready foundation to quickly address the increasing complexity and volume of applications in a digital world.”
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