Equinix ties up with VMware to speed up hybrid cloud deployments


Rene Millman

28 Aug, 2019

Equinix has expanded its partnership with VMware to jointly develop solutions to speed up enterprise hybrid cloud transformations. The partnership will see VMware Cloud on Dell EMC (VCDE) hardware running within Equinix data centres worldwide.

According to an announcement by both companies, enterprises will be able to use hybrid, multicloud infrastructures and network connectivity to address the increasing volume and complexity of their application workload needs.

VMware will support Equinix as a global colocation provider for VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, combining systems and storage in hybrid cloud infrastructures.

With the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) interconnection service on Platform Equinix, the colocation firm said enterprises can take advantage of private multicloud connectivity and deploy hybrid cloud infrastructures.

ECX Fabric is an on-demand, SDN-enabled interconnection service that helps meet the digital transformation needs of enterprises today by allowing any business to connect between its own distributed infrastructure and any other company’s distributed infrastructure, including the world’s largest cloud providers, on Platform Equinix.

Users will also gain access to potentially thousands of new global partners they can interconnect with via ECX Fabric.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, said that the 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”.

Rick Villars, research vice president of Datacenter & Cloud at IDC, said digital businesses require IT transformation and a complete end-to-end workload modernisation plan that enables full automation and continuous optimisation of applications.

“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,” he added.