Equinix launches Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric

Equinix, a leading digital infrastructure company, in association with alliance partner and global communications hub datamena, has announced the availability of Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) in the Dubai International Business Exchange (IBX), DX1. This launch further underpins Equinix’s data center facility as a world-class, carrier-neutral hub for the region where carriers, content providers, cloud providers, financial service and enterprise customers can colocate critical data infrastructure.

According to IDC’s COVID-19 Market Impact Survey, nearly half of CIOs across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa region plan to accelerate their existing digital experience efforts to reach new customers and meet operational agility needs. Investment in cloud-based solutions has skyrocketed since early 2020 in response to increasing digital demands.

ECX Fabric is an advanced interconnection solution that enables seamless, on-demand and direct access to multiple clouds and networks across the globe. By bringing together cloud service providers with enterprises consuming cloud, and enabling them to establish private, high-performance connections, ECX Fabric gives enterprises direct access to the services they need to build sophisticated hybrid cloud solutions. Furthermore, customers can utilize the solution to extend their market reach and increase privacy, performance and reliability of cloud service connections.

The ability to exchange large volumes of data through interconnection in this way is essential to compete in the digital economy. According to Equinix’s 2019-20 Global Tech Trends Survey, 7 out of 10 (70%) IT decision-makers in the UAE think interconnection is a key facilitator of digital transformation, with over two-thirds (68%) of IT decision-makers surveyed using interconnection to reduce the cost of connectivity.

ECX Fabric is an on-demand, SDN-enabled interconnection service that allows any business to connect between its own distributed infrastructure and any other company’s distributed infrastructure, including the world’s largest network service and cloud providers, on Platform Equinix. It enables customers to:

• Utilize advanced interconnection capabilities: ECX Fabric is a next-generation interconnection solution providing direct on-demand access to multiple clouds and networks. It streamlines cloud adoption processes for partners and users, accelerates delivery times and provides a higher quality and more secure cloud user experience.
• Minimize security threats with secure, high-performance connections: Better manage a wide range of business and technology risks and create secure, private connections bypassing the public internet with hybrid, multicloud solutions. ECX Fabric provides virtualized, private direct connections that bypass the internet to provide better security and performance with a range of bandwidth options.
• Adopt on-demand, automated connectivity to clouds: Determine how and where connections occur, with flexible bandwidth options, WAN-optimization, and SD-WAN solutions.
• Access many virtual circuits via one port: Connect to many participants (clouds, networks, enterprise customers) over a single physical port, enabling dynamic bandwidth allocation among various parties.
• Harness growth and success of the cloud: ECX Fabric gives rise to new possibilities for the cloud; automated provisioning of enterprise-grade cloud solutions through dense ecosystems of providers represents the next step forward in the growth and success of the cloud.

Kamel Al-Tawil, Managing Director, Middle East and North Africa, Equinix said, “Our alliance partnership with datamena allows Equinix to extend the transit zone offerings with the availability of ECX Fabric in the MENA region. Organizations can quickly add connectivity to multiple cloud providers and other ECX Fabric participants to ensure access to the systems and applications they need to succeed. Through this collaboration, we are providing enterprises with access to robust, modern data center facilities near the digital edge, enabling direct connections to an increasing number of clouds, customers and partners that are at the core of digital transformation efforts, as well as addressing pressing challenges holding businesses back from relying on the cloud for mission-critical business, including latency, security and performance issues.”