The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference may have just ended, but the opportunities presented there are already gaining traction.
Equinix had a strong presence on the WPC trade show floor and announced expanded availability of Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute through its data center locations in key global markets. This spring, Equinix became the first data center provider to deliver this global offering, which enables customers to directly connect to Azure in Equinix IBX data centers across North America, South America, Asia, Europe and Australia.
ExpressRoute is a strategic offering with serious benefits for businesses that have specific cloud security and reliability concerns. This high-performance hybrid cloud solution provides secure, private and virtual connections on a global scale. And it enables enterprise customers to use dedicated, high-speed links to shift information and applications between Microsoft Azure and the IT infrastructure they’ve located at Equinix.
Day two of the conference featured announcements from other Microsoft and Equinix partners that are taking advantage of ExpressRoute via Equinix:
- NetApp, which introduced NetApp Private Storage for Microsoft Azure, is using ExpressRoute to establish a dedicated connection between a private storage environment hosted at Equinix global data centers and the Microsoft Azure public cloud. The resulting seamless hybrid environment allows enterprises to build an agile infrastructure that bridges on-premise and cloud resources on their own terms.
- EMC is combining EMC storage in both traditional and Equinix data centers with applications running in Azure via ExpressRoute. This private connection gives its customers the best of both on-premise and public cloud environments for their high-performance applications.
- Carpathia, an Equinix partner, created a hybrid cloud solution specifically for enterprises and government agencies with strict data security requirements. The Starter Kit for Microsoft Azure, which allows for a private connection via Microsoft Azure and Equinix, gives customers a simple, secure solution to migrate application workloads from the basement to hybrid clouds connected to Microsoft Azure.
- ALOG data centers, part of the Equinix platform, was recognized during WPC as the best Microsoft partner in the hosting category for Latin America. ALOG offers mainly Microsoft cloud services such as Cloud OS and Azure ExpressRoute. ALOG’s Wellington Lordelo received the award.
The conference also featured the Equinix and Azure ExpressRoute Launch Event. The event, with speeches from Equinix’s Peter Ferris and Microsoft’s Dave Anderson, outlined the opportunities of this hybrid cloud offering for enterprises and providers alike.
“As enterprises in earnest start transitioning to the cloud, companies are finding this is a more complex process than they originally thought,” Ferris said. “By working closely with Microsoft and key integration partners, we can take this complex process and make it a lot simpler.”
Anderson added: “The ability to take applications that customers have been reticent to move to the cloud because of security or performance issues, and move them to the cloud knowing that it is just an extension of their current data center infrastructure” means businesses can take advantage of the best of public and private.
The WPC announcements of the additions to Equinix’s cloud ecosystem are a reminder that the options available through Equinix Cloud Exchange keep growing. The exchange features near real-time provisioning of cloud services and dynamic bandwidth allocation, which allows businesses to make simultaneous connections to multiple clouds from multiple sites. The industry-leading selection of cloud providers inside Equinix enables customers to connect to the clouds they want and adjust their portfolio of cloud services, as needed.
The five-day conference, with 16,000 attendees from more than 140 countries, wrapped on July 17. The Vision Keynote address, with speeches from Microsoft COO Kevin Turner, Channel Chief Phil Sorgen, General Manager of the Worldwide Partner Group Gavriella Schuster, and other top Microsoft leaders, showcased Microsoft’s vision for the future of our mobile-first, cloud-first world.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella summarized this vision: “We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.”
