Equinix has announced significant enhancements to Equinix Fabric, featuring the introduction of 25 and 50 gigabits per second (Gbps) virtual connections to cloud service providers. These advancements empower businesses to effortlessly manage larger workloads, like data-intensive AI training models or building scalable enterprise networks, by seamlessly and instantly provisioning virtual connections to leading cloud platforms. Google Cloud will be the inaugural partner to leverage this new capability.
Equinix Fabric is a software-defined network platform that provides access to thousands of service providers, network, communication, security and other cloud providers—all from a single location or multiple locations globally. Beginning in Q3 2023, Equinix Fabric customers will be able to provision virtual connections to the cloud with bandwidths up to 50 Gbps. Equinix has worked with Google Cloud as the first cloud partner to support this new capability, with integrations with other major cloud platforms expected in the future.
As businesses continue to shift to a hybrid multicloud world, it is critical that they can quickly and easily move data from one cloud to another as needed. By providing faster connections that can be created in minutes, the development of complex and data-intense applications, such as training artificial intelligence (AI) models, can be accelerated.
“Now more than ever customers need access to their data, and they need it fast, whether it’s for training a new AI model or enabling hybrid multicloud connectivity between critical workloads,” said Arun Dev, Global Leader for Digital Interconnection Services at Equinix. “Customers need to connect digital infrastructure and services on demand at software speed via secure, software-defined interconnection. I’m excited that Google Cloud is the first partner to help our joint customers unlock their growing hybrid multicloud workloads.”
This new capability will allow customers to:
- Better manage enterprise applications running on hybrid database platforms that support large data sets such as high-resolution images or video
- Accelerate transfers of data into, out of, and between cloud environments to respond more quickly to changing business demands for cloud resources and services
- Build more scalable backbone networks to connect customer deployments together and integrate cloud workloads for a more ubiquitous customer experience
- Deploy more flexible content delivery networks that connect cloud-based services such as streaming services, gaming platforms and social media networks to subscribers
