IBM expands hybrid cloud partnership with Equinix
Thu 18 Dec 2014
As IBM looks to expand its cloud, security and analytics solutions, the multinational tech giant has announced a raft of 12 new cloud sites for its hybrid cloud offering, as well as a major partnership with data centre company Equinix.
The new cloud locations include three IBM-owned facilities in Frankfurt, Tokyo, and Mexico City, and form part of the $1.2bn cloud services investment announced in January by the firm. These three cloud centres will join the fleet of IBM sites also opened this year in London, Amsterdam, Beijing, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Toronto, Dallas, Raleigh NC, Melbourne, and Paris.
The other nine centres will be managed in a deal with Equinix in which IBM will provide its SoftLayer solutions across the Equinix Cloud Exchange. The collaboration will span cloud facilities in Dallas, Chicago, Washington DC, Silicon Valley, Amsterdam, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
IBM has stated that these developments come in response to increasing demand for data sovereignty. The company claimed that “about 100 nations and territories have adopted laws that dictate how governments and private enterprises handle personal data.”
IBM and Equinix already work together to deliver cloud services from within Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres via SoftLayer Direct Link. However, this new deal extends the existing partnership to the Equinix Cloud Exchange platform, which offers further security and bandwidth features.
Customers with hosting in Equinix data centres will be able to easily and securely transfer workloads between private clouds and data centres into the SoftLayer cloud.
“Equinix Cloud Exchange continues to build momentum with secure, low-latency connections to multiple cloud providers, and adding IBM SoftLayer to our growing portfolio will continue to help our enterprise customer realize the benefits of the cloud,” said Ihab Tarazi, CTO at Equinix.
“SoftLayer, with its broad reach into the enterprise market and proven success in networking will be a great asset to Cloud Exchange, enabling customers to seamlessly replicate data between markets,” he added.
Currently, Equinix Cloud Exchange is available across 17 cloud sites, with the data centre owners planning an additional three in Sao Paolo, Zurich, and Osaka.
The last few months have seen a number of major cloud deals for IBM, including ABN AMRO, WPP, and Thomson Reuters.
