Equinix announced Dec. 8 that it will be launching Equinix Fabric services in five new markets in Canada in the coming year.
The new markets will include Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Kamloops, next year. These are just five of 56 strategic markets across the world that the company plans to expand in next year.
In addition, Equinix announced a series of new capabilities on Equinix Fabric and Network Edge, and significantly expanded partner ecosystems for both platforms in an attempt to address the changing and growing needs of enterprise customers.
Equinix Fabric (formerly Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric) can now be used by digital leaders as a single interconnection approach to connect all of their physical and virtual devices located within Equinix International Business Exchange. The company says Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric has been rebranded Equinix Fabric in recognition of the expanded capabilities, signifying the shift in how the product has evolved from delivering cloud connectivity to now serving as the interconnection method for all types of IT infrastructure, and as the consumption mechanism for a wide range of virtualized IT services.
Equinix Fabric users can now connect to any other customer on Platform Equinix, expanding customer interconnection reach by more than 3x with the ability to connect to more than 10,000 clouds, networks, partners, customers and ecosystems, the company noted in a press release.
Equinix has also expanded automated access to network service providers via Equinix Fabric, allowing them to offer customers direct, on-demand access to their network services. Within minutes, the company says, customers can use Equinix Fabric to gain access to network services like MPLS, Ethernet and IP transit from a multitude of major network service providers such as Aryaka, AT&T, BT, Cloudflare, Colt Technology Services, HKBN, Hurricane Electric, euNetworks, Fusix, GTT, Telnyx, Unitas Global and Verizon Business.
Moreover, the company recently made the Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect virtual SD-WAN appliance available on Network Edge, thereby further expanding its virtual network function (VNF) services ecosystem with the aim to help companies create and operate their network infrastructure at Equinix without a physical deployment. With this addition, Network Edge now offers enterprises a full suite of vendor-neutral, SD-WAN services with built-in integration to Equinix Fabric.
With Equinix Fabric integration, Network Edge customers will also be able to interconnect their virtual edge devices with cloud and network providers located in distributed global markets, extending their reach to potentially thousands of new business partners around the world.