Waters Rankings 2016 Winners’ Circle: Equinix — Investment and Expansion

Over the next 12 months, what will be the main challenges facing the industry that you’ll look to help address?
John Knuff, vice president of global ecosystems, Equinix: Initiatives around cost reduction and outsourcing of non-core services are a top priority. Most firms must evolve their IT environments to include more cloud services from multiple providers and they need better ways to interconnect these services so that they’ll function as a seamless whole. Equinix provides direct, private access to all the leading cloud service providers via our Equinix Cloud Exchange, enabling firms to deploy the right cloud for the right application. And we have an entire team that can assist with the inventory and prioritization of candidate applications and workloads, as well as provide guidance to re-architect into a multi-cloud environment. Specific to cloud, Equinix Professional Services for Cloud—or EPS Cloud, which was formerly Nimbo—provides extensive hybrid-cloud solutions and migration services, helping organizations adopt and integrate cloud technologies.

With the substantial investment you’ve made to the Slough, UK datacenter, and after the acquisition of Telecity, how will these moves help you to expand your coverage and offering?
Knuff: Equinix Slough continues to be an important hub for the global capital markets and our recent $3.8 billion investment to acquire Telecity extends our presence into several new markets, including Stockholm and Dublin. 

Nasdaq just acquired Chi-X in Toronto and announced that you’re moving the new trading platform into Equinix TR2. Can you tell us about your investment in Toronto and what’s driving change in the Canadian market? 

Knuff: We invested $42 million in the initial TR2 site and we estimate that we’ll invest over $100 million to fully build out the facility in five phases over the coming years. Yes, there’s been a steady stream of trading platforms announcing deployments in our TR2 facility—such as Nasdaq, the Canadian Securities Exchange, and Omega—and this is a direct result of regulations designed to encourage a more competitive trading market. 

And looking at Asia, tell us about the recent announcements coming out of China and Japan, and beyond.
Knuff: In China, we have a very diverse customer base comprising the leading international financial services firms and our newly announced partnership with Datang Telecom will further expand our connectivity options for all Equinix customers in China.  

“Our customers tell us our service levels and responsiveness are far above the competition, and I would say that this is a major differentiator for Equinix. In fact, the sheer volume of activities at our datacenters is staggering.” John Knuff, Equinix

With the acquisition of Bit-isle in Japan, Equinix will have a total of 10 datacenters in Tokyo and two in Osaka. Asia was the fastest growing region last year and our expansion announcements in Jakarta and Sydney come at an important time for us. 

Equinix has won this category three times in the last four years. What do you feel separates Equinix’s offering when compared to your competitors?
Knuff: Our customers tell us our service levels and responsiveness are far above the competition, and I would say that this is a major differentiator for Equinix. In fact, the sheer volume of activities at our datacenters is staggering. We have a team of over 680 customer care professionals and 1 million interactions per quarter. The second reason is that our neutrality tends to attract the very best service providers in the financial services industry. As an example, we have over 1,400 network providers that give us the best connected facilities in the world. Third, is our global presence and local sales force all over the world. Equinix currently has 145 datacenters in 40 markets across five continents. Additionally, 53 percent of our revenue is from customers deployed in all three operating regions—the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. Equinix is the only datacenter provider with a presence in 17 of the top 20 global financial centers.