REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Equinix, Inc., a global interconnection and data center company, together with IBM today announced an agreement to provide enterprises direct access to the full portfolio of cloud services from SoftLayer, an IBM Company, via the Equinix Cloud Exchange in nine markets worldwide spanning the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. Equinix also announced Cloud Exchange enhancements, including API functionality that makes it easier for service providers to use a single interface to the Cloud Exchange, resulting in scalable, private and secure connections to their cloud services with near real-time provisioning.

Equinix and SoftLayer previously partnered to offer customers direct cloud connection inside Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers via SoftLayer’s Direct Link service, a dedicated network connection. By extending the partnership to include additional secure and dynamic connections through Cloud Exchange, SoftLayer provides its customers with the ability to easily move production workloads in and out of the cloud, thus better enabling them to fully realize their hybrid cloud strategies.

Studies show enterprise cloud deployments are on the rise. In fact, in a recent survey of more than 650 IT decision makers, the vast majority (77 percent) said they plan to implement multi-cloud architectures in the coming year. Yet, while enterprise cloud deployments continue to grow, many enterprise CIOs still cite security and performance concerns as a major barrier to cloud adoption. Equinix Cloud Exchange helps alleviate these concerns by providing direct access to multiple cloud and network service providers through a single port. This enables quick, cost-effective access to the cloud in a secure, high-performance environment that CIOs require. Newly added API functionality enables cloud service providers to efficiently use Cloud Exchange on a broader scale, thus making it easier and more efficient to offer their cloud services via the platform.

Equinix Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX)

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)