Equinix Spices Up Chinese Cloud With Alibaba
Cloud interconnect and data center service provider Equinix is partnering with Aliyun, Alibaba's cloud computing arm, to help extend Asian cloud services for North American, Chinese and multinational enterprises.
"We've had demand from multinational customers asking, 'How do I service Asia? How do I get better user latency?'" says Chris Sharp, Equinix Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) VP of cloud innovation. The Aliyun partnership is Equinix's answer to that question, providing easier access to Aliyun's cloud services.
The partnership also helps fill Alibaba.com Hong Kong Ltd. 's ambitions of going global, Sharp says. The initial launch of the service is in Equinix's International Business Exchange data centers in Hong Kong and Silicon Valley, with expansion plans elsewhere in North America and Asia.
Alibaba opened its first international data center in Silicon Valley in March. (See Alibaba 'Planting a Flag' in US Cloud Market.)
The Alibaba partnership is Equinix's first Asian offering. Equinix already partners with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), which have Asian services, but not to the extent that Alibaba has, Sharp says.
Available services will start with infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) compute and storage, with software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications added over time, Sharp says.
Aliyun is the largest public cloud service provider in China, with more than 1.4 million customers. It operates the country's biggest content delivery network.
The Aliyun partnership follows Equinix's acquisition of TeleCity plc (London: TCY), a European operator, which expands the vendor's European presence from London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris to Dublin, Manchester, Helsinki, Milan and Stockholm, with plans to expand into Warsaw, Sofia and Istanbul in eastern Europe. (See Equinix Confirms $3.55B Bid for UK's Telecity.)
Equinix is a finalist in two categories for Light Reading's 2015 Leading Lights awards. (See Leading Lights Finalists: Most Innovative SDN Deployment (Network/Data Center Operator) and Leading Lights Finalists 2015: Most Innovative Carrier Cloud Service.)
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— Mitch Wagner, 
, West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading. Got a tip about SDN or NFV? Send it to [email protected]
