Verizon Business is working with Equinix to expand the Software-Defined Interconnect (SDI) capabilities available to the carrier’s enterprise and public sector customers. The companies said those customers can now take advantage of quicker activation of network services, lower access costs and increased networking agility.
The SDI solution, which is part of the Verizon Business Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) strategy, allows these users to connect their MPLS and Ethernet private networking services to hundreds of cloud, infrastructure and service providers with automated, same-day connectivity.
Verizon said in a statement that the carrier and its partner are responding to customer trends toward more service flexibility.
“Organizations are seeking more agile ways of working from anywhere on any device. To take advantage of new solutions built on 5G, from real-time data analytics and AI, to enhanced security and AR/VR, they need a flexible, programmable, scalable and reliable platform that delivers network services in a much more resilient and cloud-centric way than traditional network infrastructures,” said Massimo Peselli, Senior Vice President of Global Enterprise, Verizon Business, in the statement. “Equinix is a trusted strategic partner who helps enable our Network-as-a-Service approach to managed services, and this SDI expansion provides our customers with the agility they need to meet their needs as they migrate to the cloud.”
Verizon and Equinix first got together in 2019 to launch the SDI offering. The companies have a working relationship that extends back even further, as Verizon agreed to resell Equinix interconnection services in 2017, a deal which itself came a year after the telco sold 24 of its data centers to Equinix, which helped fuel Equinix’s strategy to grow its interconnection services portfolio..
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The SDI service initially offered by the partners included same day provisioning of Private IP to Equinix’s colocation environments, and will now support Ethernet E-Line and E-LAN wide area networks, the companies said. Verizon and Equinix have invested heavily in agile services and expansion into new markets. This enables customers to leverage Verizon’s high-speed network (up to 10 Gbps), coupled with Equinix Fabric, to expand and enhance connectivity to Verizon’s MPLS and Ethernet customers globally. The scalable bandwidth and provisioning automation are a foundational component of Verizon’s NaaS capabilities being rolled out at Equinix.
Those additions directly address changes that may be occurring at many companies as the Covid-19 pandemic has caused shifts toward more remote working and different mixes of applications, which in turn has changed how they access and use data centers, and manage traffic between data centers.
“As enterprise and Public Sector companies continue to digitally transform, they require network delivery solutions that are globally consistent, aligned with industry standards and delivered as-a-Service in order to create digital advantage,” said Bill Long, Senior Vice President, Core Product Management, Equinix. “To meet these needs, over the past two years, Verizon and Equinix have been delivering to the market a software-defined interconnection solution that helps customers interconnect their foundational infrastructures, and this next round of evolution incorporates the next-generation of features our customers demand.”