Equinix Ups Its Google Cloud Game With Premier Partner Status

‘Our partners can leverage this achievement to win deals with key customers and prospects,’ Equinix says.

Data center giant Equinix has upped its relationship with Google Cloud, earning Premier Partner status that it says will give its own partner ecosystem more leverage with customers.

Equinix, which currently hosts 35 percent of the world’s on-ramps to Google Cloud, had been a Google Cloud Partner since 2014. Its new status signals a higher level of investment in its Google Cloud practice.

“Equinix is committed to integrating our products and services with Google Cloud to make it easier for enterprises to adopt hybrid multi-cloud environments as part of their digital transformation journey,” Equinix said in a statement. “Our partners can leverage this achievement to win deals with key customers and prospects.”

The Redwood City, Calif.-based data center colocation and interconnection provider, which recorded $5.56 billion in revenue last year and operates as a real estate investment trust, itself now will get access to a higher level of support and services from Google Cloud.

Google Cloud Premier Partners demonstrate the top levels of technical expertise and impact with Google Cloud and receive benefits beyond the partner level that include consideration for partner marketing funds and other financial incentives, exclusive training and events, and co-marketing opportunities with Google Cloud.

Equinix has 10G connections between all public cloud providers. Equinix is part of Google Cloud’s Partner Interconnect initiative, with Google Cloud Platform-validated solutions that help enterprises more easily connect and migrate priority workloads to Google Cloud. It hosts its 35 percent of Google Cloud on-ramps through dedicated enterprise-leveraged or partner Google Cloud Interconnect services. Enterprises can colocate equipment for hybrid multi-cloud workloads on Platform Equinix—a platform of its 210-plus interconnected data centers and business ecosystems—with low latency to the nearest Google Cloud regions.

“By providing real-time, flexible and scalable connectivity to Google Cloud for customers, partners and suppliers, we are providing critical solutions for digital enterprises looking to harness the power of the cloud,” Royce Thomas, Equinix’s senior vice president of global account management, said in a statement. “This is a key priority for us, which is why we recently appointed industry veteran CB Velayuthan as our new global managing director of strategic alliances, leading our business with Google.“

Equinix said the combination of Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric—which directly connects distributed infrastructure and digital ecosystems globally on Platform Equinix—and Google Cloud Interconnect provides more agile and scalable hybrid multi-cloud services to support enterprises’ digital transformation and growth. In November, Equinix announced the integration of its Equinix SmartKey—a SaaS-based, secure key management and cryptography service—with Google Cloud External Key Manager to provide customers with key storage, encryption and tokenization services and support for governance and compliance requirements at the edge, close to clouds and carriers.

“Recognizing the dramatic changes we all are facing due to the pandemic and the resulting reality that IT modernization is … a necessity and will include hybrid architectures for years to come, then the investments made by Equinix to further streamline connectivity between and across Google Cloud Interconnect helps reduce risks for customers migrating to the cloud, as well as helps make IT modernization work smoother for managed service providers like 1901 Group,” said Brendan Walsh, senior vice president of partner relations at 1901 Group, a Reston, Va.-based Equinix Gold Partner and Google Cloud Platform Partner.

Equinix‘s new status as a Premier Partner for Google Cloud reflects the increasing enterprise need for high-quality connectivity to support enterprise clouds and to manage connectivity cost, workload performance and data governance, according to Hyoun Park, CEO and principal analyst at Amalgam Insights, a technology advisory firm based in Berkeley, Calif.

“This raised status reflects the increasing competitiveness in supporting high-performance, highly connected and well-governed cloud environments for enterprises,” Park said.

The cost of transport becomes a bigger challenge as data becomes bigger, and companies want to backup and transfer data to multiple locations,” Hyoun said. Transport and connectivity costs are becoming an increasingly competitive battlefield in the public cloud world, as Oracle has shown with recent Zoom and 8x8 wins, he said.

“Equinix will also help Google from a performance perspective, as Google Cloud customers offload some of their high-performance workloads to Equinix locations and get those workloads closer to users,” Hyoun said. “For high-performance and real-time workloads, distance matters, and Equinix helps close the distance gap for Google Cloud customers. And Equinix also helps Google Cloud with supporting environments, where data has to remain in specific locations and cannot be placed directly on Google Cloud for a variety of reasons.”

Equinix also is an Amazon Web Services Advanced Consulting Partner and Advanced Technology Partner, and a Microsoft Gold Cloud Platform and Gold DataCenter Partner.