Equinix, a global interconnection and data centre company, will be investing $73m in its first International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre.
The facility, dubbed PA8, is expected to be operational in Q1 2019 and will be Equinix’s eighth Parisian data centre, dedicated to the evolving needs of the company’s largest cloud customers.
The site will provide enterprises with greater access to top providers at Equinix via low-latency and private connectivity options. Equinix will also extend its relationships with strategic partners, as well as its overall cloud ecosystem.The PA8 IBX will include approximately 850 cabinets in the first phase of build out.
Equinix customers at PA8 will have access to Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric), an on-demand platform, meaning Equinix customers can discover and connect to any other customer across any Equinix location globally. Through a single physical connection and portal, ECX Fabric provides access to more than 1,000 of the world’s largest enterprises and cloud service providers.
Equinix’s new facility aims to enable enterprises to increase their connectivity to the cloud, which is just as well, considering the adoption of multi-cloud strategies is continuing to grow at a rapid pace.
According to Forrester Research, enterprises using five or more cloud providers are forecast to increase from 48% in 2017 to 54% in 2018. At Equinix, between Q1 2016 and Q1 2018, customers employing single cloud deployments grew 69%, while customers employing multi-cloud grew six times that amount at 429%.
France is proving a popular choice for colocation too, with more than 800 companies collocating in Equinix data centres around the country. Paris metro is already home to 200+ CSPs including AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Salesforce and Microsoft Azure.
Régis Castagné, managing director for Equinix Southern Europe commented, “Paris continues to be a top market destination for global businesses who are undergoing IT transformation which is largely driven by cloud adoption. To meet these needs, Equinix has developed deep relationships with top CSPs to provide enterprises in Paris with fast and highly secure private connectivity on a global scale. We believe that this is a win-win for the entire cloud ecosystem.”
