The importance of AI-Ready Infrastructure and a rich partner ecosystem are becoming increasingly clear as organisations look to harness the power of AI. With the support of a partner like Equinix, companies can unlock the potential of AI while maintaining the data privacy, control and regulatory compliance they need.
Founded in Silicon Valley in 1998, Equinix provides infrastructure to interconnect organisations across industries such as finance, manufacturing, retail, transport, government and more. Globally, the business hosts nearly 40% of the cloud on-ramps in the markets in which it operates, which is three times the percentage of its closest competitor.
In Australia, the provider hosts the highest number of cloud on-ramps and counts the majority of the ASX 100 and top 200 Australian companies across various verticals as customers. Its digital infrastructure platform presents a compelling case for partners that want to seize the AI opportunity.
Powerful platform backed by flexible consumption choice
Equinix’ foundation is a platform optimised for automation that enables the seamless integration of distributed workloads across multi-cloud, edge and location. Customers keen to experiment with AI in a budget-friendly way can do so on a consumption-based model. The platform supports AI deployments from experimentation to scale, offering flexible options for customers. They can choose to deploy AI infrastructure as a DIY deployment, leveraging Equinix's colocation, advanced cooling, and interconnections.
They can alternatively consume AI services from preferred vendors, including Equinix Digital Services, Equinix Private AI with NVIDIA DGX, Dell AI Factory, and HPE Green Lake, all within the Equinix Platform.
While customers can run multiple proofs of concept and build minimum viable products that they can then invest heavily in for further development,
partners can also leverage this capability to tailor their own AI solutions
With access to the world's largest ecosystem of providers, consumers and suppliers, Equinix partners can provide seamless and integrated experiences, streamlining the AI journey and reducing complexity for customers.
New providers building AI capacity
“One of our big value propositions today with AI is we are seeing a new type of providers building capacity within our platform, offering GPUs as a service and more,” explained Arun Ramprasad, Segment and GTM Lead, Australia, Equinix. “We are also seeing a large number of advanced use cases whereby leaders in industries are starting to deploy AI use cases within our facilities, largely because of our distributed platform architecture spans over 260 datacenters in more than 70 metros. We are bringing AI directly to where the data is generated, stored and utilised.
“This makes it lucrative for those AI innovators to leverage us to think beyond the public cloud and be closer to where customers are in the field, and on the edge.”
Complementing and building on public cloud
Equinix also provides the opportunity to build cloud integrated AI projects.
“On a performance basis, at certain points during experimentation, the public cloud appears feasible but, as integration with multiple data sources starts and data volumes rise, the performance to price value of AI workloads in those clouds can start to dip,” explained Arun. “The performance to price value increases, however, as customers integrate clouds with the Equinix platform.”
Outstanding use cases demonstrate Equinix’ role in delivering a digital infrastructure that supports AI. A medical research company has reduced MR image reconstruction time to under one minute, while a leading R&D-based biotechnology firm has optimised a model with four times more intensive resource utilisation. In addition, a global financial services firm has improved fraud detection by 50X using AI in Equinix.
“If you want higher performance, throughput and to be closer to your customers, the best option is to integrate Equinix to your cloud and the edge.”
Partners play a crucial role in providing solutions for customers by interconnecting and integrating to the provider and supplier AI ecosystem available in Equinix. This gives partners the ability to generate higher revenue streams beyond just reselling colocation.
“AI is a team sport involving partners, suppliers and providers, and at Equinix, our strategy is to build the strongest ecosystem of AI partners we can,” explained Ramprasad. “We look forward to working with the partner community to realise the power of the AI opportunity.”
