Sophie Ben Sadia, Vice President, Sales, APAC Partners, Equinix
Equinix offers a host of solutions to enterprise customers to facilitate their digital operations. In an interview with tele.net, Sophie Ben Sadia, vice-president sales, APAC Partners, Equinix, discusses the company’s growing partner ecosystem and key priorities…
How has Equinix’s partner ecosystem grown in India? What is its partner strategy for India and the APAC region?
Even before our acquisition of GPX India, we entered the Indian market by working with some large India-based systems integrators to address the digital transformation needs of G2000 customers. This enabled us to obtain a level of understanding and expertise of the partner ecosystem in India, which we are now putting to good use.
Equinix strives for reseller partners that will incorporate Equinix data centre services, leverage Equinix network and cloud ecosystems, bundle these into a comprehensive offer and deliver the solutions enterprises seek. Another critical component of our strategy is to identify and collaborate with partners that have strong abilities for digital services such as Equinix FabricTM, Network Edge and Equinix MetalTM. These solutions provide differentiated value to customers and will be a key focus area for us over the next 12 to 24 months. Collaborating with these partners are what we call the “Power of Three”, which is the central idea to our partner programme. They help to collaborate and innovate solutions that drive business value for customers as they are typically already partners with alliances such as Cisco, Dell Technologies and HPE.
What are the key highlights of Equinix’s channel partner programme/partner ecosystem in India?
Following the GPX India acquisition last year, we are now expanding our partner base in two ways. Firstly, we match the channel capacity to support our growth in India. Secondly, we work with partners that can deliver our global platform integrated with their own solutions to Indian multinationals looking to tap into overseas markets. Both these goals will diversify our partner ecosystem in India with existing global partners and onboarding new partners. We already have a strong base of over 300 Equinix trained and certified partner resources, which we intend to scale up significantly over the next year or two.
What are the innovative solutions that Equinix is working on?
At Equinix, innovation is in our DNA. We understand our customers’ need to adopt new, more agile technologies and business processes to keep pace with the trends and address the threats they will face over the next 5-10 years. We are continuously innovating ourselves. Some of our upcoming solutions are:
- Digital infrastructure and joint solutions: To serve the rapidly growing demand for digital infrastructure, we will soon be rolling out our interconnection services to India. With advanced interconnection services – Equinix Fabric™, Equinix Internet Exchange®, Equinix Internet Access – we aim to empower digital leaders in India to architect the secure and agile digital infrastructure required to respond to today’s increasingly dynamic business environments.
- Sustainability innovations: To enable our customers to balance sustainability with their digital infrastructure needs, our Co-Innovation Facility (CIF) in the Washington, D.C. area will allow us to partner with leading organisations to develop and test new sustainability technologies. In particular, CIF will focus on the innovations we believe will define the next generation of data centres to achieve greater sustainability, faster and more cost-effective buildouts, greater operations density, reliability and efficiency.
How is the company enabling its partners to become more digitally resilient?
At Equinix, we have always been committed to our customers and partners. To ensure the right level of support, we have invested in highly skilled professional channel centric tools such as quotation/deal registration. We are also dedicated to building partners’ knowledge in digital transformation and in our digital services in order to help them become more digitally resilient.
What are the upcoming priorities for the company?
The increasing digitalisation of the economy is continuously driving the demand for data centre and interconnection services in India. We have recently committed an estimated investment of over Rs 10 billion ($125.15 million) in India, to be undertaken in phases over the next 10 years for building a world-class data centre in Chennai. We have also announced our third data centre in Mumbai. Beyond expansion, we are working diligently to bring our interconnection services to India to help customers securely and privately connect with their customers and partners. With our advanced interconnection services, we aim to empower digital leaders in India to bring more businesses online, facilitate electronic integration with partners and supply chains, and reach more people in distributed hybrid work environments.
Sustainability is another key priority of the company. Equinix is the first in the industry to commit to reaching global climate neutrality by 2030, backed by its science-based targets and sustainability innovation agenda. Equinix’s renewable energy coverage has been over 90 per cent since 2018 and reached 95 per cent in 2021. In India, we have achieved 100 per cent renewable energy goal. With our continued sustainable efforts and technological innovations, Equinix will keep supporting the digital transformation of Indian businesses sustainably.
