Equinix. The company bills itself as "the world’s digital infrastructure company", has announced that Equinix Metal has "significantly advanced its global scale, features and ability to enable as a Service consumption of the full value of Platform Equinix."

With these new and enhanced capabilities, we're told Equinix Metal customers "can consume interconnected infrastructure with the control of physical hardware and the low overhead and developer experience of the cloud, helping them move faster in today’s competitive environment."

Today’s announcements include the expanded availability of Equinix Metal in 18 global metros, including Sydney, the addition of new networking features to support hybrid multicloud architectures, the certification of new software integrations on Equinix Metal, and the launch of a managed appliance as a Service solution.

As digital leaders seek to be in closer proximity to the hardware, software, clouds and networks that matter most to their businesses, the company claims "many are turning to Equinix Metal to create new digital services with a DevOps-friendly approach for seamless deployment across their hybrid cloud infrastructures.

"Many cloud-native companies are using Equinix Metal to locate their data “between the clouds,” adjacent to multicloud hubs for enhanced performance. Additionally, specialised hardware providers are accelerating the global rollouts of new, as a Service consumption options with Equinix Metal.

"With Equinix Metal, businesses can activate infrastructure globally, connect it to thousands of partners in the world’s largest technology ecosystem and leverage DevOps tools to deploy, maintain and scale their applications to create digital advantage. Equinix will showcase these updates and livestream use cases and partner solutions today during its one-day “Proximity” technical user conference."

Highlights and Key Facts:

• Equinix Metal is an automated, interconnected and secure bare metal service that applies a developer and API-first mindset to foundational infrastructure and provides a fully automated way for digital businesses to access the value of Platform Equinix via its leading collection of DevOps and open-source integrations.
• A wide range of companies—from SaaS leaders to Global 2000 enterprises—are leveraging Equinix Metal to enter new regions, upgrade legacy infrastructure, improve performance, reduce latency, and reach clouds and end users more easily. More examples of how customers such as Comscore, Render, WhiteOps, Infiot, Bison Trails, Dizzion, Clear Street, Restream, Super League Gaming, Vissensa and Yottaa are using Equinix Metal to bring together all the right places, partners and possibilities to create the foundational infrastructure they need to succeed can be found here.

Latest Equinix Metal advances include:

• Expanded Footprint – Equinix Metal is now available in 18 global metros including in the Americas (Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, São Paulo, Silicon Valley, Toronto and Washington, D.C.); in EMEA (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Madrid and Paris); and in Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo).
• Managed Appliance as a Service Solutions – Introducing a range of as a Service partner infrastructure solutions on the Equinix platform, the new managed appliance capability of Equinix Metal enables OEM, storage, hybrid cloud, hyperconverged and other specialty hardware vendors to deliver fully operated, as a Service solutions that are seamlessly interconnected to the Platform Equinix ecosystem. These include Pure Storage on Equinix Metal, and an expanded collaboration with Dell Technologies to offer Bare Metal as a Service on Dell Technologies. Equinix intends to launch a series of these solutions that are non-exclusive and can include multiple providers from its ecosystem in each solution category. These fully operated partner solutions complement Equinix's existing interconnection, networking and compute services to offer an expanded choice of Infrastructure as a Service solutions to its more than 10,000 customers worldwide.
• Advanced Networking with Equinix Fabric Integration – The Equinix Metal platform now supports the full portfolio of Equinix Fabric integration options including port speeds up to 100G. With native integration to Equinix Fabric, Equinix Metal customers can quickly and securely connect to the more than 10,000 networks, enterprises, clouds and SaaS platforms available on Platform Equinix via low-latency, private interconnection. A new “hybrid bonded” network mode has also been added for high availability in hybrid cloud environments. Additionally, customers can leverage Equinix Network Edge to quickly add branded virtual network services to their environments.
• Software Integrations – New native integrations from leading software vendors are now available on Equinix Metal to support hybrid multicloud infrastructures, including Mirantis Container Cloud, which delivers as a Service containers and infrastructure using Kubernetes or OpenStack, and the Cohesity Helios multicloud data platform.

Mehdi Daoudi, Co-Founder and CEO, Catchpoint said: "We are in the internet's third act, where proximity and low latency unlock a new wave of innovation. As a long-time Equinix customer, we leverage infrastructure in many data centres around the world to deliver holistic and proactive digital experience monitoring capabilities to our global clients.

"Using critical Catchpoint insights, our customers proactively monitor and optimise the digital experiences of billions of consumers and employees around the world. Equinix Metal lowers our barrier to enter new locations, democratising access to the edge, and showcases Equinix’s expanding platform vision. We are onboard and planning to roll out across all of Equinix Metal’s 18 new locations.”

Lakshmisha Nanjappachar, DevOps Manager, Zscaler said: "Cumulatively, every day we save time and money with the Equinix Metal team, and the impact is to a point where we want to expand our footprint.”

Travis Vigil, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Dell Technologies Infrastructure Solutions Group said: "The future of digital businesses depends on having the right technology, in the right places, fully interconnected and automated. Equinix Metal, which combines trusted Dell Technologies infrastructure with an automated experience, makes this real for customers. The expansion of new centres, features and integrations allows more customers to better meet the demands of today’s data era.”

Jack Hogan, VP of Technology Strategy, Pure Storage said: "Our customers have asked for an interconnected Storage as a Service that helps them unify data across all of their environments. By partnering with Equinix Metal, we are able to deliver an embedded, joint, global, on-demand Bare Metal as a Service solution that provides a seamless experience that combines best-in-class storage, compute and low-latency connectivity to clouds, enterprises and other ecosystems.”

Zac Smith, Managing Director, Equinix Metal: “Our vision at Equinix is to empower digital leaders with a trusted platform that brings together and interconnects the foundational infrastructure that powers their success. By expanding Equinix Metal globally, adding key networking capabilities and collaborating with leading hardware and software vendors to offer as a Service solutions, we’re helping customers, partners and the ecosystem at large create their digital advantage faster.”

Guy Danskine, Managing Director, Equinix Australia said: “Today’s announcement is important for our customers and partners as they can expand their digital infrastructure anywhere with just a few clicks. This will be especially important for those headquartered in metros like Melbourne, Perth and Canberra looking to expand into Sydney, where they can leverage Equinix Metal in Sydney to deploy repeatable architecture and interconnect to thousands of partners for business continuity, redundancy or data sharing purposes in reduced time and CAPEX.”