Interview: Roger Semprini & Berthold Kaib
Joining forces to connect customers worldwide
Equinix and Swisscom are now working together in the area of interconnection. We talked to Roger Semprini, Chief Executive of Equinix Switzerland, and Berthold Kaib, Senior Vice President Global Accounts at Swisscom, about the background to the cooperation and how it will benefit customers.
Text: Martina Longo, 26 june 2019
Swisscom and Equinix announced their partnership in March. What was the motivation behind this step?
Roger Semprini: Through this partnership with Equinix, Swisscom’s many international customers will enjoy the benefits of direct, private and secure access to all big-name cloud providers worldwide. Swisscom is offering its multi-national customers Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric) to support rollout to the cloud. The ECX Fabric allows clouds, networks and services to be connected to 200 data centres worldwide over secure, private connections.
Berthold Kaib: We want to offer connectivity services to our customers with international locations. To achieve this aim, we have to work with partners that are able to handle the technical implementation and whose market dynamics are a good fit with Swisscom. Equinix meets all of these criteria, making it the ideal partner.
Equinix offers a whole host of products. Why did you opt for Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric)?
Berthold Kaib: The market is moving towards hybrid clouds. With ECX Fabric, Swisscom customers are able to connect to a wide selection of clouds, benefit from easy access to multi-cloud solutions, increase their security, improve performance and also reduce costs. These are all advantages that we can offer our customers swiftly and easily thanks to our cooperation with Equinix.
Roger Semprini: Cloud connectivity is integral to current and future IT transformation. ECX Fabric is an SDN-enabled, on-demand interconnection service that helps companies to connect their own, distributed infrastructure both internally and with other companies on the Equinix platform; including the world’s biggest cloud providers and network operators AWS, Azure, Alicloud, Google and Oracle to name just a few.
How does the Equinix service differ from that of other providers?
Roger Semprini: ECX Fabric is based on interconnection, which means it bypasses the ‘normal’ public Internet, which is neither fast nor secure. Companies should opt for private data traffic to ward off digital threats and protect themselves from cyber attacks. Interconnection - the direct and private exchange of data - is increasingly becoming the standard for companies looking to assert themselves in the digital world.
Berthold Kaib (left) and Roger Semprini explain the background to the new cooperation.
What are the benefits of the extended portfolio for Swisscom customers?
Berthold Kaib: ECX Fabric gives Swisscom customers a direct, private and secure connection to all leading cloud service providers. They are able to connect to all of their cloud and IT service providers via a single portal. Global companies can offer both hybrid cloud and multi-cloud solutions at different locations at the same time. ECX Fabric supports our multi-national Swisscom customers in optimising the performance of their cloud applications, reducing latency as well as improving and scaling network control.
What is your opinion of the move away from the private cloud and towards the hybrid cloud?
Berthold Kaib: The move towards the hybrid cloud is a consequence of digital progress. What customers want is a flexible, efficient and economical IT architecture that can be customised to their specific requirements. Hybrid systems give us the freedom to do this.
Roger Semprini: In addition to local data centres, applications are increasingly being operated in public clouds. With hybrid multi-clouds, customers are able to simplify their IT environment by connecting different locations with multiple clouds over a single portal.
About Equinix
With 200 data centres, Equinix is the biggest provider of Interconnection and data centre services in the world. The Equinix network handles approximately 90 percent of all global and national Internet traffic. Leading cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform as well as all well-known social media and content streaming service providers (including Netflix and Spotify) use the Equinix network. The company is listed on the stock exchange with a capital of 30 billion dollars. Equinix operates five data centres in Switzerland: three in Zurich and two in Geneva. As such, Equinix is considered the enabler of digitisation.
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