Equinix, Inc. is an American multinational company headquartered in
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a ...
, that specializes in
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
connection and
data centers. The company is a leader in global
colocation data center market share, with 240 data centers
in 27 countries on five continents.
It is listed on the
NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol EQIX, and as of December 2021, it had approximately 11,000 employees globally.
The company converted to a
real estate investment trust
A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of commercial real estate, including office and apartment buildings, warehouses, hospitals, shopping cente ...
(REIT) in January 2015.
History
Equinix was founded in 1998 by Al Avery and
Jay Adelson
Jay Adelson (born Jay Steven Adelson, September 7, 1970) is an American Internet entrepreneur. In 2014 Adelson co-founded Center Electric with Andy Smith. In 2013 he founded Opsmatic, a technology company that improves productivity on operations ...
, two facilities managers at
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
. The firm promoted its data center platform as a neutral place where competing networks could connect and share
data traffic Network traffic or data traffic is the amount of data moving across a network at a given point of time. Network data in computer networks is mostly encapsulated in network packets, which provide the load in the network. Network traffic is the main c ...
.
The firm capitalized on the "
network effect
In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products. Net ...
," through which each new customer would broaden the appeal of its platform. It expanded to
Asia-Pacific in 2002
and Europe in 2007, followed by Latin America in 2011
and the Middle East in 2012.
In 2018, according to data collected by the online publication Sludge, Equinix signed three contracts with the
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the largest federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security. It is the country's primary border control organization, charged with regulating and facilit ...
to provide "information technology support equipment" totalling over $5 million. In September 2020, the company shifted its branding to describe itself as a "digital infrastructure company".
Acquisitions and expansion
In 2002, Equinix merged with i-STT, the Internet infrastructure service subsidiary of
Singapore Technologies Telemedia, and Pihana Pacific. This established the company's presence in China, Singapore, Australia and Japan. In 2007, the firm announced a $2 billion international expansion plan and entered the European market by acquiring data center operator IXEurope and its facilities. In 2010, Equinix opened its 50th data center, in London. Over the next seven years, the company nearly tripled its data center portfolio, growth the company attributed to increased demand caused by the emergence of cloud computing, the
Internet of Things and
big data.
In 2010, the company purchased
Switch and Data Facilities Company, Inc., a U.S. internet exchange and colocation services provider. The company extended its operations to the Middle East and in Southeast Asia in 2012.
Also in 2012, it acquired Hong Kong-based data center provider Asia-Tone. In 2014, Equinix increased its Latin American presence when it acquired ALOG Datacenters of Brazil S.A., the country's leading provider of carrier-neutral data centers.
In 2015, Equinix converted to a
real estate investment trust
A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of commercial real estate, including office and apartment buildings, warehouses, hospitals, shopping cente ...
(REIT) to gain tax advantages and add shareholder value.
That same year, it acquired the professional services company Nimbo.
In May 2015, Equinix said it would purchase the British company
TelecityGroup, the largest acquisition in company history.
The offer was cleared by the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
in November after Equinix agreed to sell eight of its data centers around Europe to
Digital Realty
Digital Realty Trust, Inc. is a real estate investment trust that invests in carrier-neutral data centers and provides colocation and peering services. As of December 31, 2019, the company owned interests in 225 operating data center facilitie ...
, but it still retained Telecity Harbour Exchange data center in
London Docklands. In January 2016, Equinix completed the Telecity acquisition in a transaction valued at approximately $3.8 billion.
The addition of these data centers more than doubled Equinix's capacity in Europe. In December 2015, the company purchased Japanese provider Bit-Isle,
adding six data centers in Japan.
In 2016, Equinix opened new data centers in
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
, Sydney and Tokyo and announced a deal to acquire 29 data centers in 15 markets from
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas ...
. In 2017, the firm also opened a new data center in
São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
.
In 2017, Equinix acquired Itconic, which expanded its data center footprint into Spain and Portugal.
In 2018, Equinix purchased the Dallas
Infomart
The Infomart is one of the largest buildings in Dallas, Texas (USA). It is the world's first and only information processing marketing center.
It is located at 1950 N. Stemmons Freeway in the Market Center neighborhood between Oak Lawn and I ...
building, where it had already been operating four data centers. It also acquired Australian data center provider Metronode and its 10 data centers. The company opened its first data center in South Korea the next year.
In 2020, Equinix finalized the purchase of Packet, a startup
that provided
bare-metal servers as a cloud service. The company expanded into India in August 2020 with the acquisition of GPX India, including a campus in
Mumbai
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...
with two data centers. In October 2020, Equinix completed the acquisition of 13
Bell Canada data centers. The company also invested heavily in
hyperscale
In computing, hyperscale is the ability of an architecture to scale appropriately as increased demand is added to the system.
This typically involves the ability to seamlessly provide and add compute, memory, networking, and storage resources to ...
xScale data centers.
On December 7, 2021, Equinix announced its acquisition of
Main One, a West African data center and connectivity solutions provider, for $320 million.
In March 2022, Equinix expanded into Chile and Peru with $705 million acquisition of 4 Data Centers from
Entel
The ''Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones'' (National Telecommunications Enterprise, or ENTel) was an Argentine state owned company which had the monopoly on public telecommunications in the country until its privatization in 1990.
Overview
It ...
.
Environmental impact
In 2015, the company made a long-term pledge to power its entire data center platform with clean and renewable energy.
The pledge followed criticism in 2014 from the environmental group
Greenpeace, which said in an annual report on the environmental practices of Internet companies that Equinix had an insufficient commitment to renewable energy and
carbon emissions mitigation. The company signed deals with
wind farm
A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turb ...
s in
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
and
Oklahoma to buy enough renewable energy to offset the energy consumption of its North American data center portfolio.
In 2019, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon pro ...
named Equinix one of 17
Green Power Partners leading the transition to renewable energy.
In September 2020, Equinix priced $1.35 billion in green bonds to finance new and existing green projects. At the same time, the company announced a Green Finance Framework to standardize transparency reporting for green debt disclosures. In November 2020, the EPA gave Equinix its 2020 Green Power Partner of the Year award.
In January 2021, Equinix joined the
Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact
The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact is a pledge of industry players and trade association of cloud infrastructure services and data centres in Europe to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. It is supported by the European Commission and Frans Ti ...
, and therefore engaged to have data centres climate neutral by 2030.
Data centers
![Equinix San Jose Campus 2211](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Equinix_San_Jose_Campus_2211.jpg)
Equinix claims to have invested more than $25 billion in its data center platform. The firm calls its data centers International Business Exchanges (IBXs). In 2017, the company launched its own
data center infrastructure management
A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...
platform, IBX SmartView. The company's
Internet Exchange service allows
ISPs
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
and enterprises to exchange Internet traffic through a global peering tool.
Data center (IBX) locations
*Americas: United States, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Mexico
*Asia-Pacific: Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India
*Europe and Middle East: Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom
See also
*
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
*
Internet exchange
*
Peering
In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the "down-stream" users of each network. Peering is settlement-free, also known as "bill-and ...
*
List of Internet exchange points
This is a list of Internet exchange points ( IXPs). There are several sources for IXP locations, including Packet Clearing House, who have maintained the earliest list of IXPs, with global coverage since 1994. Also, Telegeography, PeeringDB and t ...
References
External links
*
{{NASDAQ Financial-100
American companies established in 1998
Real estate companies established in 1998
Telecommunications companies established in 1998
Real estate companies of the United States
Telecommunications companies of the United States
2000 initial public offerings
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Data centers
Companies based in Redwood City, California
1998 establishments in California