News

Equinix Virtual Network Services Help IT Move to the Edge

• By David Ramel
• 06/05/2019

Interconnection specialist Equinix has debuted a software-centric service leveraging network functions virtualization (NFV) to help its customers moving IT to the edge connect digital supply chains.

With the new Network Edge, Equinix customers can choose from a variety of virtual network services to quicken the selection, deployment and connection of virtualized network and security devices. These virtual network services can come from multiple vendors, including Cisco, Juniper Networks and Palo Alto Networks.

The product effectively takes physical datacenter deployments or hardware requirements out of the equation.

Network Edge works with another software-centric product, Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric, the company's software-defined networking (SDN) offering.

"Combining Network Edge and ECX Fabric creates a high-performance, secure hosted network virtualization infrastructure that automates the deployment of virtual network devices, making it simpler to connect to thousands of network and cloud providers and business partners around the world," the company said in a blog post.

Those cloud providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Equinix said its new offering is designed to address digital business uses cases such as:

• Cloud-to-cloud routing -- As cloud adoption continues to grow, many applications now span multiple clouds. To maximize data moving from one cloud to another, virtual routers deployed using Network Edge can seamlessly route data with ultra-low latency between two clouds.
• Migrating from one cloud to another -- Deploying a virtual router with Network Edge can create a private connection between two clouds, allowing for more efficient data transfers when moving large amounts of data from one cloud to another for backups, migrations or analytics.
• Hybrid cloud firewall -- To help protect networks with public-facing endpoints created when public-facing applications are hosted on public clouds, Network Edge can be used to deploy virtual cloud firewalls within minutes. Network Edge can also deploy a virtual firewall in conjunction with physical firewalls.
• Branch-to-cloud SD-WAN -- To accelerate the transformation of branch offices, Network Edge will soon offer the ability to quickly build interconnection hubs at Equinix and optimize connectivity between branch locations, cloud providers, SaaS providers and thousands of potential business partners via ECX Fabric.