A High Profile Case Study--Equinix Uses Apigee To Power Cloud Exchange

Equinix is a global data center operator that has built significant credibility by being a neutral arms dealer – it hosts many of the worlds large cloud providers in its facilities. Hosting multiple vendors gives Equinix the opportunity to add extra value to customers and the Equinix Cloud Exchange is an example of this. Cloud Exchange leverages the fact the dual facts that Equinix hosts many of the cloud big names and that its scale gives it access to some very big pipes. The exchange gives application developers seamless, on-demand access to multiple clouds from multiple networks in more than a dozen locations around the world.

As organizations increasingly move to a hybrid cloud strategy, where multiple cloud vendors sell them solutions, this sort of interconnection hub becomes increasingly important - available in 17 markets globally, the Equinix Cloud Exchange offers a large ecosystem comprised of leading cloud services, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

Given the size and status of the Cloud Exchange, any vendor that provides the plumbing needed to run it gains significant reflected glory – this is the case for API management vendor Apigee, the company that enables organizations to offer APIs and manage those same APIs. Apigee already boasts of such customers as Walgreens, eBay, Shell, Live Nation, Kaiser Permanente and Sears. Now Equinix gets added to that list.

In a case of abstracting away non-core elements of its service, Equinix leverages Apigee’s API platform to simplify the usually complex process of provisioning and managing connections to multiple cloud services and networks.  In addition Equinix also uses Apigee Edge to mobilize its own digital workforce, exposing its IT services through mobile apps as required. Equinix CIO Brian Lillie doesn’t mince words when talking about the importance of API management for the company, saying:

The near-real-time connectivity in the Equinix Cloud Exchange is grounded in APIs, so we needed robust API management that can support heavy traffic loads

The API management space is an interesting one, two of Apigee’s competitors, Layer 7 and Mashery, were acquired last year (by CA Technologies and Intel respectively). Meanwhile smaller vendors like 3Scale, along with other companies moving into the API management space, continue to battle for customers. As software continues to eat the world as Marc Andreessen so memorably opined, these companies that provide the infrastructure for that disruption to occur become increasingly important.

The Equinix deal is another string in Apigee’s bow and you can bet they’ll milk it for all it’s worth.