Equinix has more than 220 colocation data centers across 26 countries that are connected with Equinix Fabric. And Cisco has a software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) technology. Together they have launched Cisco’s SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect with Equinix.
The product provides automated connectivity to the big public clouds as well as enterprise-to-enterprise connectivity via Equinix’s points of presence (PoPs) around the globe.
The companies say the benefit of their collaboration is that customers can manage their Cisco SD-WAN gateways along with connectivity across the globe — all from a single portal.
Cisco and Equinix customers can take advantage of the companies’ co-engineering effort via Cisco’s SD-WAN controller, vManage. Joint customers can deploy virtual network function (VNF) devices, such as Cisco Cloud Services Routers (CSR 1000V), at Equinix locations. Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect will configure these VNF devices, then dynamically set up Equinix Fabric interconnections.
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Cisco says that enterprises face problems with low-quality connectivity over the public internet across different geographical regions, and they don’t have the ability to perform proper application-aware routing across multiple clouds and providers. Cisco and Equinix say their new joint product solves these problems.
The companies also cite these additional benefits:
- The creation of on-demand network connections in minutes, rather than manually creating individual connections;
- A normalized experience where Cisco and Equinix provide portal-driven automated workflows to connect to any cloud and any carrier;
- Centralized visibility via Cisco SD-WAN multi-cloud monitoring;
- Highly available global network: Equinix Fabric provides a globally available private backbone with 99.999% uptime SLA;
- Automation flows to connect branches and users to one another and cloud resources;
- Integrated support with Cisco and Equinix working together to support customers;
- The ability to activate cloud redundancy (dual link and dual router) and implement active/active network redundancy.