Equinix, Nimbo Intro New Services to Streamline AWS Cloud Deployments

**Editor’s Note: Click here for our recently compiled list of new products and services that partners can sell.**

Equinix, with Nimbo, which it acquired earlier this year, on Wednesday announced two new offerings to streamline Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud deployments.

The AWS Direct Connect Converged Infrastructure bundle and Equinix Cloud Exchange enablement offerings will be available in all Equinix International Business Exchange data centers that offer AWS Direct Connect or Equinix Cloud Exchange.

Greg Adgate, Equinix’s vice president of global partnerships and alliances, tells Channel Partners that partners who do not currently have professional-services skills around cloud enablement now can leverage Nimbo to add their skills to their offerings. Also, partners who are not currently providing managed private-hybrid cloud as a service now have a reference architecture to use, he said.

“The Nimbo solution offers partners the opportunity to resell their professional services bundle (and) the AWS bundle offers partners the opportunity to deliver the solution bundle as a managed service,” he said.

The new offerings are most advantageous to VARs, which can design and install the AWS bundle as a hardware sale, and MSPs, which can deliver the AWS bundle as a managed service offering, Adgate said.

“In most end-user deployments of this type, partners play a role, either in design and implementation or in the full managed-services approach,” he said.

Enterprises are looking to move more production workloads to the cloud to achieve business agility, improve application performance and control costs, Adgate said; however, many organizations must work with a range of tools, technologies and data security concerns when expanding their private IT platform to include the advantages provided by the cloud, he added.

AWS Direct Connect bundles are a set of advanced hybrid architectures that help reduce this complexity while providing peak performance for customers moving to AWS, he said. The bundles feature deployment tools from Nimbo, NetApp’s NPS capability and Cisco Intercloud Fabric, along with direct connection via Equinix inside Equinix’s data centers.

“We are seeing significant growth in enterprise customers looking to connect to AWS in …

… our facilities, and specifically in a hybrid model,” Adgate said. “These customers are increasingly looking to hybrid cloud architectures to maximize their IT investments and realize the benefits of the cloud. With these integrated solutions, we are helping these companies expedite their transition to the cloud and quickly extend their existing infrastructure to AWS.”

In addition to collaborating on the bundles, Equinix and Nimbo will also provide Equinix Cloud Exchange configuration and foundation enablement services, either as part of the Equinix Cloud Exchange Starter-Kit or as individual, standalone offerings. This provides a turnkey cloud connection, an immediately useable cloud account and an extension to cloud services for corporate resources.

“Joining the Equinix family in January 2015 has enabled Nimbo to help our customers develop an even more complete strategy for evolving towards the hybrid cloud,” said Joerg Joergensen, Nimbo’s CFO. “The year 2014 presented some fantastic opportunities to help large enterprise customers, specifically in the resources industry, take advantage of AWS’s scalability, reduced time to market, and cost efficiencies. With these new solutions, we look forward to continued success helping companies realize the benefits of both public and hybrid architectures.”

In 2014, Equinix experienced a 90 percent increase in the number of enterprise connections to AWS.