Equinix, Inc. has announced the availability of the AWS Direct Connect service in the Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in Seattle (SE2 and SE3). AWS Direct Connect enables customers to connect their infrastructure directly to Amazon Web Services (AWS), establishing a private network connection to reduce network costs, increase throughput, and deliver more consistent network performance than the public internet delivers. In addition, Equinix customers can now connect to the AWS GovCloud (US) from all existing AWS Direct Connect locations in North America.
Existing Equinix customers can connect to AWS Direct Connect inside the Seattle data centers via a simple cross-connect that can be established in a matter of days. With a direct connection to AWS inside SE2 and SE3, customers can achieve millisecond latency between their infrastructure and AWS infrastructure, resulting in improved application performance and security.
Equinix customers can also use AWS Direct Connect to access the AWS GovCloud (US) region from all existing AWS Direct Connect locations in North America. AWS GovCloud (US) is designed to allow US government agencies and customers to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements.
Since the roll out of AWS Direct Connect in Equinix’s Ashburn, Virginia data center campus, AWS Direct Connect has expanded to Equinix locations in Seattle, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. Equinix customers such as Badgeville, Box, Carpathia Hosting and NetApp are using AWS Direct Connect to lower network costs into and out of AWS, bypassing the public internet to take advantage of reduced data transfer rates.
Using AWS Direct Connect, Badgeville deployed a hybrid IT model within Equinix IBX data centers. As a result, Badgeville gained control of its own infrastructure and achieved performance increases of up to 40 percent, faster API response times and a reduction in monthly cloud expenditure of approximately 40 percent.
Equinix opened its second Seattle data center (SE3) earlier this year to support growing demand for data center and interconnection services in Seattle metro area from network and cloud service providers, and content and digital media companies. The SE3 IBX serves as a gateway to Asia Pacific and offers customers the opportunity to extend their footprint in the Northwestern United States and Western Canada while leveraging Platform Equinix™ to help fuel their business.