Equinix offers multi-homing service

Data center and Internet exchange operator Equinix today announced a multi-homing service that allows business to diversify their IP connections without incurring the costs of long contracts with several ISPs.

Called Equinix Direct, the service allows enterprises to make a single connection to one of Equinix’s exchange centers and then chose individual short-term capacity agreements from a list of service providers using Equinix facilities to peer. Equinix chief technology officer Jay Adelson said companies normally wanting to multi-home have to strike separate deals with different service providers, usually for specific levels of bandwidth and with durations of no less than a year. Not only do the companies have to deal with separate provisioning from each carrier, they usually have no need for the extra bandwidth except for redundancy purposes.

“There is a lot of desire to multi-home out there, but it’s just too costly,” Adelson said. “The result is a lot of companies have to rely on a single network connection, which is not the best idea if you need to maintain 100% network uptime.”

Equinix essentially takes advantage of the infrastructure service providers and ISPs already have installed in Equinix’s data hubs. Equinix channels all of those connections into its multi-homing platform, which handles all routing, billing and dynamic settlement, and allows customers to pick and choose among the various carriers.

Service providers are happy to participate, Adelson said: They recognize the value of revenue from enterprises looking for redundant connections, but the costs of provisioning to those customers are too high without significant long-term capacity agreements. Since the Equinix’s infrastructure is already in place, the service providers don’t have to lift a finger, he said. They merely post their rates and service-level agreements in Equinix’s portal, Equinix business customers select their services on a month-by-month basis, and Equinix cuts a check to the carriers each month for the capacity those customers use.

The service launched today in two of Equinix’s data centers, in San Jose, CA, and Ashburn, VA, but Equinix said plans to bring the services to its other 13 data centers in the future.