Equinix operates 260+ data centers in 33 countries, offering colocation, interconnection, and cloud on-ramps for enterprises since 1998.
Equinix is one of the world's largest data center and interconnection companies, operating what it calls International Business Exchange, or IBX, facilities in more than 30 countries. Rather than selling software, Equinix rents physical rack space, power, and cooling to businesses that want to house their own servers in a secure, carrier-neutral facility, and it sells cross-connects that let those businesses plug directly into cloud providers, network carriers, and each other without routing traffic over the public internet.
Founded in 1998 in Silicon Valley by former Digital Equipment Corporation facilities managers Al Avery and Jay Adelson, Equinix grew from a handful of neutral internet exchange points into a global real estate and infrastructure company. It converted to a real estate investment trust structure in 2015 and now trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker EQIX, with a market capitalization that places it among the largest data center operators anywhere.
The centerpiece of Equinix's offering is direct, private interconnection: a company that colocates equipment inside an Equinix facility can order a physical or virtual cross-connect to a bank, a cloud region, an ad exchange, or a business partner sitting in the same building, cutting latency and avoiding the public internet entirely. Equinix Fabric extends this idea into a software-defined interconnection product that lets customers provision virtual connections to cloud on-ramps and other Equinix customers on demand through an API or portal, rather than waiting for a physical cable to be run.
Equinix also offers managed bare-metal infrastructure through Equinix Metal, retail and wholesale colocation at different scales, and dedicated cloud on-ramps to every major hyperscaler, letting customers build hybrid architectures that mix owned hardware with rented cloud capacity in the same building. Facilities are built with redundant power and cooling and carry uptime guarantees that make them suitable for regulated industries with strict availability requirements.
Equinix does not publish a price list. Colocation costs are quoted per contract and depend on the amount of rack space, power draw, and cross-connects a customer needs, as well as the specific facility and region, since data center real estate costs vary significantly by market.
Prospective customers typically work with an Equinix sales representative or partner to size a deployment and receive a proposal; larger enterprise and wholesale deals are negotiated individually and can include multi-year term commitments in exchange for better rates.
Equinix rents data center space, power, and cooling for customers to house their own servers, and sells interconnection services that let those servers connect directly to clouds, carriers, and other businesses.
No, Equinix is a colocation and interconnection company. It hosts and connects to cloud providers rather than offering its own public cloud compute platform, though Equinix Metal does offer managed bare-metal servers.
Pricing is custom and quoted per contract based on rack space, power consumption, cross-connects, and facility location; there is no self-serve price list.
Equinix is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and operates data centers across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific.
Yes, Equinix trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker EQIX and operates as a real estate investment trust.