Cloud Computing: Equinix Opens $60 Million Seattle Data Center

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Equinix opened a $60 million SE3 data center in downtown Seattle Thursday to enhance its data center and network communication services to the RightScale cloud management service, and potentially to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and major enterprise customers. AWS and Equinix are already cloud partners in six other locations, and Equinix officials said the close working relationship makes it likely that AWS will use the Seattle facility at some point in the future.

Amazon Web Services currently relies on Equinix facilities to power its Direct Connect service, used by financial services and other privacy-oriented organizations that wish to establish a fiber-optic communications link with an Amazon data center rather than relying on the public Internet…

The new Seattle site, however, already has one cloud service provider, Blue Box, a young supplier of infrastructure with custom, private cloud characteristics to 600 customers. Jesse Proudman, Bluebox founder and CEO, said in an interview that his firm likes the SE3 facility "because of the growth possibilities. If you go with a regional provider and outgrow their facilities, where do you go next?" Equinix has also "always been a hub of network connectivity," and Blue Box likes connectivity that can reach its California customers as well as those in the Seattle area. It also has plans to expand in Asia. Soon Blue Box will offer its cloud services from Zurich, again from an Equinix facility there…

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