As channel partnerships continue to deepen and evolve, we see the continuum of partnership types expand. Years ago we could clearly delineate a channel partner from a strategic alliance. Today, those lines are blurring. Datapipe and Equinix represent a classic example of this.
What started 16 years ago as a customer and vendor relationship between Datapipe and Equinix has evolved into a real channel-alliance partnership. Datapipe, a managed hosting and cloud services provider, needed to expand its business across multiple geographies. Equinix, an industry leading data center company with global footprint, was also growing at a rapid rate.
“We don’t enter into partnerships lightly,” said Rich Dolan, SVP of Marketing at Datapipe. “We make sure our partners are like-minded and innovative, and will assist us in providing clients with the strongest custom solutions, managed services, security, and reliability.”
Datapipe is also a highly valued, strategic partner of Equinix’s, and was one of the first companies to join its global channel partner program in 2015. “By collaborating with them over the years, we have been able to work with enterprise companies worldwide to remove many of the common barriers to cloud adoption. Together Datapipe and Equinix help enterprises to deliver and maintain scalable and dynamic cloud solutions, including infrastructure as a service and platform as a service within highly secured and reliable data centers to fit every need. said Chris Rajiah, Vice President of Worldwide Channels and alliances at Equinix.
The two companies have come together, enabling domestic and global enterprise and government customers to scale both traditional and cloud solutions across the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe through their partnership. Together they have also adopted a number of strategic alliance best practices that are now built into both companies’ DNA:
The alliance fosters a close relationship between the two company’s executive teams. This relationship enables quick buy-in from the top for new strategies, clients, implementations, and partnerships and helps ensure the alliance’s success.
Datapipe and Equinix recognized early on the shift from traditional to hybrid cloud happening within their client base. The established alliance with Equinix enabled Datapipe to offer clients a hybrid cloud – which continues today to be one of the most significant growth opportunities in the world for enterprise IT.
Datapipe builds out new offerings and new geographies based on demand. The alliance with Equinix gives Datapipe the ability to quickly respond to and scale customer requests. They can turn on new services and rapidly enable customers to expand into new geographies.
The company also has a vertical approach, recently making an acquisition to accelerate its success in the US federal market. This successful acquisition has enabled both Datapipe and Equinix to expand their presence into the military and civilian government markets.
The Datapipe and Equinix partnership truly represents an example of a relationship that has progressed from first a customer relationship, then a channel partner, and now a true strategic channel alliance leveraged by both companies’ channel partners in the marketplace.