Equinix looks to take channel revenues past 20%

Equinix is looking to build on the success it has had with the channel since making the decision to go indirect aiming to reach more enterprise customers via partners.

The firm was direct for the first seventeen years of its history but in the last three has started working with the channel to ensure it can get to a greater number of customers.

Partners have been bringing business and fresh customers to the data centre player and the firm is aiming to keep that momentum going in the channel.

Oren Yehudai, senior director, EMEA channel sales at Equinix, said that it had grown the channel operation over the past three years, with 26 plus now working in that area.

"It is an indication that this is a key top priority for the company in terms of growing through channel, acquiring enterprise through channel," he said.

He added that the channel was in a position to add extra services to its proposition and more partners appreciated that they could put Equinix at the heart of a proposal and then add other options for customers.

"If we look at where we are today compared to three years ago you can see firsly that the size of the team has grown. Even though we have only been around for three years more than 20% of our sales are channel sales and our expectations from that segment are to grow significantly faster than the rest of the business," he said.

He said that at the start it had signed up partners to add some presence but it was now looking more at quality than quantity and there had to be value on both sides of the relationship and now encouraged partners to invest with the vendor more heavily.

"You can clearly see that the partners that go through this process with us create opportunities to double the revenue, compared to those that are working with us purely on a transactional level," he said.