Equinix, Inc. has announced the immediate availability of dedicated, private access to Oracle Cloud in its Sydney, Australia, International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center. Available via Oracle Cloud Network Service – FastConnect and the Equinix Cloud Exchange™, access will be available for Oracle Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as well as Platform as a Service (PaaS). This direct access enables enterprise customers in this growing region to migrate compute, applications and data to Oracle Cloud in a high-performance, low-latency manner for an optimal user experience.

This builds on previous announcements between Equinix and Oracle to offer direct connection to several Oracle PaaS and IaaS services, including database, Java, integration, analytics, compute and storage — in multiple regions around the globe. The addition of Sydney brings the total number of markets that Equinix is offering private access to Oracle Cloud to five, globally.

"We are excited to continue our collaboration with Oracle and bring this service to the Asia Pacific market. The ability to connect directly to Oracle is an essential strategy for companies as they deploy workloads to the cloud. By providing direct access, our mutual customers can create a high-speed, dedicated, and low-latency connection that allows them to fully realize the benefits of hybrid deployment. We look forward to ongoing collaborations with Oracle, bringing this solution to additional Equinix data centers across the globe," said Robert Blackburn, global managing director, Oracle strategic alliance, Equinix.

Cloud deployments in Asia Pacific, and specifically Australia, are on the rise. According to a recent report by IDC*, 67% of all Australian organizations surveyed are embracing cloud, using public or private cloud for more than one or two applications or workloads. Yet, factors such as security and privacy concerns still inhibit public cloud adoption. Through the Equinix Cloud Exchange integration with Oracle FastConnect, customers in Australia can establish direct connectivity between their private IT infrastructure and Oracle Cloud. This enables them to fully realize the benefits of hybrid cloud — moving application, middleware and database workloads seamlessly between private IT infrastructure and Oracle Cloud on a private, dedicated connection resulting in consistent and predictable performance and lower latency.

Whether a customer is looking to incorporate direct connection to Oracle as part of a broader interconnection strategy, or specifically needing to migrate data-heavy applications to the cloud, connection to Oracle Cloud inside Equinix is a highly scalable solution for many enterprise users, that can further a customer's efforts to address data privacy, regulatory compliance and data sovereignty scenarios. In addition to direct access to the Oracle Cloud, customers in Sydney will also gain access to Oracle Managed Cloud Services to help them determine the best deployment model for their business needs.

In today's world, business models are increasingly interdependent and enterprises are adopting an Interconnection Oriented Architecture™ (IOA) strategy in order to deliver the level of performance users demand while taking advantage of multiple IaaS, PaaS and SaaS cloud services. Enterprises bring these services closer to their global end users by putting workloads and application as close as possible to the digital edge of their network in Equinix facilities, co-locating IT hubs adjacent to the various cloud service providers that host their cloud edges in Equinix data centers.

"With interconnection emerging as a catalyst of revenue growth for many Australian businesses, being able to securely and directly connect to cloud and network services is critical. Our goal at Equinix has always been to help our enterprise customers realize the full benefits of the cloud – without worrying about application latency or cost issues. We are thrilled to be bringing Oracle direct access to our customers in Australia. This private, direct access reduces network costs, increases throughput, and provides a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections," said Jeremy Deutsch, managing director, Equinix Australia.

The Equinix data centers in Sydney are the most interconnected in Australia. Enterprise customers in Sydney are able to establish direct links to both of the continent's largest peering points, as well as key submarine cable systems, and gain direct access to multiple network and cloud providers such as Oracle, via the Equinix Cloud Exchange. And with the largest selection of international and regional networks in Australia, enterprise customers have the broadest choice of network providers from which to connect to Oracle Cloud.

Oracle Cloud delivers nearly 1,000 SaaS applications and 50 enterprise-class PaaS and IaaS services to customers in more than 195 countries around the world, and supports 55 billion transactions each day. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is also part of the fast growing sector of cloud computing. According to a recent Gartner report the highest cloud growth is expected to come from IaaS, with a growth of 38.4% in 2016.

The Equinix Cloud Exchange is currently available in 21 markets globally – Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, Osaka, Paris, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington D.C., and Zurich.