Equinix

Equinix is a California-based multinational company specializes in internet connection and data centers. The company is one of the biggest competitors in the global colocation data center market field. The company has more than 200 data centers in 25 countries.

Equinix was founded in 1998 by two facility managers at Digital Equipment Corporation, Al Avery and Jay Adelson. Jay Adelson stated that the company’s core attributes, equality, neutrality, and Internet Exchange, shaped the company’s name. Equinix merged with i-STT, a subsidiary of Singapore Technologies Telemedia and Pihana Pacific in 2002. After the agreement, the company expanded to Asia-Pacific in 2002, Europe in 2007, Latin America in 2011 and the Middle East in 2012.

During this period, Peter Van Camp was the CEO from May 2000 until 2006. When he was appointed as executive chairman of the board of directors, Steve Smith became the CEO in 2007 and resigned in January 2018. In September of 2018, Charles Meyers was named as the president and CEO.

Shortly after its establishment, Equinix signed major companies as customers in 2004, including AT&T, Sprint, and Sony and expanded to 15 data centers in the same year. In 2006,  the company purchased the Ashburn campus in Washington. The second major acquisition in the company’s history has happened in 2010. Equinix acquired the U.S. internet exchange and colocation services provider, Switch and Data for approximately $683.4 million.

To gain tax advantages, the company was converted to a real estate investment trust or REIT for short in 2015. Also, the company made its biggest acquisition the same year. At the end of May 2015, Equinix acquired a British company, TelecityGroup for $3.8 billion. This agreement doubled the company’s capacity in Europe and the company expanded to more than 100 data centers around the globe. Equinix has also acquired a bare-metal server provider startup, Packet for $335 million in 2020, which will allow its customers to deploy physical servers across Equinix’s hosting infrastructure. According to Equinix’s statements, the company invested more than $25 billion to build its data center platform.