HPE CTO Fidelma Russo, Cisco EVP Jeetu Patel Join Equinix Board

The appointments some with Equinix aiming to drive as much as 50 percent of its annual revenues from channel sales. That includes partnerships with the likes of HPE and Cisco.

With everything-as-a-service reshaping the channel landscape, data center co-location provider Equinix has named Hewlett Packard Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Fidelma Russo and Cisco Executive Vice President Jeetu Patel to its board of directors.

The appointments come with Equinix aiming to drive as much as 50 percent of its annual revenues from channel sales. That includes partnerships with the likes of HPE and Cisco.

In the most recent quarter, Equinix’s channel program delivered its fourth consecutive quarter of record bookings, accounting for about 40 percent of bookings and 60 percent of new logos.

As the CTO of HPE, Russo (pictured above) has been key in bringing to market a new release of the HPE GreenLake pay-per-use cloud service aimed at delivering a public cloud like experience similar to AWS and Microsoft Azure.

HPE began offering its GreenLake cloud service through Equinix in 2019.

Russo, who previously headed up VMware’s cloud services business unit, joined HPE nine months ago.

Patel, who oversees Cisco’s security and collaboration business, has been a driving force behind Cisco’s software subscription business, including Webex.

Equinix provides an alternative to running Cisco over the public internet through its Cisco Webex Edge Connect on the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric and Network Edge.

Patel, who joined Cisco nearly two years ago, was previously chief product and chief strategy officer for secure cloud storage and workflow provider Box.

Patel has also been a fierce advocate of the hybrid work model that emerged during the global pandemic.

A top sales executive for a Solution Provider 500 company, who did not want to be identified, said the board appointments reflect the increasing partnerships between Equinix and legacy infrastructure providers aimed at providing an instant on public cloud like experience for on premise cloud services. “Customers like having the option of going through a colocation provider like Equinix,” he said. “They like the idea of having HPE GreenLake built into the data fabric of a colocation provider like Equinix. That’s a huge advantage when making a move to GreenLake.”

Equinix also provides as-a-service offerings with HPE rival Dell Technologies including Dell APEX Data Storage Services as an option for customers. Among the options is a Dell managed colocation offering through Equinix.

Even with the rise in as-a-service offerings there is still a strong demand for customers for on-premise as-a-service, said Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech Enterprise, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla. solution provider.

“The colocation providers are all courting HPE GreenLake, Cisco as-a-service and Dell Apex, but there is still a play for as-a-service on-premise which keeps the customer closer to their technology,” he said. “Just like public cloud there are reasons and use cases for it but there are also still use cases and value for that on-premise as-a-service with GreenLake, Cisco and Dell APEX.”