In this episode, we explore the world of high-performance data centers and the transformative partnerships reshaping the public sector landscape. Join us as we explore how strategic collaborations between Equinix and Carahsoft can enhance operational efficiency, reduce latency, and drive innovation. Our expert guests will share insights on the critical role of data center infrastructure in ensuring optimal performance and security for public sector organizations.
Unlocking Performance: The Future of Data Centers in the Public Sector with Equinix
[Brittany Roland]
Welcome everyone to today's podcast, which is focused on digital transformation in the public sector. I am Brittany Rowland, Director of Partner Account Management Sales in the public sector space at Equinix and your moderator for today. I'm thrilled to guide you through this engaging discussion.
Joining me are two exceptional leaders, Jim and Evan. Jim, Evan, want to introduce yourselves?
[Jim Gwiazda]
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm looking forward to today's conversation. My name is Jim Vias and I'm the Vice President of Public Sector at Equinix.
[Evan Slack]
My name is Evan Slack. I'm a Director of Sales at Carosoft, responsible for hybrid and multi-cloud technologies.
[Brittany Roland]
So together, these gentlemen will discuss how Equinix and Carosoft are empowering the public sector organizations to achieve their digital transformation goals. So let's dive right in. To kick things off, Evan, can you share Carosoft's role in supporting the public sector ecosystem?
[Evan Slack]
Absolutely. Thank you, Brittany. So Carosoft is a trusted IT solutions provider in the government space.
We want to be a bridge between the technology innovators and government agencies. So that is providing them with best of breed technologies like Equinix and empowering them to meet their mission objectives.
[Brittany Roland]
Thanks, Evan. Jim, for those that may be listening and are unfamiliar with the data center industry, why is that important and what role does Equinix play in supporting the digital transformation journey taking place across public sector?
[Jim Gwiazda]
Absolutely. So simply put, data centers are really the backbone of modern digital operations. They connect agencies and they help them scale their operations, but not all data center providers are the same.
So where your data lives, right, it matters. And at Equinix, we help connect the leading organizations to the partners, clouds, and service providers that matter most to them. And what this means and what we really provide comes down to three things.
So reach and scale, secure and private connectivity, and then high performance AI-ready data centers.
[Brittany Roland]
All right. So Jim, public sector organizations face unique challenges. What are some of the critical needs you're seeing in this space and why is that so important to address now?
[Jim Gwiazda]
As the mission has grown, so too has the complexity of these agencies' networks. And legacy architectures weren't built to support this distributed connectivity. And as a result, agencies struggle with things like performance bottlenecks, security risks, and skyrocketing costs in some cases.
And the reality for many public sector organizations is that they have a fragmented, slow, and inefficient network. Every application, every additional cloud that you connect to, every partner that you add, this kind of increases that pathway and really introduces latency and complexity into your network and can kind of slow down innovation. Now, a lot of agencies are already addressing this issue and it's a really important topic, particularly as they continue to deliver services to citizens, they try to keep pace with their adversaries, and continue to kind of innovate.
[Brittany Roland]
Evan, how do these challenges shape Carisoft's approach supporting public sector?
[Evan Slack]
Right. So it highlights the importance of partnership and we can provide access to solutions and simplify the procurement process for government agencies that want to take advantage of the most modern technologies in their data centers. So we want to focus on that simplicity and the process to make that as easy for them as possible.
One of the challenges that we're seeing in government IT today is the need to be efficient, cost-effective, and secure. Combining all three of those things at one time is very difficult for government agencies, and there's not a one-size-fits-all to that. The opportunity to partner with Carisoft and Equinix is part of that digital transformation and IT modernization that can really help government agencies meet all three of those objectives.
[Brittany Roland]
Jim, can you walk us through some benefits that you've seen public sector agencies realize by working with Equinix?
[Jim Gwiazda]
Absolutely, and I alluded to it a little bit earlier. It comes down to three things. So the first is around reach and scale.
So we operate a network of over 260 vendor-neutral data centers on five continents in over 30 countries. Why this matters is we enable organizations to seamlessly connect to their partners, clouds, and service providers, no matter if it's at the mission's edge on the other side of the world or across the country. So the next one is around secure and private connectivity.
At Equinix, our customers have access to low-latency connection to an ecosystem of thousands of partners and service providers, and that's because those service providers live inside of Equinix. You can securely connect to that ecosystem to do a whole host of things, from multi-cloud networking to privately connecting with a partner without going over the internet. And why this matters is this helps ensure a greater level of performance, a greater level of control, and helps to reduce the risk for agencies.
The third and final are really high-performance AI-ready data centers, and we deliver reliable, scalable, and secure AI-ready data centers designed for maximum performance and efficiency. And this really enables organizations to power those critical operations and advanced workloads without interruption. In addition to that, within Equinix, all of our data centers in the U.S. are all accredited at FSMA-HI by a 3PAO, and they also meet a NIST 800-53 requirements around security, access management, incident response, and disaster recovery.
[Brittany Roland]
Evan, can you share any real-world examples on how Kerasoft and Equinix have helped public sector organizations transform their operations?
[Evan Slack]
Absolutely. So the first one that comes to mind is state governments transitioning from legacy systems to hybrid and multi-cloud systems. That's a common use case that we're seeing in the government today, where legacy operations are not suited for the future and the evolving IT landscape.
We're also seeing that from the past five years, the transition from the pandemic environment, where there was this rush and necessary move to public cloud, is being moved back to on-premise workloads and in a data center, but that's not living in a government facility. That's living in a data center like Equinix that is going to meet the performance demands and also have the adjacency to the cloud applications and the public cloud offerings that they're still using today. SAS applications and the use of those has exploded over the past five years, and it's really important from a performance perspective that state governments, federal government agencies, are able to leverage the best performance out of those applications.
Another example that comes to mind would be in the federal space. AI is driving the conversation and is really key to everything that government is focused on today. In order to leverage and get the most out of AI, you have to have a modern infrastructure.
An agency that we've helped support of recent was really focused on these secure interconnections to their AI-ready platform running within an Equinix data center. In order to get the most performance, you need a high density and really efficient data center to really power that AI infrastructure. Again, they're leveraging Equinix to do so, and that's a common use case that we're seeing today in the federal government.
[Brittany Roland]
Jim, partnerships between Equinix and Carisoft are clearly driving innovation in public sector. How does the collaboration amplify Equinix offerings?
[Jim Gwiazda]
Carisoft's expertise in government procurement really allows us to streamline access to our solutions, not only for agencies, but for the partners that we work with across public sector. Together, we're building this ecosystem where integrators, service providers, and agencies can really collaborate seamlessly. Carisoft has helped us really extend our reach, ensuring that agencies and partners have the tools they need to achieve their digital transformation journey, and gives us access to markets that we never had access to before.
[Evan Slack]
Absolutely. I'll add to that, Jim, that you touched on removing the barriers and making it easier to simplify the procurement process. We've seen, in cases, 50% or greater reduction in the timeline in order for the government agencies to take advantage of your offerings.
That's where that time to value equation really helps the government agencies accelerate when they're able to modernize and leverage the other technologies that are going to help them evolve with IT along the way. That's been really important to the customers to reduce those barriers to entry as well as expand the ecosystem where more partners in the community, the resellers, the integration partners, and the service providers are better able to leverage this network with you all as well through Carisoft.
[Jim Gwiazda]
There's a recent example that I'll just highlight as well. We were working with a state agency, but we didn't have the necessary contract vehicles to access them. If we wanted to go through a lengthy procurement cycle, that would take 12 to 18 months.
But because Carisoft had a contract with that agency and an ecosystem of partners to leverage, we were able to shorten that cycle from what would have been 12 to 18 months, potentially, to only a few months to get access to that customer and deliver the services that they really needed.
[Brittany Roland]
When looking ahead, what trends do you see shaping the public sector digital transformation space, and how can agencies ensure the investments remain adaptable?
[Jim Gwiazda]
We stand at the forefront of an AI-driven economic and technological revolution, and we have a unique opportunity to secure America's dominance in this groundbreaking field. I think global leadership, national security, and economic prosperity belong to those who control this AI infrastructure, and Equinix has really built that backbone that makes it all possible. Our global network of interconnected data centers are the world's most secure, scalable, and efficient platform for AI compute.
It's also where the global technology leaders have already built out their artificial intelligence platforms. We don't just host servers. We help orchestrate the flow of AI at scale, and Equinix is really that neutral ground where we can harness the raw power of AI and help it meet real-world impact.
Our platform isn't a commodity. It's a strategic asset that's purpose-built to handle the demands of AI workloads, regardless of the industry.
[Evan Slack]
Jim, you touch on the importance of customers being able to do that at scale, and that flexibility and scalability is absolutely key to me. The investments that government agencies are making into their infrastructure today need to support the future of where IT and technology is going. AI is a big part of that.
The AI standards today are still being written, so that flexibility and being able to work with a partner that has the ecosystem and that network, we talk about collaboration and what we're talking about is interconnectivity and that ability to get the most out of the investments, especially government agencies are using taxpayer dollars. It's important that they're getting the absolute most out of those technologies, and the performance that they're getting from that collaboration, from that ecosystem, from that interconnectivity is driving their modernization and technology, driving performance, and resulting in the outcomes that are important to their mission. So that flexibility and scalability is a key part, and the investments that customers and government agencies are making in the data center are driving that potential long-term.
[Brittany Roland]
Alright, so Jim, Evan, thank you for sharing your valuable insights today. It's clear that the partnership between Equinix and Kerasoft is driving meaningful change in the public sector space. As we wrap up, I encourage our listeners to explore how high-performance data centers can unlock new opportunities for organizations.
Stay tuned for more episodes and thank you for joining us.