Optical network specialist Infinera has announced that Equinix selected its Cloud Xpress hardware for datacenter interconnections across its Tokyo network.

Equinix’s IBX data centers offer private, high-performance connections to support hybrid cloud strategies in 21 markets, including Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Tokyo is the second metro market, after Hong Kong, where Equinix is deploying the Infinera Cloud Xpress.

supercomputing infinera

The Cloud Xpress family

The Cloud Xpress family -originally introduced in 2014 - uses the oPIC-500 optical engine, Infinera’s metro-optimized photonic integrated circuit, to deliver data center interconnect services at up to one 500 Gb/s in a two rack unit chassis.

The just announced Cloud Xpress with 100 GbE extends the hyper-scale density of the existing Cloud Xpress family that operators can use to scale their networks. With the addition of the new platform, the Cloud Xpress family now supports 10 GbE, 40 GbE and 100 GbE client-side interfaces.

Equinix is a global interconnection and datacenter company, operating International Business Exchange data centers in 33 markets across 15 countries. The company selected nfinera’s Cloud Xpress to serve the growing need for high bandwidth customer interconnections between its four IBX datacenters in Tokyo, which serve more than 260 companies.

Ideal for high performance datacenter interconnection, the Cloud Xpress leveragesInfinera’s unique photonic integrated circuit technology to deliver a full 500 Gb/s super-channel of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) line-side bandwidth over 150 kilometers without any need for additional multiplexers or amplifiers - something it says is unique among datacenter interconnect products.

Installed in Hong Kong and now in Tokyo

“Equinix is rapidly expanding across the globe,” said Teri Francis, vice president of technology at Equinix. “Cloud Xpress is an ideal solution for us to scale bandwidth in our Hong Kong and Tokyo networks and enhance our ability to connect our customers. Cloud Xpress is extremely simple to deploy and manage and fits our high-density, low power requirements. We are now looking forward to deploying the Cloud Xpress family in other markets globally to take advantage of these same scaling benefits.”

“The continued deployment of the Cloud Xpress by a leading datacenter operator like Equinix underscores the value Cloud Xpress brings to high-bandwidth datacenter interconnect,” said Stu Elby, senior vice president of cloud network strategy and technology at Infinera. “The Cloud Xpress, a purpose-built rack-and-stack datacenter platform, is ideal for operators in Asia where space limitation is a factor. The Cloud Xpress addresses the critical needs of datacenter operators and continues to gain traction in networks across the globe.”