Mobile is arguably the most disruptive technology force affecting the way we live, work and play today. Furthermore, its reach is truly global – from providing mobile banking services to remote users in emerging markets, to delivering real-time data straight to city trader’s smartphones from Hong Kong to London, the pervasive reach of mobile has no limit. The opportunities for organisations within the mobile value chain to develop new and innovative services for consumers have never been more boundless.

Yet at the same time some organisations are failing to fulfil their global potential because their ability to collaborate with other potential ecosystem partners is limited – ironically – by their own location. Rather than choose to work with partners based on suitability, innovation or complementing technology they are they bound by geographic proximity to ecosystem partners.

The lines between fixed-line and mobile are blurring as users expect the same level of service regardless of device or location. Cloud services and the associated data demands are having an extraordinary effect, especially in the OTT (over the top) service provider market. As users continue to consume content on the go, the mobile experience must equate to what we expect from at-home viewing.

Mobile ecosystems consist of closely aligned organisations - including service providers, operators, developers, enterprises and vertical organisations - working together to achieve common objectives; most crucially delivering services to end users which express value – both through new and existing revenue, optimising cost and driving user experience.

Collaboration in the data centre widens your global reach and brings the global ecosystem to your doorstep. ‘Old-world’ barriers such as location or geography are no longer an issue; partners can be selected based on their solutions, suitability and innovation - not location.

Appropriate choice of data centre can help organisations improve service performance, as well as reduce costs, by colocating their core server bases with key partners.

This is great news for mobile services providers and end users. In particular, collaborating in vendor neutral data centres promotes openness and forces greater standardisation and interoperability. This too is good for the industry and helps us to more away from mobile ‘gated communities’ where organisations are tied-in to certain operating systems or vendors.

Equinix – through International Business Exchange (IBX®) data centres, Platform Equinix™ and Equinix Marketplace™ – is the only data centre provider who can enable such collaboration across all key geographic locations – The Americas, EMEA and Asia Pac.

Equinix connects businesses with partners and customers around the world through a global platform of high performance data centres, containing dynamic partner ecosystems and the broadest choice of networks. Across the globe, Equinix customers leverage global data centres to power performance and reduce latency.

Platform Equinix also allows customers to store and distribute latency-sensitive data to the major networks that carry the traffic to local businesses and homes around the world. This has a huge impact on scalability as businesses in the Equinix ecosystem can boost performance and reach customers and business partners faster than ever by deploying infrastructure close to their target markets - wherever they are.

For example, in financial services Equinix interconnects the financial services industry in all leading financial markets worldwide, facilitating proximity hosting and FIX connectivity on a global scale and providing a neutral foundation for online and mobile banking, payments, and insurance systems.

Platform Equinix enables the mobile value chain to architect solutions for congestion, thin-pipes, long lead times for provisioning capacity, inefficient routing architectures, and complicated procurement of interoperability services. The Equinix IBX data centre ecosystem gives all members of the mobile value chain direct access to their partners and enablers, allowing them to create solutions that localise traffic, scale bandwidth, and monetise services.