Equinix Channel Partners Get New Leaders in 3 Global Regions

Equinix has added three new vice presidents to work with Equinix channel partners in three global regions. That includes hiring vets from Oracle and Schneider Electric, and promoting a channel exec who’s been with the company more than 10 years.

Equinix’s Orla Ni Chorcora

Orla Ni Chorcora has been hired as vice president of channel for EMEA. She previously was with Oracle for nearly 24 years. Ni Chorcora most recently was senior director of business development for Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Equinix’s Sophie Ben Sadia

Sophie Ben Sadia has been hired as vice president of sales for APAC partners. She was with Schneider Electric for four-and-a-half years, and before that was with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. She was most recently Schneider’s vice president of channels and alliances in the IT division.

Equinix’s Ben Thames

Kevin Thames has been promoted to vice president of the Americas channel. He joined Equinix in May 2011 and most recently was senior director of partner and alliance sales for the Americas.

Driving Organizational Changes

Jules Johnson is Equinix’s senior vice president of global channels.

“For more than a year, we have been implementing organizational changes across global sales to drive better focus and consistency to reach our goals in relation to the partner program,” she said. “First, we announced a global channel organization, which unified all channel sellers and the global channel programs teams. I then moved into the senior vice president role of the organization to better align our partner objectives and bring together our partner ecosystem across all regions. We also created a new channel leadership council, a global cross-functional team, to establish a partner framework and prioritization that will help drive decisions faster.”

Goals for Equinix channel partners include:

• Channel growth. Channel accounted for more than 30% of bookings in the first quarter of 2021. In the next few years, Equinix will do greater than 50% of its business through partners.
• Acceleration. It’s aiming to accelerate realization of its channel vision and goals by leading cross-functional decision-making alignment and accountability. It also plans to perpetually inspire a partner-first mindset at Equinix.
• Services. Equinix is looking to enable large organizations to sell more complete services inside of Equinix so that companies can take advantage of the service providers who serve within that ecosystem.
• Channel-enabled mindset. Equinix is looking to shift to a longer-term, channel-enabled mindset, where new product offerings and services will become key focus areas.

Accelerating Adoption of Solutions

“All our efforts around consolidating our partner and channel initiatives focus on one set of core objectives: to accelerate the adoption of Equinix and partner solutions by our mutual customer communities,” Johnson said. “We’re addressing this fundamental goal by working to optimize partner communication and enhance message consistency from our organization to the partner community.”

It’s essential that Equinix teams with partners who can bring their own services and competencies into a solution, she said.

“They span the gamut from resellers, system integrators, technology alliance partners and MSPs to network service providers,” Johnson said. “The relationship with our partner community is symbiotic and our goal is to make that relationship as integrated and effective as possible.”