First Equinix Channel Chief Sets Big Goals for Company’s Channel Partners

Equinix channel partners are now under one leader with the promotion of Jules Johnston to senior vice president of global channels.

Johnston joined Equinix in early 2016 and most recently was vice president of Americas partner sales. She’s been in her newly created role for about a month.

Equinix previously didn’t have a global channel chief. It’s now initiating an integrated partner sales and partner program team.

The $6 billion company last month announced its 73rd consecutive quarter of revenue growth. In addition, its channel program continues to grow. Equinix channel partners contributed to more than 30% of bookings and accounted for more than 60% of new customers.

Last month, Equinix introduced private network access to Microsoft Azure to customers across six new global markets — Canberra, Seoul, Dubai, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin and Bogota. Equinix offers this access through Azure ExpressRoute on its own platform. It also provides direct network access to Azure services such as the Azure VMware solution.

Equinix’s Jules Johnston

In a Q&A with Channel Futures, Johnston talks about what Equinix channel partners can expect in the months ahead.

Channel Futures: How has your role with Equinix changed?

Jules Johnston: There are a couple of reasons we’re bringing the group together. One, we have spent the last few years listening to our partners about their needs. And in a company the size of Equinix, it is to their benefit to be able to aggregate and elevate their needs and concerns to develop greater, more standard, consistent tools and infrastructure to help scale for partners. So a good deal of the impetus of this is to provide an elevated service and a consistent experience instead of running a channel motion differently in all parts of the world. That extends to tools and infrastructure. It’s also about being a champion for our partners with our product group so we can move the company to a partner-first product strategy. And the need for that is fortunately exacerbated by new services.

As we launch new products and services, it’s very important that we have a partner-sensing feedback mechanism globally. It’s also important to have partnership certifications, partner trainings and partner SAT mechanisms. Enterprises now need not just Equinix, but all the things our partners provide. So our selling motion has dramatically evolved. That’s because the enterprise needs all those adjacent services, and we’ve been fortunate to have a lot of big partners lean in with us.

CF: How will Equinix channel partners benefit from the partner organization coming together under one leader?

JJ: I think they benefit from an ease of communication and a greater consistency in our delivery from the organization itself. So our move to consolidate the partner champions, to elevate their voice within Equinix, is important. It’s part of a commitment to invest in more tools for them. For example, we’re investing in a partner quoting tool so they can globally be more self-sufficient [in] answering the customer’s questions and complexities around network choices or …