UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

__________________________

FORM 10-K

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017

OR

For the transition period from _____________ to _____________

Commission file number 000-31293

______________________

EQUINIX, INC.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

One Lagoon Drive, Redwood City, California 94065

(Address of principal executive offices, including ZIP code)

(650) 598-6000

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer as defined in Rule 405 of the Act. Yes   x     No   ¨

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes    ¨    No   x

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes   x     No   ¨

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files). Yes   x     No   ¨

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. x

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer or a smaller reporting company. See definitions of "large accelerated filer," "accelerated filer" and "smaller reporting company" in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. (Check one):

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.    ¨

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes    ¨    No   x

The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common stock held by non-affiliates computed by reference to the price at which the common stock was last sold as of the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter was approximately $33.5 billion . As of February 23, 2018 , a total of 79,228,072 shares of the registrant’s common stock were outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Part III – Portions of the registrant’s definitive proxy statement to be issued in conjunction with the registrant’s 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which is expected to be filed not later than 120 days after the registrant’s fiscal year ended December 31, 2017 . Except as expressly incorporated by reference, the registrant’s proxy statement shall not be deemed to be a part of this report on Form 10-K.

EQUINIX, INC.

FORM 10-K

DECEMBER 31, 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I

Table of Contents

The words "Equinix", "we", "our", "ours", "us" and the "Company" refer to Equinix, Inc. All statements in this discussion that are not historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including statements regarding Equinix’s "expectations", "beliefs", "intentions", "strategies", "forecasts", "predictions", "plans" or the like. Such statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to a number of factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Equinix cautions investors that there can be no assurance that actual results or business conditions will not differ materially from those projected or suggested in such forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, the risk factors discussed in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Equinix expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in Equinix’s expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions, or circumstances on which any such statements are based.

Industry Background

The internet is a collection of numerous independent networks interconnected to form a network of networks. Users on different networks communicate with each other through interconnection between these networks. For example, when a person sends an email to someone who uses a different provider for his or her connectivity (e.g. Comcast versus AT&T), the email must pass from one network to the other to get to its final destination. A data center provides a physical point at which that interconnection can occur.

To accommodate the rapid growth of internet traffic that was occurring in the early years of the internet, an organized approach for network interconnection was needed. This was the start of the network era, when networks gained mutual advantage by exchanging data traffic on interoperable platforms. The exchange of traffic between these networks became known as peering, which is when networks agree to trade traffic at relatively equal amounts, often at no charge to the other party. At first, government and nonprofit organizations established places where these networks could peer with each other. These points were known as network access points, or NAPs. Over time, many NAPs became a natural extension of carrier services and were run by companies such as MFS (now a part of Verizon Business), Sprint, Ameritech and Pacific Bell (the latter two now part of AT&T).

Ultimately, these NAPs were unable to scale with the growth of the internet, and the lack of "neutrality" by the carrier owners of these NAPs created a conflict of interest with the participants. This created a market need for network-neutral interconnection points that could accommodate the rapidly growing demand to increase performance for enterprise and consumer users of the internet, especially with the rise of important content providers such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo! and others. In addition, the providers, as well as a growing number of enterprises, required a more secure and reliable solution for direct connection to a variety of telecommunications networks, as the importance of their internet operations continued to grow. These were the seeds of the connected era, when peering expanded exponentially among new players, and access to information anytime and anywhere became the norm.

To accommodate internet traffic growth, the largest networks left the NAPs and began connecting and trading traffic by placing private circuits between each other. Peering, which once occurred at the NAP locations, was moved to these private circuits. Over the years, these circuits became expensive to expand and could not be built quickly enough to accommodate traffic growth. This led to a need by the large carriers to find a more efficient way to peer. The multi-tenant or colocation data center was introduced to meet this need. Today, many customers satisfy their requirements for peering through data center providers like Equinix because this strategy permits them to peer with the networks as they require within one location, using simple, direct and secure connections. Their ability to peer within a data center or across a data center campus, instead of across a metro area, has increased the scalability of their operations while decreasing network costs.

The interconnection model has further evolved over the years to include new offerings, as the collaborative landscape of the interconnected era imposes new demands for connectivity that facilitates more scalable interactive and real-time digital interconnections. Enterprises are becoming increasingly interdependent and cloud- and digital-enabled, and to compete they need real-time data exchange and reliable, instant connections between and across any given digital ecosystem. Starting with the peering and network communities, interconnection has been used for new network solutions, including carrier Ethernet, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), virtual private networks (VPNs), and mobile services, in addition to traditional international private line and voice services. The data center industry is working to keep up with the rapid digital transformation of today's businesses, and it continues to evolve with a set of new network offerings (such as SDN, blockchain and 5G) where interconnection is often used to solve any challenge using both physical and virtual networks, across geographic boundaries.

In addition, the enterprise customer segment is also evolving. In the past, most enterprises opted to keep their data center requirements in-house. However, current trends are leading more enterprise chief information officers (CIOs) to either outsource their data center requirements, and/or extend their corporate wide area networks (WANs) into carrier-neutral colocation facilities. These trends include the following:

Industry analysts project the compound annual growth rate of the global carrier neutral colocation market to be approximately 8% between 2016 and 2020.

Equinix Value Proposition

Equinix’s global platform for digital business offers these unique value propositions to customers:

With Platform Equinix, enterprises and service providers can deploy digital infrastructure anywhere they need to be. Customers are quickly and easily able to place applications, data, security and networking controls next to users, clouds and networks in major metros globally. With one global partner, our customers are able to reduce complexity and accelerate time to market while relying on the consistency of a proven worldwide interconnection and data center leader.

Businesses operating on Platform Equinix will be able to discover and reach anyone on demand, through one connection to the world, by directly connecting physically or virtually to customers, partners, providers and between their points of presence. This gives our customers the capabilities to reach everyone they need to from one place and to simplify, scale and dynamically adapt their digital infrastructures to keep pace with rapidly changing business demands.

On Platform Equinix, our customers are able to activate their digital edge through leading technology tools, partners and services. By leveraging software controls and expert advisors, service providers and enterprises can dynamically design, implement and manage their digital edge. They can also secure, view, control and manage hybrid IT environments to seamlessly scale digital integration across their business.

More than 9,800 companies, including a diversified mix of cloud and IT service providers, content providers, enterprises, financial companies, and network and mobile service providers, currently operate within Equinix IBX data centers. These companies derive specific value from the following elements of the Equinix platform offering:

interconnection platform for digital business that is connected physically and virtually around the world. Companies that can deploy an interconnected digital infrastructure can connect broadly and securely scale the integration of their business at the digital edge.

Our Strategy

Our objective is to expand our global leadership position as the premier network and cloud-neutral data center and interconnection platform for enterprises, cloud and IT services providers, media and content companies, financial services firms, IoT and big data providers, and network and mobile services providers. These are the key components of our strategy:

Improve customer performance through global interconnection.  To succeed in today’s digital economy, enterprises around the world must adopt globally interconnected, on-demand digital IT architectures. The business connections forged in Equinix data centers through the power of interconnection are vital to accelerating our customers' businesses. To help companies understand, deploy and benefit from global interconnection, Equinix has created a blueprint for becoming an interconnected enterprise - the Interconnection Oriented Architecture ^® (IOA ^® ) strategy. Based on work with more than 230 Fortune 500 customers, our IOA framework is a proven and repeatable engagement model that both enterprises and solution providers can leverage to directly and securely connect people, locations, clouds and data. An IOA strategy shifts the fundamental IT delivery architecture from siloed

and centralized to interconnected and distributed. Since the introduction of its IOA strategy, Equinix has created an "IOA Playbook" and "IOA Knowledge Base™," which were developed from our aggregated learnings across more than 600 Equinix customer (enterprise and service provider) deployments. These tools are offered online at no charge to any organization and provide fundamental, repeatable steps that organizations can take to deploy an IOA strategy across common digital workloads. They offer application blueprints for networks, security, data and applications, as well as for various use cases including ecosystems, analytics, content delivery, collaboration, hybrid multicloud and the IoT.

When combined with Equinix's critical mass of premier network and cloud providers and content companies, the increasing rate of adoption of an IOA strategy by the world's enterprise companies enables Equinix to extend its leadership as one of the core interconnection hubs of the information-driven, digital world. The density of providers inside Equinix is a key selling point for companies looking to connect with a diverse set of networks and deliver the best connectivity to their end customers at the digital edge, as well as to network companies that want to sell bandwidth to companies and efficiently interconnect with other networks. Equinix currently houses more than 1,700 unique networks, including the top-tier networks, which allow customers to directly interconnect with providers that best meet their unique price and performance needs. We have a growing mass of key players in cloud and IT services (Accenture, Amazon Web Services, AT&T, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and Office 365, Oracle Cloud, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud and SAP Cloud Platform, Salesforce.com, IBM Bluemix and VMware vCloud Air), and in the enterprise and financial sectors (Bechtel, Bloomberg, Chicago Board of Trade, The GAP, McGraw-Hill, etc.). We expect these segments will continue to grow as customers seek to leverage our density of network providers and interconnect directly with each other to improve performance.

Streamline ease of doing business globally.  Customers say data center reliability, power availability and network choice are the most important attributes they consider when choosing a data center provider in a particular location. We have long been recognized as a leader in these areas, and our performance continues to improve.

In 2017, more than half of our revenue came from customers with deployments in all three of our global regions, and we expect seamless global solutions to become an increasingly important data center selection criteria as the need for globally interconnected, on-demand digital IT architectures continues to grow. We continue to focus on strategic acquisitions to expand our market coverage and on global product standardization, pricing and contracts harmonization initiatives to meet these global demands.

   Deepen existing ecosystems and develop new ones.  As various enterprises and service and content providers locate in our IBX data centers, their suppliers and business partners benefit by doing the same, and they gain the full economic and performance benefits of direct, global interconnection for their business ecosystems. These partners, in turn, pull in their business partners, creating a "network effect" of customer adoption. Our interconnection offerings enable scalable, secure, reliable and cost-effective interconnectivity and optimized traffic exchange, which lowers overall costs and increases flexibility. The ability to directly and globally interconnect with a wide variety of companies is a key differentiator for us and enables companies to create new opportunities within unique ecosystems by working together. We also have efficient and innovative internet and cloud exchange platforms in our IBX sites to accelerate commercial growth within the ecosystems via the network effect.

  Expand vertical go-to-market plan.  We plan to continue to focus our go-to-market efforts on customer segments and business applications that appreciate the Equinix value proposition of interconnection, reliability, global reach and prime collaboration opportunities within and across ecosystems. We have identified these segments today as cloud and IT services, content and digital media, financial services, enterprises, and network and mobile service providers. As digital business evolves, we will continue to identify and focus our go-to-market efforts on industry segments that need our value proposition.

Accelerate global reach and scale. We continue to evaluate expansion opportunities in select markets based on customer demand. In May 2017, we closed a deal with Verizon to acquire 29 data centers across 15 metro areas. This strategic acquisition strengthened our global platform by increasing interconnection in the U.S. and Latin America and accelerated Equinix's penetration of the enterprise and strategic market sectors, including government and energy. We made several other important, smaller acquisitions in 2017, including the purchase of IO UK’s facility in Slough, United Kingdom, the purchase of data center provider Itconic and its five data centers (four in Spain and one in Portugal), and the purchase of a Zenium data center in Istanbul. At the end of the year, we announced the entry into a transaction agreement to acquire Metronode, which operates 10 data centers spanning Australia. In February 2018, we announced the entry into a transaction agreement to acquire Infomart Dallas, including its operations and tenants. We also saw significant organic growth in 2017, opening new data centers on four continents, including AM4 in Amsterdam, FR6 in Frankfurt, HK5 in Hong Kong, SP3 in São Paulo, SV10 in Silicon Valley and DC12 in Washington, D.C. Once we close the Metronode acquisition, expected in the first half of 2018, Equinix's total global footprint will expand to 200 data centers in 52 markets in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

We expect to continue to execute our expansion strategy in a cost-effective and disciplined manner through a combination of acquiring existing data centers through lease or purchase, acquiring or investing in local data center operators, and building new IBX data centers based on key criteria, such as demand and potential financial return in each market.

Our Customers

Our customers include carriers, mobile and other bandwidth providers, cloud and IT services providers, content providers, financial companies and global enterprises. We provide each customer access to a choice of business partners and solutions based on their colocation, interconnection and managed IT service needs. As of December 31, 2017, we had more than 9,800 customers worldwide.

Customers in our five key customer categories include the following:

Customers typically sign renewable contracts of one or more years in length. Our largest customer accounted for approximately 3% of our recurring revenues for the years ended December 31, 2017 , 2016 and 2015 . Our 50 largest customers accounted for approximately 37% , 36% and 34% of our recurring revenues for the years ended December 31, 2017 , 2016 and 2015 , respectively.

Our Offerings

Equinix provides a choice of data center offerings primarily comprised of colocation, interconnection solutions, bundled offers and professional services.

Colocation and Related Offerings

Our IBX data centers provide our customers with secure, reliable and robust environments that are necessary for optimum internet commerce interconnection. Our IBX data centers include multiple layers of physical security, scalable cabinet space availability, on-site trained staff (24x7x365), dedicated areas for customer care and equipment staging, redundant AC/DC power systems and other redundant and fault-tolerant infrastructure systems. Some specifications of offerings provided by individual IBX data centers may differ based on original facility design or market.

Within our IBX data centers, customers can deploy their equipment and interconnect with a choice of networks, cloud providers or other business partners. We also provide customized solutions for customers looking to package our IBX offerings as part of their complex solutions. Our colocation offerings include:

Cabinets.  Our customers have several choices for colocating their networking, server and storage equipment. They can place the equipment in one of our shared or private cages or customize their space. In certain select markets, customers can purchase their own private "suite" which is walled off from the rest of the data center. As customers’ colocation requirements increase, they can expand within their original cage (or suite) or upgrade into a cage that meets their expanded requirements. Customers buy the hardware they place in our IBX data centers directly from their chosen vendors. Cabinets (or suites) are priced with an initial installation fee and an ongoing recurring monthly charge.

Power.  Power is an element of increasing importance in customers’ colocation decisions. We offer both AC and DC power circuits at various amperages and phases customized to a customer’s individual power requirements. Power is priced with an initial installation fee and an ongoing recurring monthly charge. We also offer metered power in certain markets.

IBXflex ^® . IBXflex allows customers to deploy mission-critical operations personnel and equipment on-site at our IBX data centers. Because of the proximity to their infrastructure within our IBX data centers, IBXflex customers can offer a faster response and quicker troubleshooting solution than those available in traditional colocation facilities. This space can also be used as a secure disaster recovery point for customers’ business and operations personnel. IBXflex is priced with an initial installation fee and an ongoing recurring monthly charge.

IBX SmartView™. Equinix IBX SmartView™ offers application programming interface (API) -based DCIM that provides real-time access to environmental and operating information within an Equinix IBX footprint, as if those cages were all on site with the customer. IBX SmartView helps its customers consistently maintain their IBX operations and deployments with alerts and notifications, while enhancing long-term planning with customizable reports.

Hyperscale Infrastructure. Our integration efforts with the major cloud players have provided us with deep insight into the evolving architecture of the cloud. Today, the majority of private interconnection nodes for the major cloud players are located in Equinix facilities. In addition, we are in discussions with a targeted set of hyperscale customers to develop capacity to serve their larger footprint needs. We are leveraging the combination of existing capacity and dedicated hyperscale builds to meet these needs in a handful of key markets in 2018.

Interconnection Solutions

Our interconnection solutions are evolving to enable high-performance, secure, scalable, reliable and cost-effective interconnection and traffic exchange between Equinix customers across our global platform. These interconnection solutions are either on a one-to-one basis with direct cross connects or on a one-to-many basis through our ECX Fabric or other exchange solutions. In the peering community, we play an important industry leadership role by acting as the relationship broker between parties who would like to interconnect within our IBX data centers and, now, between regionally distributed IBX data centers. Our staff holds or has held significant positions in many leading industry groups, such as the North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Members of our staff have published industry-recognized white papers and strategy documents in the areas of peering and interconnection, many of which are used by other institutions worldwide in furthering the education and promotion of this important set of solutions.

Our current interconnection solutions are comprised of the following:

Physical Cross Connect/Direct Interconnections. Customers needing to directly and privately connect to another IBX data center customer can do so through single or multi-mode fiber. These cross connections are the physical link between customers and can be implemented within 24 hours of request. Cross-connect offerings are priced with an initial installation fee and an ongoing monthly recurring charge.

Equinix Internet Exchange™. Customers may choose to connect to and peer through the central switching fabric of our Equinix Internet Exchange, rather than purchase a direct physical cross connection. With a connection to this switch, a customer can aggregate multiple interconnects over one physical connection with multiple, linked 100-gigabit ports of capacity, instead of purchasing individual physical cross connects. The offering is priced per IBX data center with an initial installation fee and an ongoing monthly recurring charge.

Equinix Metro Connect . Customers who are located in one IBX data center may need to interconnect with networks or other customers located in an adjacent or nearby IBX data center in the same metro area. Metro Connect allows customers to seamlessly interconnect between IBX data centers at capacities up to 100 Gigabits per second. Metro Connect offerings are priced with an initial installation fee and an ongoing monthly recurring charge dependent on the capacity purchased by the customer.

Internet Connectivity.  Customers who are installing equipment in our IBX data centers generally require IP connectivity or bandwidth access. Although many large customers prefer to contract directly with carriers, we offer customers the ability to contract for IP connectivity and bandwidth access through us from any of the major bandwidth providers in that data center. This bandwidth access is targeted to customers who require a single bill and a single point of support through Equinix for the entire contract for their bandwidth needs. Internet connectivity is priced with an initial installation fee and an ongoing monthly recurring charge based on the amount of bandwidth committed.

Equinix Cloud Exchange™ (ECX) Fabric. The ECX Fabric directly, securely and dynamically connects distributed infrastructure and digital ecosystems on Platform Equinix via global, software-defined interconnection. It enables businesses to customize their connectivity to partners, customers and suppliers through an interface that provides all the benefits companies

have come to expect from "as-a-service" models. This includes real-time provisioning via a portal or API, pay-as-you-go billing increments and the removal of friction in establishing elastic connectivity between metros. The ECX Fabric is designed for scalability, agility and virtualized connectivity. Through a single port, Equinix customers can discover and reach anyone on demand, locally or across metros. Customers pay a monthly port fee to access the ECX Fabric, plus a transport access fee to connect to customers in other metros based on data and inter-city bandwidth expense.

The new ECX Fabric capabilities are now available in the Americas and EMEA regions, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, New York, Paris, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Stockholm, Toronto, Washington, D.C. and Zurich. In the fourth quarter of 2017 and into early 2018, Equinix is rolling out ECX Fabric to new metros in the Americas and EMEA regions of Denver, Düsseldorf, Geneva, Helsinki, Miami, Milan, and Munich. In 2018, Equinix will also extend connectivity to São Paulo within the Americas region, and between the APAC region ECX Fabric metro locations of Hong Kong, Melbourne, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.

Equinix Performance Hub ^®  

The Equinix Performance Hub places corporate IT resources in IBX data centers connected to many networks and clouds near large user populations. Performance Hub solutions can be implemented gradually, without closing or moving out of existing data centers. Performance Hub allows companies to efficiently deploy resources at the edge, closest to their end-users, enabling an affordable, low-risk approach to improving network performance and reducing costs. This distributed, connectivity-driven approach to data center computing has been proven by Gartner, 451 Group, and many enterprise customers to provide dramatic benefits in application and network performance, as well as in business and IT agility. The Performance Hub offering is priced per IBX data center with an initial installation fee and an ongoing recurring monthly charge.

Equinix Data Hub ^®  

Equinix Data Hub is an extension of the Equinix Performance Hub framework and is a data center solution that addresses enterprise demands for real-time analytics, IoT, data collection and data protection. Data Hub empowers organizations to build a globally optimized data platform located in strategic data centers around the world and maintain full control over business-critical data for any and all security and compliance demands. Data Hub use cases include: cloud integrated tiered storage, big data analytics infrastructures and data protection and replication. The Data Hub offering is priced per IBX data center with an initial installation fee and an ongoing recurring monthly charge.

Equinix Professional Services

Exponential increases in data traffic and growing demand for interconnection mean pressure on companies to stay competitive. Customers need a partner with knowledge of the global terrain and trends, so they can maximize new technology and information and meet the needs of dispersed end users. Equinix Professional Services is uniquely positioned to be that partner. Equinix experts help companies tap the resources and opportunities for innovation available on a global platform of more than 9,800 companies in 48 markets, including more than 1,700 network service providers and 2,900 cloud and IT services providers. Our consultants have the know-how and experience to help customers introduce new service offerings, optimize IT architectures, simplify hybrid and multicloud migrations and stay up-and-running. Equinix professional services are priced at the project level and include:

Cloud Consulting Services. Many companies are migrating to a hybrid or multicloud environment as the cloud’s cost advantages and flexibility are critical in an era of rising electronic collaboration and user expectations. Equinix's Professional Services for Cloud are designed to facilitate cloud migration with a detailed assessment, design and implementation process that gives customers a faster, smoother path to the cloud. The 2,900 cloud and IT service providers and 1,700 network service providers within Equinix's network help our experts tailor cloud deployments to individual business needs and maximize their cloud performance, savings and security while ensuring future resilience and agility.

Network and IOA Transformation Services. Digital transformation creates new revenue streams from information about an organizations’ physical operations, it also creates congestion and performance issues for an organization’s legacy network. The growth in data, applications and locations that must be served by a digital enterprise, plus the reduction in latency required by real-time applications, all put enormous stress on legacy IT infrastructure. Equinix’s Professional Services for network and IOA transformation helps companies plan and build their future network and infrastructure architecture, ready for the challenges of digital business today and tomorrow.

Global Solutions Architects ^®  

Equinix Global Solutions Architects (GSAs) are industry experts, innovators and thought leaders, committed to helping companies deploy their IT infrastructures in ways that best serve their business needs and fully exploit the advantages offered by Equinix’s global interconnection platform. Equinix’s GSAs have decades of combined experience in cloud deployments, facility operations, business analytics and network design and operations. They work as extensions of our customers’ IT and technology teams, helping efficiently deploy high-performance solutions, advising them on service provider choices, and designing IT architectures that help them reach today’s goals and anticipate tomorrow’s requirements. GSA services are provided at no additional cost.

Solution Validation Centers ^®  

Equinix Solution Validation Centers (SVCs) are state-of-the-art facilities that allow customers to test and fine-tune their IT infrastructure, network, cloud and data center rollouts in a real-world environment before full build-out and deployment. Customers can measure how their applications perform when they move off legacy systems, spot and address unforeseen technical barriers, and optimize various infrastructure components, network connections and applications. Our SVCs operate in 18 strategic markets globally, helping companies reduce risk and maximize their IT investments.

Smart Hands Services ^®  

The Equinix Smart Hands service enables customers to use our highly trained IBX data center personnel to act as their hands (or eyes and ears) when their own staff cannot be on-site. Smart Hands technicians offer a range of services, from routine equipment inventory and labeling to more complex installations and configuring. Smart Hands technicians also provide technical assistance and troubleshooting services. Smart Hands services are sold by the hour.

Equinix Customer Portal

The Equinix Customer Portal offers 24/7 access to our customer care personnel, so customers can report problems, schedule shipments or order Smart Hands services at any time of the day or night. Equinix conducts a significant portion of its transactions with its customers via this portal.

Business Continuity Trading Rooms

Trading infrastructure is mission-critical for financial firms worldwide, and our Business Continuity Trading Rooms (BCTRs) ensure that trading does not stop, even if primary operations are knocked off-line or are disabled. A BCTR backs up our customers’ trading operations in one of our secure data center facilities, right down to telephone services and multiple desktop monitors. BCTR offerings are protected with backup generators and uninterruptible power supply to guarantee reliability and deliver peace of mind. BCTR services are priced by size of capacity.

Sales and Marketing

Sales.  We use a direct sales force and channel marketing program to market our offerings to global enterprises, content providers, financial companies, and mobile and network service providers. We organize our sales force by customer type, as well as by establishing a sales presence in diverse geographic regions, which enables efficient servicing of the customer base from a network of regional offices. In addition to our worldwide headquarters located in Silicon Valley, we have established an Asia-Pacific regional headquarters in Hong Kong and a European regional headquarters in Amsterdam. Our Americas sales offices are located in Ashburn, Bogota, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Silicon Valley, Tampa and Toronto. Our EMEA sales offices are located in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dubai, Dublin, Dusseldorf, Enschede, Frankfurt, Geneva, Helsinki, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, Munich, Paris, Sofia, Stockholm, Warsaw and Zurich. Our Asia-Pacific sales offices are located in Beijing, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Osaka, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne and Tokyo.

Our sales team works closely with each customer to foster the natural network effect of our IBX model, resulting in access to a wider potential customer base via our existing customers. As a result of the IBX interconnection model, IBX data center participants often encourage their customers, suppliers and business partners to also locate in our IBX data centers. These customers, suppliers and business partners, in turn, encourage their business partners to locate in our IBX data centers, resulting in additional customer growth. This network effect significantly reduces our new customer acquisition costs. In addition, large network providers, cloud providers or managed service providers may refer customers to Equinix as a part of their total customer solution. Equinix also focuses the selling by our vertical sales specialists on supporting specific industry requirements for network, mobile, and media and content providers, financial services, cloud computing, systems integrators and enterprise customer segments.

The Equinix channel program adds an ecosystem of leading system integrators and service providers, from managed network to cloud services. They help our customers design and deploy the right cloud and IT solutions enterprises need to reach their customers, employees and supply chains. Our channel partners understand how to leverage and integrate the advantages of the Platform Equinix global footprint, high performance connectivity options and global supply-chain ecosystems to deliver solutions that precisely meet our customers’ performance, reliability and cost requirements.

Marketing. To support our sales efforts and to actively promote our brand in the Americas, Asia-Pacific and EMEA, we conduct comprehensive marketing programs. Our marketing strategies include active public relations and ongoing customer communications programs. Our marketing efforts are focused on major business and trade publications, online media outlets, industry events and sponsored activities. Our staff holds leadership positions in key networking organizations, and we participate in a variety of internet, enterprise IT, computer and financial industry conferences, placing our officers and employees in keynote speaking engagements at these conferences. We also regularly measure customer satisfaction levels and host key customer forums to ensure customer needs are understood and incorporated in product and service planning efforts. From a brand perspective, we build recognition through our website, external blog and social media channels by sponsoring or leading industry technical forums, by participating in internet industry standard-setting bodies and through advertising, paid social media and online campaigns. We continue to develop and host industry educational forums focused on peering technologies and practices for ISPs and content providers.

Our Competition

While a large number of enterprises own their own data centers, many others outsource some or all of their requirements to multi-tenant data center (MTDC) facilities, such as those operated by Equinix. We believe that the outsourcing trend is likely to accelerate in the coming years. The global MTDC market is highly fragmented. It is estimated that Equinix is one of more than 1,300 companies that provide MTDC offerings around the world, ranging in size from firms with a single data center in a single market to firms in over 20 markets. Equinix competes with these firms which vary in terms of their data center offerings, including:

Colocation Providers

Colocation data centers are a type of MTDC that can also be referred to as "retail" data center space. Typically, colocation data center space is offered on the basis of individual racks/cabinets or cages ranging from 500 to 10,000 square feet in size. Typical customers of colocation providers include:

Full facility maintenance and systems, including fire suppression, security, power backup and HVAC, are routinely included in managed colocation offerings. A variety of additional services are typically available, including remote hands technician services and network monitoring services.

Providers in addition to Equinix that offer colocation both globally and locally include firms such as AT&T, COLT and NTT.

Carrier-Neutral Colocation Providers

In addition to data center space and power, colocation providers also offer interconnection. Some of these providers, known as network or carrier-neutral colocation providers, can offer customers the choice of hundreds of network service providers or ISPs to choose from. Typically, customers use interconnection to buy internet connectivity, connect to VoIP telephone networks, perform financial exchange and settlement functions or perform business-to-business e-commerce. Carrier-neutral data centers are often located in key network hubs around the world, such as New York, Ashburn, Va., London, Amsterdam, Singapore and Hong Kong. Two types of data center facilities offering carrier-neutral colocation are used for many network-to-network interconnections:

Providers in addition to Equinix that we believe could be defined as offering carrier-neutral colocation include CoreSite, Digital Realty Trust, Global Switch, Interxion and Telehouse.

Wholesale Data Center Providers

Wholesale data center providers lease data center space that is typically offered in cells or pods (i.e., individual white-space rooms) ranging in size from 10,000 to 20,000 square feet or larger. Wholesale data center offerings are targeted to both enterprises and colocation providers. These data centers primarily provide space and power without additional services like technicians, remote hands services or network monitoring (although other tenants might offer such services).

Sample wholesale data center providers include Digital Realty Trust, e-Shelter and Global Switch.

Managed Hosting Providers

Managed hosting services are provided by several firms that also provide data center colocation solutions. Typically, managed hosting providers can manage server hardware that is owned by either the hosting provider or the customer. They can also provide a combination of comprehensive systems administration, database administration and sometimes application management services. Frequently, this results in managed hosting providers "running" the customer’s servers, although such administration is frequently shared. The provider may manage such functions as operating systems, databases, security and patch management, while the customer will maintain management of the applications riding on top of those systems.

The full list of potential services that can be offered as part of managed hosting is substantial and includes services such as remote management, custom applications, helpdesk, messaging, databases, disaster recovery, managed storage, managed virtualization, managed security, managed networks and systems monitoring. Managed hosting services are typically used for:

Examples of managed hosting providers include: AT&T, CenturyLink, NaviSite, Rackspace, SunGard and Verizon Business.

Unlike other providers whose core businesses are bandwidth or managed services, we focus on neutral interconnection hubs for cloud and IT service providers, content providers, financial companies, enterprises and network service providers. As a result, we do not have the limited choices found commonly at other hosting/colocation companies. We compete based on the quality of our IBX data centers, our ability to provide a one-stop global solution in our Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific locations, the performance and diversity of our network- and cloud-neutral strategy, and the economic benefits of the aggregation of top network, cloud and business ecosystems under one roof. We expect to continue to benefit from several industry trends, including the need for contracting with multiple networks due to the uncertainty in the telecommunications market; customers’ increasing power requirements; enterprise customers’ increased use of virtualization and outsourcing; the continued growth of broadband and significant growth in Ethernet as a network alternative; and the growth in mobile applications.

Our Business Segment Financial Information

We currently operate in three reportable segments comprised of our Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific geographic regions. Information attributable to each of our reportable segments is set forth in Note 16 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Employees

We had 7,273 employees as of December 31, 2017 . We had 3,154 employees based in the Americas, 2,560 employees based in EMEA and 1,559 employees based in Asia-Pacific. Of those employees, 3,341 employees were in engineering and operations, 1,264 employees were in sales and marketing and 2,668 employees were in management, finance and administration.

Available Information

We were incorporated in Delaware in June 1998. We are required to file reports under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC".) You may read and copy our materials on file with the SEC at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549. You may obtain information regarding the SEC’s Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. The SEC also maintains an internet website at http://www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information.

You may also obtain copies of our annual reports on Form 10-K, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to such reports, free of charge by visiting the Investor Relations page on our website, www.equinix.com. These reports are available as soon as reasonably practical after we file them with the SEC. Information contained on our website is not part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.