Equinix and VMware have announced an expanded global relationship to deliver new digital infrastructure and multi-cloud services. The companies have jointly launched VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal, a new distributed cloud service that will deliver a more performant, secure, and cost-effective cloud option to support enterprise applications. The service will combine VMware-managed and supported cloud infrastructure as a Service with Equinix’s interconnected, global Bare Metal as a Service offering.

The service will extend customers’ cloud environments into distributed metro locations to satisfy business-critical performance demands at the edge while enabling them to preserve the integrity of enterprise workloads.

VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal will be ideal for distributed cloud use cases including smart cities, video analytics, game development, real-time financial market trading, retail POS, and a variety of use cases using IoT and ML/Inference. The service will include VMware Cloud for consistent multicloud infrastructure and operations and Equinix Metal, an automated bare metal and interconnection offering delivered as a service across Equinix’s global International Business Exchange (IBX) footprint.

VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal will provide private, low-latency access to both private and public cloud environments—as well as thousands of IT and network providers—via Equinix Fabric interconnection. This built-in private connectivity will deliver multicloud flexibility and choice with instantaneous connectivity to all public cloud services.

Customers will be able to purchase the VMware Cloud software as a service from VMware and the Bare Metal as a Service capacity from Equinix.