Once you have defined and designed your services offered over Equinix Fabric, it’s time to set up and test your offer.
Order and Turn Up Ports
To become a service provider on Equinix Fabric, you must have either Fabric ports or virtual devices to which customers can connect. This will enable connectivity to your services or physical cage.
If you already have existing Fabric ports, you can use them to offer connectivity to your services over Equinix Fabric simply by creating a public service profile.
If you need to order Equinix Fabric ports, see Equinix Fabric Port Ordering for instructions. Ports typically take anywhere from 24 hours to a few days to turn up. Turn up may be accelerated either by an expedited order or by foregoing the turn up call.
Note: The default provisioning process does not require a turn up call.
Create a Service Profile
Service profiles define how you will offer your services over Fabric. Service profiles can be public or private. To make your services discoverable and available to any Fabric customer you need to create a public service profile. For instructions, see Create a Layer 2 Service Profile.
Public service profiles allow customers to see that you have services available on Fabric in certain Equinix locations. Customers can search for Fabric services in a few different ways:
Because your service profile is how others will find your service when they wish to connect, provide an accurate description of your service and a service profile name, which includes your company name and the service that is being offered. Some examples are AWS Direct Connect or Verizon Software-Defined Interconnection.
Some other ways in which you can use service profiles to enhance the customer experience include:
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Upload a logo for your service profile by creating a support ticket. Select other as the issue type when creating the ticket.
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Utilize the custom process flows when creating or editing your service profile. This process flow defines a 2, 3, or 4-step process that your customers should follow when connecting to your service. The process flow is shown in the Fabric portal when customers opt to connect to your service.
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Be sure to include a link to your company’s website in your service profile description so customer may learn more about the services and pricing.
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Make sure to tag your service for appropriate keywords when creating your service profile.
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Update your company profile. Equinix Marketplace allows you to edit your company profile with information about the services your company offers. This company profile information is also shared when customers search for similar services within marketplace or the Equinix Fabric portal.
Public Service Profile Approval Process
Because public service profiles appear externally to Equinix customers in several places including our web site and our Fabric portal, it’s important that we ensure your profile is accurately completed. To ensure timely approval of your service profile:
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Create a service profile in the Equinix Fabric portal. For instructions, see Create a Layer 2 Service Profile.
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Download and complete the Service Provider Readiness Checklist and email it to ServiceProfileApproval@equinix.com. Include a reference to your newly created profile. The checklist will ensure you have considered all the options for making your services publicly available on Fabric.
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Provide contact information in case of any questions from Equinix about your service profile.
If you have questions regarding this process, contact ServiceProfileApproval@equinix.com.
Create and Update your Company Profile in Equinix Marketplace
Keeping your company’s storefront in Equinix Marketplace ensures that qualified buyers can find your services and make contact. The storefront within Marketplace allows you to add information such as a company bio, list services and subservices as well as locations, and include company contacts.
Follow the directions to complete your storefront in the My Company, Services, and Team Members sections once you are logged in to Equinix Marketplace.
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Go to My Company and click Storefront.
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In the Storefront section, click Edit Storefront near the top right of the page.
Add assets such as a company logo, bio, description of services, social media links, insights (case studies, white papers, links to external media), and promotions and events.
Note: You can add multiple promotions and events at once, and they will automatically be added to a rotating ad banner on the homepage of all users with a Marketplace account, allowing you to reach all existing customers of Equinix.
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Click Services and then click Edit Services at the top right of the page.
Identify the services and sub-services your company provides to ensure you show up in searches performed by partners and buyers on Marketplace and in the Equinix Fabric portal. It is important to select all appropriate sub-services so your company shows up in more search results, and these results are as detailed as possible.
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Click Team Members and then click Edit Team to make sure the correct contacts are listed for your company.
Include appropriate contacts at your company for inquiries and inbound leads. We suggest that you show a registered Marketplace user as the primary contact. Including your company’s general inquires alias is also acceptable. Make sure the name, title, email, and phone number are complete so that companies can contact you.
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Click Publish when you are done with your edits.
If you have questions or would like a more thorough walk-through of how to update and edit your storefront, contact marketplacedemo@equinix.com. For a tutorial on editing your storefront in Marketplace, watch the video below.
Editing Your Storefront Video
Ensure End-to-End Service Flow
Once you are ready to receive (or initiate) connections over Equinix Fabric, be sure to test the end-to-end service flow. Whether you have enabled customer-ordered access or provider-ordered access, we recommend you test several scenarios.
Create screen shots and document the workflows that can be posted both within Equinix documentation sites and within your own appropriate access methods. More information regarding documenting your service can be found in the GTM/Launch section below.
If you need assistance with testing, contact your sales team.
