Data center infrastructure company Equinix Inc. said today it’s launching a new, fully automated and interconnected bare-metal computing service for its customers, based on the technology it obtained from Packet Hosting Inc. earlier this year.

Equinix is a provider of digital infrastructure and colocation services. It owns a number of huge data centers that are scattered across the world, renting out capacity from these facilities to companies that want more control over the infrastructure they use. It gives its customers a way to do this without making expensive investments in server and storage hardware.

Equinix in March completed its acquisition of Packet, a similar company that specialized in renting out so-called bare metal servers, which don’t have operating systems and other software installed on them. It bought Packet because its bare-metal servers offer more customized hardware configurations than what’s available from the regular server and storage infrastructure it provides.

For example, customers can choose to rent servers powered by specific processors from Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., or Nvidia Corp. In contrast, the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure offer more standard configurations, but that might not work for every customer.

Equinix said the new Equinix Metal service will give customers a fully automated, “as-a-service” deployment method for their digital infrastructure. The service also integrates with Equinix Fabric, an interconnection service available in 45 markets that gives businesses an easy way to exchange their data on demand, and between metropolitan areas through fast, private connections. It means that Equinix customers not only have more customizable server options, but can also scale their infrastructure up and down more easily, the company said.

The Equinix Metal platform is ideal for use cases ranging from hybrid cloud to DevOps automation and global edge delivery, Equinix said.

“Today’s digital leaders are increasingly gaining a competitive advantage by leveraging infrastructure choices that meet their exact needs and can be deployed globally and interconnected,” said Mark Bowker, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “By augmenting its portfolio of foundational services with high-performance, fully automated compute, the addition of Equinix Metal can help digital businesses extract greater value from Platform Equinix’s rich ecosystems and global interconnection fabric and rapidly deploy the physical infrastructure of their choice.”

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE the Equinix Metal offering means that the days of providing physical frameworks for cloud operators are now over.

“Enterprises will welcome these cross-cloud provider and bare metal options,” he said. “So we expect a positive future for Equinix Metal, so long as Equinix can spread awareness of its new positioning to enterprises and successfully cater to the new buying center of this offering.”

The company said the Equinix Metal service is available now via Equinix International Business Exchange data centers in Amsterdam, New York, Silicon Valley and Washington D.C. It plans to make the service available in a total of 14 global metropolitan areas by early next year.

Photo: Equinix/Facebook