Equinix today announced that Equinix Metal has advanced its global scale, features and ability to enable as a Service consumption of the full value of Platform Equinix.

With these new and enhanced capabilities, Equinix Metal customers can consume interconnected infrastructure with the control of physical hardware and the low overhead and developer experience of the cloud, helping them move faster in today’s competitive environment.

Today’s announcements include the expanded availability of Equinix Metal in 18 global metros, the addition of new networking features to support hybrid multicloud architectures, the certification of new software integrations on Equinix Metal, and the launch of a managed appliance as a Service solution.

Introducing a range of as a Service partner infrastructure solutions on the Equinix platform, the new managed appliance capability of Equinix Metal enables OEM, storage, hybrid cloud, hyperconverged and other specialty hardware vendors to deliver fully operated, as a Service solutions that are seamlessly interconnected to the Platform Equinix ecosystem.

The Equinix Metal platform now supports the full portfolio of Equinix Fabric integration options including port speeds up to 100G. With native integration to Equinix Fabric, Equinix Metal customers can securely connect to the more than 10,000 networks, enterprises, clouds and SaaS platforms available on Platform Equinix via low-latency, private interconnection.

A new “hybrid bonded” network mode has also been added for high availability in hybrid cloud environments. Additionally, customers can leverage Equinix Network Edge to add branded virtual network services to their environments.

New native integrations from leading software vendors are now available on Equinix Metal to support hybrid multicloud infrastructures, including Mirantis Container Cloud, which delivers as a Service containers and infrastructure using Kubernetes or OpenStack, and the Cohesity Helios multicloud data platform.