Most businesses connect to cloud over the public internet by default - not by design. For partners selling datacentre infrastructure, that gap is one of the most overlooked revenue opportunities in the market right now.
There is a question worth asking every customer: How is your data getting to the cloud?
In most cases, the answer is the public internet. It was there, it was easy, and it came as the default with AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. No one designed it that way. It just happened.
That default has real consequences for cost, performance and security. Understanding those trade-offs is the start of a commercial conversation most partners never have.
The hidden cost sitting in your customer's cloud bill
Cloud providers charge egress fees when data leaves their platforms. Many customers know this in theory. Very few have added it up.
Lewis Preston, Partner Account Manager at Equinix, sees this play out regularly in customer conversations.
“Data transfer over the public internet, where bandwidth is variable and pricing is usage-based (egress), becomes both unpredictable and a primary cost driver. It's common with enterprise workloads across hybrid-cloud architectures as they regularly exceed ~100 TB per month, where 150 TB can easily translate to $15K–$20K+ in egress charges.”
If a customer is running backups to cloud, syncing environments or pushing AI and analytics workloads, this is no longer a rounding error. It is a line item you can help them claw back.
Performance is the other half of the story
Egress is easy to price. Performance pain shows up in user complaints and slow projects.
The public internet is a shared network. Your customer’s traffic contends with everyone else’s, with no guaranteed throughput and no SLA on latency. Congestion at peak times leads to packet loss and inconsistent app behaviour.
According to Lewis, this is where private interconnection fundamentally changes the experience.
“By contrast, when workloads are privately interconnected, data moves directly between providers, locations, and partners over dedicated links, shifting data transfer to a predictable model, giving customers far greater control over both cost and data transfer; customers of Equinix Fabric experience 30–70% lower costs compared to internet services."
He also points out the efficiency gains for data‑heavy workloads.
“Equinix Fabric is a private, layer-2 network that provides on‑demand, software-defined interconnection, enabling low-latency, private connectivity between distributed infrastructure (clouds, partners, networks) without traversing the public internet.
Importantly, it removes the per-GB penalty, so instead of costs increasing with every workload or data movement, customers are operating within a predictable, engineered capacity." Lewis says.
“Additionally, Fabric enables customers the ability to deliberately design and enforce where traffic stays so they can keep sensitive data within the required jurisdiction to meet sovereignty and regulatory requirements with greater certainty and visibility.”
For latency‑sensitive applications, inter‑cloud traffic or large‑scale data movement, the performance benefits can be just as commercially compelling as the cost savings.
How to start the conversation
Lead with a single question: Do you know what you pay in egress fees each month?
From there, build the case with three moves:
• Run a cost comparison using their real data volumes with the Equinix Fabric Pricing Estimate Tool.
• Tie performance to specific workloads that would benefit from dedicated bandwidth.
• Show the complexity reduction: fewer VPN endpoints, simpler security, and self-service scaling in minutes.
Fabric connections on pay-as-you-go plans have no mandatory long-term contract. Start with one high-volume workload, prove the ROI, then expand.
The opportunity here is not complicated. Your customers are paying more than they need to, for connectivity that performs less reliably than it should. The conversation is straightforward - and it starts with a question most of them have never been asked.
How Dicker Data helps
As Equinix’s Australian distributor, Dicker Data makes it easy for partners to design, position and deliver private cloud connectivity with confidence. With access to Equinix Fabric, local pre‑sales expertise and partner enablement, resellers can address cloud cost, performance and security challenges without added complexity — while creating repeatable, margin‑friendly opportunities. Get in touch with our local team here.
Equinix Fabric is a registered trademark of Equinix, Inc. Amazon Web Services, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Egress cost data based on standard provider pricing, North America, July 2025.T
