Equinix announced on May 4 that it completed its $683.4 Million acquisition of Switch and Data.

What it didn't announce (yet) is that the channel program for Switch and Data has been shuttered. The employees were let go yesterday. 

Dany Bouchedid, CEO of COLOTRAQ (a collocation specialty shop), "I can't say that it's a surprise." 

The termination clause in the Switch and Data agent agreement allowed the new owners to walk away from its agents easily. 

Bouchedid asked me what happens after Telx's IPO? Telx has a very agent friendly program, according to Bouchedid. Equinix is just one of the players in the collocation space. (There are a number of them including Digital Realty, Dupont Fabros, Telx, Terremark, even Level3). 

Competition (for Equinix) is coming not just from other colo players, but from virtualization, cloud offerings, and managed service providers, like Host.net. That is where the true long-term competition will be from. And probably the one with the best channel program will win.