CenturyLink has expanded the number of network interconnection partners across 58 of its data centers throughout North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, giving customers access to 99 additional carrier and network provider sources.
On average, CenturyLink offers seven network carrier connections at each of its data centers, with some facilities containing over 20 unique provider options.
By offering a larger array of interconnection options, CenturyLink says its growing Interconnection Ecosystem facilitates secure data center connectivity by offering hosting and colocation customers direct, low-latency connectivity to a broad array of ecosystems beyond the walls of the data centers.
The telco’s connectivity options provide access to ISVs, content-delivery networks, financial matching engines, carrier hotels and on-net access to more than 260 data center facilities.
But serving its own data centers is only one part of the equation. CenturyLink’s network provides low latency connectivity from any of its data center over 260 neutral data center facilities, giving customers the ability to connect such as geographic redundancy solutions, ecosystem partners, and cloud nodes such as CLC, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google.
Offering a larger array of connectivity options for its customers also reflects CenturyLink's awareness of the migration trend among enterprise customers to a hybrid IT environment where businesses outsource some functions like data center and applications to a third party while retaining other functions in-house.
CenturyLink’s data center business is currently in flux. Glen Post, CEO of CenturyLink, told investors during the telco's second quarter earnings call that it is currently in the process of selling off its data center business and expects to complete a deal either at the end of the third or early in the fourth quarter.
A sale of its data center assets -- a concept it started to explore last year as a way to reduce operational costs -- would give CenturyLink more money to invest in areas like broadband and virtualization.
For more:
- see the release
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