Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is giving its enterprise customers that use its Private IP service the opportunity to connect to multiple cloud services with its new Secure Cloud Interconnect (SCI) service.
Initially supporting Verizon's own cloud service and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), the telco said it expects to sign on another half-dozen other major cloud services later this year. The service with Microsoft Azure is expected to be available this summer for customers in the U.S.
Among the new features that Secure Cloud Interconnect enable are dynamic bandwidth allocation with fully redundant connections, application performance throughput and QoS, usage-based billing and simple provisioning and management via a centralized portal.
The service provider will offer connections of up to 10 Gbps to clouds--including Verizon, Equinix and Microsoft--connecting to SCI.
As it ramps up its cloud partnership roster, Verizon is deploying Private IP edge routers into these clouds to enable pre-integration of networking and data center interfaces. To reduce activation time when an enterprise selects its cloud partner, Verizon said it will provision the connection in minutes or hours, versus days or weeks or a month.
This service also applies to enterprises that have located their private cloud infrastructure in Equinix data centers. These customers can directly access Verizon's Private IP service in 15 Equinix data centers in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific.
SCI with Verizon cloud will be immediately available in three locations (Denver, northern Virginia and Santa Clara, Calif.), with sites in Europe (London, Amsterdam) available in May. Verizon said that additional sites are planned for Europe and the Asia-Pacific region by the end of this year.
Providing greater flexibility to let customers choose what cloud to connect to has become an ongoing trend in the cloud segment.
AT&T, for example, established a pact with CSC to deliver a joint cloud service solution for global enterprise customers, while Masergy developed a direct connection relationship by offering access to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect.
For more:
- see the release
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