Comcast Business announced yesterday that its customers can receive an up-to 10Gbps private network connection to IBM’s Cloud for public, private, or hybrid cloud deployments. Businesses around the world need to rely on the open Internet to connect to their cloud service providers, which can be highly unreliable.
“By working with IBM Cloud, Comcast Business gives enterprises more choices for connectivity so they can store data, optimize their workloads, and execute mission-critical applications in the cloud, whether it be on-premise, off-premise or a combination of the two,” said Jeff Lewis, vice president of data services at Comcast Business. “Through dedicated, reliable, secure access with multi-Gigabit performance and low latency, organizations can connect to a cloud system that best fits their needs with the ability to easily scale up in the future as requirements change.
“Comcast Business’ network connects to nearly 500 data centers as well as cloud exchanges for dynamic access to multiple cloud providers.
“Comcast Business clients will have access to IBM Cloud’s expanding global footprint, which currently includes over 50 data centers in 19 countries across six continents. All IBM Cloud data centers connect to advanced networking infrastructure, hardware and software with robust bandwidth and connectivity for high performance and reliability.”
Big cloud service providers are doing their best to circumvent the first mile connectivity problem by offering their own private connects, and in places where that is not possible they partner with local Internet carriers.
For example, Microsoft Azure offers ExpressRoute, a private connection between Azure datacenters and on-premise infrastructure. Since ExpressRoute connections don’t go over the public Internet, they offer higher reliability, increased speed and low latency compared to typical Internet connections.
But how can this be possible unless Microsoft starts laying cables around the world, criss-crossing streets from Budapest to Beverly Hills? Cloud service providers obviously don’t want to enter into the telecom business, and these high-speed private connections to their datacenters is made possible by working with telecom carriers around the world. Here is a quick list of companies that Microsoft has partnered with to make its Azure ExpressRoute a possibility.
The deal between IBM Cloud and Comcast Business is a similar arrangement, allowing IBM to offer high-speed, reliable connectivity between IBM’s cloud infrastructure and any on-premise infrastructure the client may have at their location, using Comcast’s extensive networks.
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