Internet Solutions has confirmed new CloudConnect partnerships with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud, making it the only ISP in South Africa to offer secure dedicated links to three of the world’s largest on-demand public cloud computing platforms.
The new partnerships are offered as a fully managed connectivity service from IS.
“CloudConnect is part of our hyper-connected, hyper-exchange connectivity offering where we provide world-class systems and infrastructure to global carriers and enterprises alike. The service provides high- speed, ultra-low latency MPLS VPN connectivity via direct and secure links to AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Dimension Data Cloud and more,” says Gopal Govinder, executive head: VPN at IS.
Core to IS’s cloud strategy has always been to remain cloud service provider agnostic, in order to augment the service offering from a pure connectivity play to a more business specific requirement, allowing all types of enterprises to interconnect with the cloud provider(s) of their choice, no matter their industry – with a choice of defined service speeds for up to 25% less than the cost of international bandwidth connectivity.
CloudConnect can provide instant provisioning, flexible storage, data security and choice of pay-as-you-use or pay-as-you-grow models for greater operational efficiency, improved uptime, and even increased agility when testing and deploying new services.
“We want to ensure that our clients have the connectivity their specific ecosystem requires, and that we can offer them the choice of hyper-exchange from any-to-as-many cloud platform(s) that works best for their needs and business applications, while increasing the speed of their transactions by approximately 25%,” says Govinder.
Many of the cloud exchange partners are based in global points of presence and therefore don’t have a direct in-country presence, and while this adds a certain level of complexity to the CloudConnect offering, Govinder is confident that IS’s ability to securely connect clients via our global centres in London and Frankfurt provides unparalleled high-performance, cost-effective cloud services.
“Our cloud services empower clients to harness transformative technology with less investment in the underlying infrastructure – and the expertise required to maintain it. Cloud based networking gives you access to the advanced network infrastructure needed to run sophisticated applications with the ability to scale capacity to meet demand. On average, our clients more than halved the time to bring new services online by using the service, ” he says.
“Cloud computing is a powerful enabler of growth and innovation especially in the South African context. For example, our clients have reduced time spent on network operations by an average of 25% and saved about 20 weeks in delivering new innovations to market. As new, comparable platforms become available, they will be added to the hyper-connected suite of CloudConnect services,” concludes Govinder.
CloudConnect currently offers direct access to cloud platforms from the world’s top vendors:
* Microsoft Cloud, which includes the Microsoft Azure suite, through ExpressRoute;
* Amazon Web Services (AWS), through AWS Direct Connect;
* Google Suite through Google Cloud Interconnect;
* Internet Solutions ITaaS with MPLS VPN; and
* Dimension Data through Cloud Private Network Connection.