Google’s Roster of Cloud Interconnect Providers Grows
Google Cloud Platform has added another service provider, Global Capacity, to its list of carrier interconnect providers as the roll out of enterprise hybrid cloud architectures gathers momentum.
Chicago-based Global Capacity claimed Tuesday (March 17) it is the first "connectivity-as-a-service" provider to link enterprises to Google Cloud Platform. The carrier said its platform could deliver bandwidth options from over 9.6 million commercial addresses to the Google cloud.
Global Capacity specializes in delivering private Ethernet connectivity and IP services based on a real-time networking pricing structure. The carrier said it would work with Google to streamline connections between the cloud service and the carrier's more than 20,000 enterprise customers.
The carrier's Ethernet connections can be used to connect with any Google cloud service, including Google Compute Engine, Google Cloud Storage or Google BigQuery, the search giant's managed data analysis service.
Global Capacity said its platform provides guaranteed bandwidth via Ethernet connections at speeds ranging from 1 MB to 10 GB. It pitches the interconnection service as allowing developers and enterprises to develop, test and deploy business applications on Google's hyper-scale cloud infrastructure.
Global Capacity joins a growing list of a Google carrier interconnect service providers that includes Equinix Inc., Level 3 Communications, Tata Communications and Verizon.
Google has been steadily adding carriers to its list of interconnect service providers as a way to link datacenters and enterprises to its public cloud service. Last November, for example, is signed up global datacenter operator Equinix to provide direct access to Google Cloud Platform via its Cloud Exchange.
A recent survey commissioned by Equinix found that more than 90 percent of global businesses are preparing to deploy public cloud services during 2015. Still, CIOs cited the cost of shifting variable workloads to public clouds as a major barrier to cloud adoption. Hence, interconnect service providers like Equinix and Global Capacity are touting their provisioning services as a way to reduce connection costs while managing multiple connections through a single platform.
Moreover, carriers argue that greater access to low-latency, flexible bandwidth interconnect services would spur the growth of hybrid cloud architectures capable of handling a range of enterprise applications.
According to the Equinix-sponsored survey released in November 2014, 77 percent of IT executives, administrators and service providers said they planned to deploy "multiple clouds" over the next year. The survey found that 45 percent of new cloud-based applications would be deployed at a third-party colocation provider. The vast majority of those surveyed, 87 percent, said they would require interconnection services to meet their cloud performance objectives.
Equinix asserted that the survey results show that "multi-cloud strategies" are ascendant and that enterprises are increasingly shifting to collocation services and wide-area network optimization as they roll out their hybrid cloud architectures.
