Interxion Teases Centralized Private Multi-Cloud Connection Service

European data center provider Interxion announced Cloud Connect, an upcoming service that allows companies to connect to one or more cloud service providers through private, secure links, bypassing the public Internet. It will include service level guarantees on latency, throughput and security. BTI Systems provided the technological foundation for the service.

Private connections to multiple clouds from Interxion data centers will make it easier for customers to integrate public cloud services into enterprise environments.

The services will be provisioned through BTI-made customer service portal. It enables online ordering and management of customers' virtual LAN connections to cloud providers.

Interxion has maintained a “cloud-neutral” strategy, saying it has no intentions of getting into the cloud services business itself. It focuses on connecting customers to whatever clouds they want.

The company announced private links to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure before.

“Every organization beginning a migration to the cloud faces the challenge of making the hybrid model work with their existing IT installations,” said Mario Galvez, Interxion’s vice president of product management. “The choice of data center is important because the applications running in different environments need to interact in a secure and high-performance manner. Cloud Connect makes this decision-making process easier by offering multiple private connect services from a single connection.”

Initial Cloud Connect deployments will launch in London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam in the third quarter of 2014. More locations will follow in 2015.

Providing private links to public cloud services has become an important part of colocation providers' businesses, and many of them have been racing to get public cloud points of presence installed in their facilities.

Digital Realty Trust recently launched cloud connectivity services in the UK in partnership with communications services provider Epsilon. Equinix continues to expand its private connections to public clouds, recently rolling out Azure ExpressRoute globally, including Europe.

Level 3 launched a Cloud Connect service in October, offering the underlying network connectivity and services for global enterprises to more effectively integrate the cloud into their evolving IT architecture.