Zayo to Connect Digital Realty Clients to AWS, Azure, IBM SoftLayer Privately

Network connectivity provider Zayo Group will offer private connections to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and IBM SoftLayer clouds out of Digital Realty Trust data centers worldwide, the companies announced Tuesday.

Such services are usually an enterprise cloud play, enabling companies to use public cloud without going through the public Internet, which is the common way to access them. This option is reportedly attractive for enterprises that do not trust the Internet’s security and need faster cloud connectivity than it offers.

Digital Realty is known primarily for being a massive wholesale data center provider, but it also operates some retail colocation facilities around the world, a business it has been attempting to grow this year. The company has been diversifying its service portfolio, focusing on partnerships like the one with Zayo to offer customers packaged deals that include data center space and power as well as services higher up the stack.

For Equinix, Digital Realty’s customer that also competes with the landlord in the retail colo market, offering private network links to major cloud providers has been a gold mine. On its latest earnings call, Equinix officials said its connectivity services revenue was growing faster than any other business segment and that private connectivity to cloud was the fastest-growing portion of that business.

The deal with Zayo is aimed at helping enterprises set up hybrid infrastructure that combines dedicated servers in Digital Realty facilities with public cloud resources. It is not limited to the data center provider’s colocation facilities.

Digital Realty has more than 130 data center locations across 11 countries, and Zayo’s network is connected to most of them. Overall, its network spans more than 81,000 route miles and connects more than 500 data centers.

“Zayo’s footprint complements our global portfolio of data centers, enabling us to provide mutual customers with a diverse set of services, including connectivity to a wide range of cloud providers,” Mike Bohlig, director of global alliances at Digital Realty, said in a statement.

Bohlig came to Digital Realty from Amazon Web Services earlier this year specifically to grow the company’s ecosystem of service provider partners. Other notable partnerships Digital Realty has struck recently include a deal with VMware to offer direct connectivity to its public cloud, and a deal with Carpathia Hosting to deliver joint solutions to customers.