A massive new partnership designed to speed adoption of cloud services has been forged between AT&T and Equinix. The AT&T NetBond solution, which enables customers to connect to cloud services through their private AT&T VPN networks, will be embedded in various Equinix data centers through the deal.
The new alliance is a win for cloud service providers, who can enable access to their offerings through AT&T NetBond in Equinix’s global data centers. The NetBond service ensures secure connections with high reliability and performance capabilities instead of cloud providers relying on the public Internet to deliver solutions.
Data center provider Equinix, which has a presence in 31 markets, has been busy over the past few months forging partnerships to facilitate delivery of cloud and managed services. In November, the company partnered with IaaS provider Unitas Global to deliver private cloud and managed services to customers in Equinix data centers. And in October, Equinix expanded its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) by offering additional connectivity options for AWS within Equinix data centers.
The AT&T alliance is geared toward enterprise adoption of cloud services, and addresses questions and concerns many organizations have about migrating applications to the cloud. AT&T NetBond is expected to be available in Equinix data centers within the first quarter of the year. (AT&T is also one of the contributors at this year’s ITEXPO, taking place this week in Miami, Florida).
"Business customers want rock solid network-based security protecting their traffic and applications when they use cloud services," said Jon Summers, senior vice president growth platforms, AT&T Business Solutions. "Virtual private networking gives them better protection against Internet threats while also delivering the reliability, agility and performance they need when accessing the cloud."
"Equinix sits at the intersection of cloud service providers, network service providers and enterprise customers that want to use those services,” added Pete Hayes, chief sales officer for Equinix. “The alliance lets AT&T quickly expand its portfolio of AT&T NetBond-enabled cloud services by using our position as a cloud hub. Together, we're making the network as flexible as the cloud and giving enterprises confidence they can move their most demanding applications to the cloud and still meet their security, scalability and performance requirements."
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
