IBM has also added the option to take a colocation cabinet within some of its own data centers for the objective of connecting directly to cloud servers. It has partnered with several major data center and network service providers to sell this kind of cloud connectivity services in their data centers around the world.
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U.S.’s privately held multi-format food, fuel and pharmacy retailer Giant Eagle is in the initial stages of rolling out a hybrid cloud solution from IBM Cloud to overhaul its IT infrastructure.
Jack Beech, Vice President Business Development for SoftLayer, an IBM Company, said “IBM Cloud has maintained a long-standing commitment to providing advanced network capabilities to the enterprise as part of our core service offering”. Coca-Cola, an existing IBM customer, is one of the first companies to connect privately to SoftLayer with Direct Link at NEXTDC’s M1 Melbourne data centre, meeting a disaster recovery requirement.
“By extending our Direct Link services to now include access to NEXTDC, we further our goal to improve the flexibility, performance, security and reliability of enterprise connections to our IaaS platform”. “Those include healthcare industry businesses whose applications and data storage environments must comply with HIPAA and other stringent government regulations”. Specifically, firms can choose a mix of on-premise, public cloud services and private clouds. By adding more companies to the Direct Link network, IBM is simplifying the way customers can adopt and leverage a hybrid cloud model. The idea is to offer flexibility and choice, according to IBM.
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The new IBM Cloud addition means Verizon’s Secure Cloud Interconnect now offers access to eight cloud providers. “At the same time, these new offerings allow customers to precisely determine how they can best use hybrid cloud and then work with IBM to implement the specific resources required to achieve success”.
