More and more companies are entrusting their business operations to applications delivered on public clouds, often integrated with on-premises or private cloud solutions. In these scenarios, having fast and reliable connections that also ensure adequate data protection in transit is crucial. Direct Cloud services provide the most effective connectivity solution to meet these needs
What is Direct Cloud?
Connecting to Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) can easily be done via the Internet, provided you are willing to accept the advantages and disadvantages of using a “public” network. Direct Cloud services, on the other hand, enable the establishment of a private and secure connection between your corporate network and CSPs, offering several benefits compared to public Internet connections, including:
- Increased security: Traffic is encrypted and routed through a dedicated network, reducing the risk of interception or intrusion.
- Lower latency: The direct connection between networks offers faster response times, improving the performance of cloud applications.
- High reliability: CSPs guarantee high uptime and SLAs for connections made in Direct Cloud mode.
- Greater control: Ability to monitor and manage the traffic flow to and from the CSP
Each CSP offers its own interconnection service: for Microsoft Azure, it is called ExpressRoute, for Oracle, Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect, then there’s Google Cloud Interconnect, and of course, AWS Direct Connect. Despite the different names, the approaches can be summarized into two types:
- Dedicated : A private connection is established between the CSP and the customer on a dedicated physical interconnection
- Shared: A private virtual connection is established between the CSP and the customer on a physical resource shared among multiple customers
All interconnection services also offer the possibility of redundant configurations, which are in some cases mandatory, as a testament to the high attention to service SLAs.
In general, the steps for configuring the service are as follows:
- Interconnection creation: Establishing a physical or virtual link between the customer’s premises and the cloud provider, typically done by a connectivity provider linked to the CSP (in Dedicated or Shared mode).
- Provisioning: Creating an account and activating the interconnection service via the CSP’s portal, usually carried out by the Direct Cloud service provider.
- Routing configuration: Setting up routing tables to correctly direct traffic between the local network and the cloud, usually managed by the end customer.
Retelit’s Solution
Retelit can offer both types of interconnection to CSPs, depending on the customers’ requirements for speed, resilience, and “destination,” as some need to connect to CSP regions in Ireland or Germany.
- Dedicated: Hosting fiber interconnections with CSPs’ Italian regions in Retelit’s Avalon Campus datacenters.
- Shared: An alternative for connecting to CSPs’ Italian regions and reaching European regions through diversified partners..
Retelit, therefore, represents a fast lane to public clouds.
Retelit’s Direct Cloud enable private, fast, and reliable connections to Italian and European regions of the most prominent Cloud Service Providers, empowering your company to adopt multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud solutions.
Insight provided by Luca Cavobianchi – Product Marketing, Retelit