AT&T offers secure links to IBM SoftLayer cloud
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IBM and AT&T formed a partnership to let customers connect their private IT systems to IBM's SoftLayer cloud using AT&T's NetBond secure virtual private network service.
IBM and AT&T are teaming up to stay competitive in the cloud market, announcing a deal that would let customers link their IT services to IBM SoftLayer cloud using AT&T NetBond secure virtual private network (VPN).
The dual service offering would give customers a method for securely connecting their data and IT systems to a set of SoftLayer managed hosting and hybrid cloud services.
Linking together the IBM and AT&T network technologies would help organizations customize their own hybrid cloud computing applications. It also automatically allocates VPN bandwidth, allowing customers to use as much or as little as they need.
“AT&T NetBond gives customers a broader range of options as they explore how to best leverage a hybrid cloud,” said Jim Comfort, general manager of IBM Cloud Services. Customers could move workloads to the SoftLayer cloud “as if were part of their local-area network,” he added.
AT&T offered three other selling points for the service:
- NetBond works with existing AT&T VPN services through APIs, creating an automated network service that frees customers from the need to directly manage access lines and other equipment.
- NetBond “automatically flexes” with the needs of the cloud service, enabling customers savings of 60 percent on networking costs.
- The VPN technology also isolates traffic going directly to cloud platforms using the AT&T private global network, thus providing more protections from distributed denial of service attacks.
Jon Summers, senior vice president growth platforms at AT&T said the two companies were “making the network as flexible as the cloud and giving enterprises confidence they can migrate their business systems to the cloud and still meet their security, scalability and performance requirements.”
The companies expect these capabilities to be available in first quarter of 2015.
IBM acquired SoftLayer in late 2014 then made a $1 billion commitment broaden its cloud portfolio by adding 27 new data centers to SoftLayer’s existing 13.