Cloud Connectivity Made Simple – Megaport Connected
Originally published in ficolo.com in 2019.
Reliable connectivity is the backbone on which cloud strategies are built. As most businesses start to employ multi-cloud approaches to their IT, the need for reliable connectivity between different cloud solutions and services is only increasing. However, there is a disconnect – cloud capacity can be set up easily and quickly, but the connectivity element typically takes far too long and requires a fixed, lengthy commitment.
Ficolo provides customers with services that enable the production of world-class cloud services. Connectivity plays a vital part in this. To enhance our Cloud Delivery service portfolio, Ficolo has partnered with Megaport, a leading Network-as-a-Service (Naas) provider.
With this new partnership, Ficolo’s customers can directly connect to more than 300 service providers on the Megaport Network. With access to a global ecosystem of cloud providers including Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Salesforce, and Oracle Cloud, organisations can easily get to the cloud services that power their business. Additionally, Megaport’s Network as a Service solution allows for flexible configuration of connections that can be scaled according to your needs – for instance, more bandwidth when running backups.
Connectivity to clouds and data centers
Cloud infrastructure connectivity doesn’t usually get the consideration it needs compared to the IT side of the cloud but it is an incredibly important part of your network infrastructure, and should form the foundation of your strategy. The choice you make about your connectivity to the cloud, or between data center environments, will determine the outcome of your workload performance, your data flow, and your ability to future-proof your network. Traditional means of connectivity (such as moving traffic across the public internet) is typically unsecure, slow, and resource-heavy. It could take months to provision a connection, and there is very little flexibility when it comes to making changes.
Leveraging Megaport NaaS connectivity, Ficolo customers have the opportunity to design a streamlined multi-cloud network architecture from one platform. Building multiple connections to multiple providers and between multiple regions is easy and almost instant. Managing and altering connections and bandwidth speeds is just as simple.
Via Megaport and Ficolo, customers can not only flexibility connect to cloud providers but also hundreds of data centers around the world. For instance, connecting to a data center in Germany, and then between various metros from there, can be set up easily and then bandwidth can be dialled up and down on demand.
Each provider can be accessed with a private, dedicated connection which negates the security concerns you might have with traditional connectivity and ensure the best possible performance for your traffic. The Megaport NaaS solution provides an agile alternative to traditional networking – and along with Ficolo’s services – creates a well-rounded and scalable approach to cloud strategy.
Multiple benefits
Connecting to cloud services through the public internet doesn’t provide a guaranteed performance, reliability or security and does not support integrating clouds with on-premises systems and solutions Direct connectivity simplifies management, reduces costs and improves performance
Levering the Megaport connectivity has multiple benefits:
Scalable Connectivity: Increase and decrease your bandwidth at any time to suit your business demands.
Flexible Terms: Minimise your financial commitment and avoid lock-in contracts with pay-as-you-need billing. The connection can be set up easily in the Megaport portal and stays valid as long as required, The minimum timeframe for a port is a month.
Real-Time Provisioning: Provision connections in 59 seconds once you are connected to the Megaport network.
Secure and Private Connectivity: Keep your traffic secure on our private redundant network. Your traffic will not transit the public internet
The new partnership will provide Ficolo customers the broadest choice of Megaport enabled locations across Europe, covering all key interconnection hubs. The network meets stringent security, data sovereignty, and redundancy requirements. This solution is a perfect fit for those who are designing a multi-cloud approach for their business.