Google Provides Another On Ramp To The Cloud With Partner Interconnect

Google is offering a new, economical way for customers to get to the cloud quickly. The latest on ramp, Partner Interconnect, relies on dedicated connectivity from the internet giant's service provider partners to the Google Cloud Platform.

Partner Interconnect is a great option for customers that don't need the full 10-Gbps bandwidth of a dedicated circuit but still require private, high-bandwidth connectivity to the Google Cloud, John Veizades, product manager for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, wrote on the Google Cloud Platform blog Tuesday.

To Agosto, a Minneapolis-based Google partner, Partner Interconnect demonstrates that Google is continuing to remove technical barriers in an effort to make cloud adoption easier for customers.

[Related: Google Continues Cloud Momentum In Q1 As Internet Giant Lands More Enterprise Customers]

A business' journey to cloud requires many different kinds of pathways, said Aric Bandy, president of Agosto.

"Google supporting yet another interconnect gives our customers additional options for connectivity to get their data into Google Cloud," Bandy said. "Flexible data rates and hundreds of additional worldwide POPs [Points of Presence] gives smaller and new customers realistic options for private connectivity."

Partner Interconnect lets businesses connect to Google Cloud from a convenient location, at a data rate that meets their needs, according to Google's Veizades. Customers can buy a partial circuit for their connectivity, ranging from 50 Mbps to 10 Gbps. For businesses that aren't geographically located near a Google Cloud region or Point of Presence, these customers can connect via Google's carrier partners’ connections.

Google so far has 23 global service provider partners signed up and certified for Partner Interconnect that customers can choose from, among them AT&T, CenturyLink, Equinix, NTT, Orange, Verizon and Zayo.

Partner Interconnect joins Google's two other cloud interconnection services. One option, Dedicated Interconnect, is an enterprise-grade connection between a business' on-premises network to the Google Cloud Platform that uses full 10-Gbps circuits. The second option is Cloud VPN, a service that connects premises-based networks to Google Cloud Platform Virtual Private Cloud network via an IPsec VPN connection, according to Google.

Partner Interconnect will be generally available in the coming weeks, according to Google.