While every industry has faced unique challenges throughout the pandemic, there is one thing every company has in common: Business continuity is more important than ever.
Supporting the critical need to keep data centers and business operating as normal, IBM Cloud provides multizone regions (MZR)—three or more Availability Zones that are independent from each other—to ensure that failure events affect only a single zone. Taking a MZR approach enables consistent cloud services across different zones, better resiliency, increased availability, and higher interconnect speed between data centers for client resources.
To continue helping clients achieve their business continuity goals, today IBM announced the release of IBM Cloud™ Direct Link 2.0 in all six MZRs (Dallas, Washington DC, London, Frankfurt, Sydney, Tokyo). With Direct Link’s private network, clients can seamlessly interconnect on-prem environments to IBM Cloud worldwide resources without touching the public internet—allowing continuous operation at all times. The ability to virtually acquire bandwidth on demand also eliminates the need for clients to physically deploy technicians to the data center, which is especially important throughout the pandemic and even during periods of natural disasters or inclement weather.
In addition to keeping businesses running as normal, Direct Link 2.0 provides enhanced connectivity, agility, and simplicity, which allows clients to spend less time designing and deploying network architectures. As a result, teams will gain more time to focus on development of solutions. With advanced connectivity, clients will also maintain better visibility into networks across their enterprise, simplifying operations and, in turn, lowering operating costs.
Key features of IBM Cloud Direct Link 2.0
- Support for multiple virtual private clouds (VPCs), with or without classic access from a single Direct Link within the same account
- Improved BYOIP (Bring Your Own IP) address options with VPC to create native connectivity between an on-premises environment and IBM Cloud
- Support for connections to multiple IBM Cloud accounts via VPC from a single Direct Link
- Metered billing, which provides flexibility and lowers the barrier of entry to IBM Cloud
- Enhanced user experience (UX) across Direct Link connections, with improved inventory and visibility to router diversity
As enterprises look to remain resilient and keep business operating as normal, Direct Link 2.0 currently offers Direct Link Dedicated and Direct Link Connect, based on unique business needs.
- Direct Link Dedicated is a single-tenant, fiber-based, cross-connect that will enable a private network connection to IBM Cloud. This offering is also used by colocation facilities adjacent to IBM Cloud points of presence (PoPs) and data centers. Clients can select speeds of 1, 2, 5, or 10 Gbps.
- Direct Link Connect allows clients to leverage a service provider to quickly establish and deliver connectivity to IBM Cloud locations. These providers are already connected to the IBM Cloud network, using multi-tenant, high capacity links (also known as network-to-network interfaces, or NNI). Clients can select between speeds of 50, 100, 200, and 500 Mbps, or 1, 2, and 5 Gbps.
To learn more about how our offerings can help maintain business continuity, visit “Getting started with IBM Cloud Direct Link.”
Get started today
IBM Cloud Direct Link is available today in IBM Cloud US South, US East, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
For more information or to start your free trial, visit IBM Cloud Direct Link.