Starting this week, business customers of Google’s cloud services will be able to connect their datacenters to Google’s Cloud Platform via AT&T’s Netbond for Cloud high-bandwidth connectivity service.
As part of a new alliance announced May 29, businesses will also be able to access Google’s entire range of G Suite cloud productivity apps—including Gmail, Drive and Docs—through AT&Ts Collaborate hosted voice and collaboration service.
As a result of the partnership, enterprises will be able to move workloads across cloud environments in a secure fashion without having to touch the public Internet, the two companies jointly announced.
AT&T is one of several vendors with whom Google has partnered with to offer what the company calls a partner Interconnect service. Other telecommunications companies that offer such services include BT, Century Link, Equinix, Orange Business Services and Tata Communications.
“Partner Interconnect offers organizations private connectivity to GCP and allows data centers geographically distant from a Google Cloud region or point of presence to connect at up to 10Gbps,” AT&T and Google said.
Google Partner Interconnect is one three options the company currently offers for enterprises that want a secure link between their data centers and Google’s cloud platform. The other two options are Dedicated Interconnect and Cloud VPN.
With Dedicated Interconnect enterprises get a fully private 10Gbps link tying their datacenters to Google’s cloud. The option is designed for organizations with large workloads and high-bandwidth requirements.
The Cloud VPN service is designed for organizations that want a more secure connection than the public cloud, but don’t require or cannot afford a fully dedicated circuit. Organizations that sign up for the Cloud VPN service connect to GCP via an IPsec VPN link.
Announced in April 2018, Partner Interconnect falls between Dedicated Interconnect and Cloud VPN in terms of capabilities. With Partner Interconnect, enterprises get the same high-bandwidth connectivity as Dedicated Interconnect. But instead of having to buy—and pay for—a full circuit, an enterprise can purchase a partial circuit with Partner Interconnect ranging from 50Mbps to 10Gbps from Google partners such as AT&T.
With G Suite now becoming available via AT&T Collaborate, enterprises have the additional benefit of getting access to chat, voice, video and desktop sharing services from a single source, the two companies said. Organizations that sign up for the service will be able to access G Suite applications from anywhere and on virtually any device.
Roman Pacewicz, chief product officer at AT&T Business described the collaboration with Google as giving enterprises access to a full suite of Google productivity apps and a private network connection to Google Cloud.
“Our alliance allows businesses to seamlessly communicate and collaborate from virtually anywhere and connect their networks to our highly-scalable and reliable infrastructure,” added Paul Ferrand, Google Cloud’s president of global customer operations, stated in the partners’ joint announcement.
For AT&T, the Google partnership lengthens the list of providers using the AT&T Netbond for Cloud service to provide dedicated links for their customers. Currently more than 20 major cloud service providers are using the service to provide secure access to 130 cloud services, according to AT&T.