Google expands service for directly connecting private datacenters to its cloud

Google announced a few enhancements to its cloud networking capabilities today that are designed to provide customers with more options for connecting their private datacenters with those run by the tech titan.

First off, the company’s Dedicated Interconnect service, which allows customers to establish private connections between their datacenters and Google’s network, has entered general availability. Google introduced the service last month, and it’s now available from more locations around the globe. At this point, Google guarantees 99.99 percent uptime for its customers using the service, which can be accessed from a number of points in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Second, the company also announced Cloud Router Global Routing, a new feature that’s designed to make any subnet in Google Cloud available worldwide through Dedicated Interconnect. That means it’s possible for a customer in the U.S. to connect their private datacenter to Google’s network in New York and access all of their cloud applications, even those running in datacenters on other continents.

This is part of Google’s push to serve large enterprise customers with its cloud offerings. While some businesses have opted to move their entire application footprint to the public cloud, most are working with a hybrid deployment model, keeping some applications in private datacenters while running others on the public cloud.

Dedicated Interconnect is supposed to provide customers with a secure, lower-latency means of connecting their computing assets to the network, and it could help lure new customers to Google’s cloud platform. It’s important for the company to offer services these in order to compete with Amazon, Microsoft, and other players in the space.

It’s worth noting that Google doesn’t currently have Dedicated Interconnect peering locations anywhere in Central America, South America, or Africa. The company announced today that it is working with Equinix to provide additional locations for the service in the future, in addition to building out its global network.