Digital Realty brings greater IBM Cloud access to Sydney

Digital Realty has expanded access to IBM Cloud in Australia through the availability of IBM Cloud Direct Link Dedicating Hosting services in Sydney.

The data center, colocation and interconnection solutions company is an IBM Cloud Direct Link partner, says the expansion is expected to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption for local enterprises and enable them in their hybrid cloud journeys.

Following the announcement, Australian customers can now access the IBM Cloud Direct Link Dedicated Hosting service through Digital Realty's 3.5-hectare data center campus on Templar Road in Erskine Park.

The service is low-latency and provides high-speed access to the IBM Cloud in Sydney with speeds up to 10 Gbit/s.

The IBM Cloud data center is collocated on the Digital Realty campus in Sydney, further reducing latency for high-performance use cases, according to the company.

Customers have access to different connectivity options across Digital Realty's offerings, including IBM Cloud Direct Link Connect, IBM Cloud Direct Link Dedicated, and in select metros (now including Sydney), IBM Cloud Direct Link Dedicated Hosting.

Digital Realty chief technology officer Chris Sharp says, "We are the first data center provider to offer IBM Cloud Direct Link Dedicated Hosting, and currently the only data center provider to offer IBM Direct Link Connect.

Sharp says, "The flexibility of offering customers multiple options enables them to choose the level of service they need to help meet their specific speed, deployment and location requirements. Combined with Digital Realty's Service Exchange, customers can also take advantage of on-demand network functionality powered by Megaport.

By utilising the IBM Cloud Direct Link Connect, customers are able to establish virtual connections, further expanding the value of hybrid applications supported in Digital Realty's data centers, the company says.

IBM Cloud Infrastructure distinguished engineer and director, Storage Tribe, Michael Fork says, "Today's enterprise is looking for the competitive advantages that a hybrid cloud strategy can offer.

This means companies need integrated and holistically managed clouds both on and off premises and across different clouds with the networking support required for fast, reliable and secure data movement and processing.

"Through this expanded offering, Digital Realty is providing their customers with a new on-ramp to the IBM Cloud and our suite of higher value services like AI, blockchain, analytics, IoT and quantum," says Fork.

Sharp says, "We have supported IBM Cloud Direct Link since 2015 to provide our customers with private, secure connections that simplify network topology, future-proof customer solutions, move workloads closer to the cloud and create true hybrid multi-cloud architectures.

Working with IBM means we are able to solve the complexities of managing workloads across a variety of cloud services and infrastructures.

At present, Digital Realty has nine global locations that can be utilised for low-latency colocation, privately connected to IBM Cloud via the IBM Direct Link Dedicated Hosting offering.