American telco Verizon announced the launch of a Secure Cloud Interconnect service (SCI) this week, using private IP addresses to connect its cloud and multiple cloud platforms together, beginning initially with Microsoft Azure. Michael Palmer, vice president of product development for Verizon said linking cloud platforms with private links will help inspire confidence in cloud service once again, which has waxed and waned over the past year.

Verizon said enterprises will be able to use its private IP service to connect to multiple cloud services including the Verizon cloud, beginning with Azure, and it expects an additional half-dozen other major cloud providers to come on board later this year.

The service with Azure support is expected to go live this summer.

It also said enterprises that have located their private cloud infrastructure in Equinix datacentres can directly access the service in 15 Equinix datacentres in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

“With Secure Cloud Interconnect, Verizon is removing the barriers for enterprise cloud adoption,” said Michael Palmer, vice president of product development for Verizon. “The reality is that many organizations today use multiple clouds to meet their business and technical objectives, but there was no easy way to manage this environment.”

“Our new offering uniquely gives enterprises everything they require in a multi-cloud environment – security, private connectivity, performance, simplicity and efficiency,” stated Palmer.

The service will come with 10Gbps private links between supported cloud platforms including its own, and will boast dynamic bandwidth allocation with fully redundant connections, application performance throughput and quality of service monitoring, usage-based billing, provisioning and management via a centralised portal.

“As enterprises look to cloud computing for speed, flexibility and efficiency, they also require a platform that offers enterprise-proven performance and reliability,” said Yousef Khalidi, distinguished Azure engineer at Microsoft.

“We look forward to extending our cloud services to Verizon’s extensive network of clients through its security-enabled enterprise platform,” he added.

Whether in enterprises or public sector organisations, particularly the military, dark fibre has been deployed extensively to secure digital web-connected services. But many within the cloud security community view dark fibre as an essential element in the future internet, as the proliferation of cloud services and connected devices leaves organisations increasingly vulnerable to digital attack.