CenturyLink Adds Google to Cloud Destinations

CenturyLink has expanded its Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections service to Google Cloud Platform.

The move provides a new option for connecting business premises and public data centers to cloud environments. It allows self-serve, real-time, dedicated network connectivity across thousands of endpoints in North America, Asia Pacific and Europe through CenturyLink’s global fiber network.

Chris McReynolds, CenturyLink‘s vice president of core network services, tells Channel Partners the top three public cloud providers are Google, Microsoft and Amazon, and adding Google to his company’s cloud destinations for Dynamic Connections is “key to supporting the customers’ need to move and stand up workloads when they want and where they want.”

CenturyLink’s Chris McReynolds

“Google is a thought leader with software technology, including container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes,” he said. “This is technology that many companies are using when building new cloud-native applications.”

The move will give CenturyLink and its partners a competitive advantage, McReynolds said.

“Some other companies have had ‘real-time’ connectivity to Google, but what is different about CenturyLink is the breadth of locations across North America, EMEA and APAC where we can connect dynamically to Google,” he said. “Over 150,000 buildings and 2,000 data centers can be connected. The billing model is also unique. Customers can activate connections for as little as an hour and choose the amount of bandwidth they want. This commercial model gives them the flexibility they need, but also the cost predictability they want that many other competitors can’t provide.”

Paul Savill, CenturyLink’s senior vice president of core network and technology solutions, tells Channel Partners the expansion will benefit CenturyLink’s partners because they now can use it in the solutions they build for their customers.

CenturyLink’s Paul Savill

“The capability enables rapid provisioning and reconfiguration of private circuits into Google Cloud,” he said. “This makes it more cost effective, higher performing and more secure.”

CenturyLink said Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections plays a key role in its edge compute strategy. It provides real-time network provisioning from the customer premises to CenturyLink’s edge locations, allowing businesses to deploy and manage workloads in an agile development model.

“We conduct feedback sessions with our key partners to help accommodate their needs, and expanding Dynamic Connections service to the Google Cloud Platform has been an ask of theirs as Google really gained momentum in the cloud marketplace,” McReynolds said. “We listened and reprioritized our road map to meet the ever changing needs of our partners.”

CenturyLink expanded its longstanding partnership with Google Cloud in 2019 by combining a public cloud with CenturyLink IT consulting services.

“With CenturyLink Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections, enterprises will be able to connect their locations and scale their network up and down as quickly and easily as they do with their Google Cloud workloads,” said Kerry Takenaka, Google Cloud product manager. “Having your network behave in a cloud-like elastic way will be a key enabler to enterprises’ hybrid cloud strategies and digital transformation.”