CenturyLink Updates Private Cloud Service with VMware, HPE

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CenturyLink has enhanced its private cloud service, which now combines a large-scale, interconnected network with VMware Cloud Foundation and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) server technology for hyperconverged infrastructure.

CenturyLink Dedicated Cloud Compute (DCC) Foundation is an updated architecture moving to a converged, software-defined data center model aimed at helping businesses lower their total cost of ownership, deliver advanced security and simplify their operations. It is now available to partners and customers in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

CenturyLink’s Terence Gleeson

Terence Gleeson, CenturyLink’s vice president of strategic partner alliances, tells Channel Partners the enhanced private cloud service gives partners and customers “tremendous benefits and a consistent user experience across public and private cloud.”

“To be clear, the service is fully private, but one objective we had in developing it is to give users (the) agility they have become used to from using public cloud,” he said. “This is a fantastic opportunity for partners to bring this secure and high-performing private cloud platform to their customers. We have been working with VMware since the dawn of their company. It’s been a great, long-lasting and growing partnership. Our latest release leverages that partnership between a service provider and a technology company because it allows us to do the private cloud R&D and modernize it, and also re-architect it.”

Software-defined data center technology and hyperconverged infrastructure deliver a single, software-defined infrastructure platform for deployment and management of all data-center resources. This includes compute, storage, networks and security built on an API-based, software-defined layer.

“We believe this service is well positioned to allow partners to offer companies in several verticals a flexible and agile private cloud solution, including in health care and financial services,” Gleeson said. “Due to the sensitive nature of their data and their clients’ data, these customers need private options, and they need to quickly deploy and provision their private clouds. It also lends itself to a global portfolio as it is available in 32 hosting locations globally, including Singapore, United Kingdom, Germany, India, Japan, and many locations throughout the United States and Canada.”

CenturyLink runs one of the world’s largest VMware clouds, with more than 100,000 virtual machines under management for enterprise and government clients.

“The impact of cloud is undeniable, reshaping the way IT operates, the way IT functions as an organization and the role IT plays within the business,” said Geoff Waters, VMware’s vice president of global cloud sales. “Working with partners such as CenturyLink, VMware’s cloud strategy is to help customers run, manage, connect and secure their entire application portfolio across clouds and devices, leveraging a common operating environment. Together we will help our mutual customers drive digital transformation and gain the greatest advantage from cloud computing.”

Last month, CenturyLink rolled out managed software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) packages that will serve hybrid environments.