Digital Realty Trust (DLR) has enabled direct access to its data center portfolio via the VMware (VMW) vCloud Air, the company announced this week. The data center and colocation solution provider expects the integration to allow customers to leverage the new vCloud Air Direct Connect feature to extend their environments into VMware’s hybrid cloud service.

"Our work with VMware is an important next step in our role as a business partner for our colocation and wholesale data center clients,” said Matt Miszewski, senior vice president of Sales and Marketing for Digital Realty, in a statement. “By offering pre-provisioned and on-demand services operated by VMware, we will eliminate the often burdensome process of cloud connectivity by providing our clients with a seamless extension to the cloud from their existing data center locations in our facilities."

With vCloud Air, Digital Realty’s customers will be able to support existing workloads and develop new applications on a common platform, according to the company. Users also will be able to extend existing data centers to the cloud by using VMware’s hybrid service.

"We are pleased that Digital Realty will be offering vCloud Direct Connect from their data centers directly into VMware vCloud Air," said Scott Collison, vice president, VMware vCloud Air business unit at VMware. "VMware Direct Connect enables clients to seamlessly expand their infrastructure to VMware vCloud Air for additional resources and scale as they need it—all this, with the protection of being within their own private network."