By Ellen Muraskin

Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ Secure Cloud Interconnect (SCI) preconfigured cloud connection and management service has expanded its scope and its geographical range of offerings, as promised to partners last month.

The service extends the security of private WANs over Verizon’s own wired IP and wireless LTE networks, enabling companies to easily move workloads to a range of popular cloud services and data centers. Its DYI provisioning portal presents a choice of cloud services and locations, classes of service and bandwidth ranges per application, and allows client organizations to pay per use.

SCI now connects with Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute and Microsoft ExpressRoute for Office 365/Skype for Business/Government Cloud and Google as well as those announced previously: Amazon Web Services, Salesforce.com, HP Helion Managed Cloud Service and Salesforce.com. It also provisions resources at Equinix, Verizon and CoreSite data centers in more than 30 locations in the Americas, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. With this announcement, new sites have been opened in Sao Paulo; Frankfurt and Russelsheim, Germany; New York; and Los Angeles. Future expansion plans for this fall include further build-out in Asia-Pacific.

Verizon’s cloud provider footprint now includes the following locations: 

The growth of Cloud Service Provider locations can reduce lengthy backhauls and ensure application performance, as well as provide geographic diversity, Verizon told Channel Partners. These are the spots where Secure Cloud Interconnect NNIs (network-to-network interfaces) are established.

Expanding vertically as well as horizontally, Verizon Enterprise announced Wednesday that SCI has been made available to the public sector. At the federal level, SCI is offered through Verizon’s Networx Universal and Enterprise contracts, and connects to the FedRAMP-certified cloud platforms delivered by Verizon and Microsoft; more such providers will be added with additional network build-outs and system integration. At the state and local level and for public safety and education, any of SCI’s connected providers may be provisioned, as FedRAMP-certified cloud environment is typically not required. PCI and HIPAA compliance are built in.

SCI is particularly geared toward organizations that use multiple cloud services, in private or public clouds or hybrid scenarios. By virtue of its pre-integration with edge routers at CSP access points, Verizon’s software-defined service automatically provisions connections in minutes or hours, instead of the days or weeks previously required. And through its centralized portal, it simplifies clients’ management and cost control for multiple cloud services in multiple sites. For more information, visit Verizon Public Sector Markets.