NEXTDC gets cloudy in the capital with new AWS Direct Connect

Datacentre operator, NEXTDC, is claiming to be the first company to offer a direct connection to Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the nation’s capital thanks to a new deal with the public cloud provider.

The service, known as AWS Direct Connect, allows partners to offer high speed interconnections between customer’s datacentre environments and the public cloud platform. 

As an alternative to using the public internet to access the service links to AWS, the service establishes private, low latency network connections to help increase performance, reliability and security of applications and workloads.  

The deal is the second such agreement for NEXTDC which previously signed a deal for the service in its Melbourne facility. A company spokesperson told ARN at the time that the deal allowed partners to get around the cost of inter-capital connections to a Direct Connect location in Sydney.

“Now they have a choice to connect to AWS with either a physical cross connect service at M1, or use AXONVX to establish multiple private elastic cross connects on-demand. This means partners can offer AWS services with reduced connectivity costs," the spokesperson said.

Rival operators Global Switch and Equinix both offer AWS Direct Connect from their Sydney datacentres.

This brings the total number of interconnections in Australia to four and is the second outside Sydney, where the cloud provider’s datacentre is located.

NEXTDC said the addition of a Canberra Direct Connect would enable Federal Government and other organisations to “take full advantage of AWS to deliver applications and digital services to Australians – at scale in a highly secure environment.”

The deal comes at a time the cloud provider is upping its game in the public sector market. In December 2016, the company launched a specific channel program for partners targeting government.

“There are all these micro ecosystems out there, and more so in the public sector space than in most other industries, you have some unique attributes,” AWS global channel boss, Terry Wise, said at the time. “A lot of these government agencies don’t work on business outcomes or return on investment. It is more about how they serve the mission of the organisation and that is a different thought process.”

“The launch of the AWS Direct Connect service out of NEXTDC’s Canberra data centre will enable our Federal and ACT Government customers to connect the hyper-scale AWS Cloud and run synchronous replication across independent zones, helping to ensure government data is managed securely - with high resilience,” AWS A/NZ public sector country manager, Andrew Phillips, said. 

“This in turn will help government agencies deliver improved services to Australian citizens, who increasingly rely on digital services for their interactions with government.”

NEXTDC is a member of the Data Centre Facilities Supplies Panel which allows it to tender for government projects and CEO Craig Scroggie said the new service will be a boost for the company in future tenders

Credit: NextDC

“Connectivity to the protected ICON network is available at C1, allowing government agencies to connect to C1 for their data centre needs and securely access a host of additional cloud services, such as AWS,” he added. “AWS Direct Connect is the latest service our expanding partner community can offer to the ACT to support the Federal Government’s ICT transformation.”

“In combination, NEXTDC’s industry-leading colocation and our partners’ diverse cloud services represent a compelling offer to our government customers.”

Other members of the Federal Government's panel include: Australian Data Centres, Canberra Data Centres, Datacom Systems (ACT), Datapod (Australia), Digital Sense Hosting, Fujitsu Australia, Hewlett Packard Australia, iiNet, iseek Communications, Macquarie Telecom, Metronode, NTT Com ICT DC Solutions Australia, Pacnet Services, Red Cloud and Vocus Data Centres.

NEXTDC said the facility would also play a significant role in the growth of cloud-based economic activity in regional Australia by enabling new business models and bringing innovation to the delivery of digital government services.