CenturyLink, Inc. announced it has expanded its global cloud alliance with Dell Technologies, Inc. and VMware, Inc. to offer a hybrid cloud solution designed to help digital businesses in Asia Pacific successfully modernise their application workloads and manage their cloud journey.

By 2021, over 90 per cent of enterprises in Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ) will rely on a mix of on-premises/dedicated private cloud, several public clouds and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs according to IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2020 Predictions - APEJ Implications.

This collaboration immediately offers customers the benefits of a fully managed software-defined data centre (SDDC) solution deployable in more than 2,200 CenturyLink network-connected private and public data centres worldwide. This complete SDDC solution with built-in automation enables improved security and new levels of control and scalability across private and public clouds to deliver a consistent customer experience.

Ignatius Wong, director, product management, hybrid cloud & IT solutions at CenturyLink Asia Pacific said: "This cloud alliance brings innovation from today's leading cloud technology providers for a scalable, secure and high-performance architecture to ensure a seamless transition to the cloud and help businesses looking to leverage a hybrid cloud strategy to meet the demands of a digital reality."

IDC has also emphasised that as cloud services become core to enterprises, the IT environments they operate grow more complex. Multiple public cloud, private cloud and traditional systems need to be interconnected, integrated and collectively managed. The situation is forcing enterprises to seek a managed cloud services deployment model to help them effectively run and optimise their on- and off-premises cloud, coupled with the relatively low skills in APEJ to manage cloud implementation across private and public clouds

Wong added: "Customers adopting a multi and hybrid cloud approach can also use CenturyLink's Cloud Application Manager to coordinate the delivery of infrastructure, applications and services across the private or public cloud with greater agility, flexibility and control. CenturyLink can deliver an end-to-end solution to help customers achieve their multi and hybrid cloud vision, while also minimizing IT downtime and migration risk."

Enterprises can also benefit from CenturyLink Cloud Connect solutions, which deliver secure, high-performance, and virtualised networking functionality to leading public and private clouds. This includes the ability to self-provision network connectivity to leading public clouds on demand utilising CenturyLink's Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections.

"Cloud technology has brought immense and undeniable benefits to enterprises worldwide," said David Bate, vice president, cloud, VMware, Asia Pacific Japan. "Through this joint offering that VMware is bringing together with CenturyLink and Dell, our APAC customers will be able to achieve a higher level of flexibility and scalability in their cloud strategy. This is also in line with our aim to help customers build and deploy modern applications from the data center, to the cloud and the edge, and to offer the ability to migrate seamlessly between environments with no constraints." 

Key Facts:

• CenturyLink is a VMware Premier Cloud Provider Partner, as well as a Dell Technologies Global Platinum Partner.

• CenturyLink Private Cloud on VMware Cloud Foundation™ is CenturyLink's managed private cloud service built on VMware Cloud Foundation and enabled by Dell Technologies' PowerEdge servers.