We gave a brief description of the definition and function of the cloud in Our Cloud On-Ramp page. It is also important to understand that, presumably, the most attractive advantage of going to the Cloud, is the elimination of the necessary up-front capital expense when doing it yourself. The Cloud providers recoup that expense, which they absorb, by charging a transfer fee for the actual information, the data, that is sent and received to and from your local presence to your Cloud presence.
When the amount of data flowing between private locations and the cloud becomes significant, it may pay to invest in a private connection to the cloud to avoid a significant percentage of the transfer fees. The Cloud providers provide significant discounts when the traffic going to and from the Cloud travels a direct private circuit as opposed to going over the internet. A direct connection also guarantees better security and throughput.
We have arrangements with multiple providers who provides us with direct connectivity to the five largest cloud providers. We currently offer direct connectivity to the Cloud from our data NOCs to AWS (Amazon), Azure (Microsoft), Google, IBM, Alibaba and Oracle. We can connect your locations to us - extending the direct connection - by either providing a private circuit to your premises or by providing an SD-WAN over broadband circuit. We can also direct connect to the other cloud platforms.