Tata Communications, an IT subsidiary of the Indian conglomerate, has launched IZO – a new platform that enables global organizations to harness the benefits of cloud – be it private, hybrid or public.
The IZO range includes three products: IZO Public offers enterprise customers remote access to Tata’s virtualized IT infrastructure, while IZO Private enables connectivity between customers’ own infrastructure and public clouds provided by the likes of Amazon and Microsoft.
IZO Internet WAN works in a similar manner, with the added assurance of enterprise-grade service-level agreements (SLAs). Tata has already signed relevant partnerships with more than 20 regional cloud service providers.
Easy IZO
Tata Communications operates major subsea and terrestrial communications networks, and owns nearly 50 data centers around the world. Today, more than 24 percent of the world’s Internet traffic travels over its infrastructure.
In April, Gartner predicted that through 2020, the most common use of cloud services will be a hybrid model combining on-premises and external cloud services. Tata’s IZO platform clearly aims to capitalize on the trend.
“We’re taking the necessary steps towards making the Internet ‘Fit For Business’ by bringing a new level of predictability and reliability to the public Internet that does not exist today,” explained Vinod Kumar, managing director and CEO of Tata Communications.
“This isn’t something we can do alone and we’re joined in this initiative to bring about a new era of Internet, by some of the world’s leading ISP and cloud providers as we collaborate to achieve a common goal. Cloud, in every form, continues to transform the way businesses operate, innovate and generate revenue. Our role is to make sure that we’re delivering a network that supports and enhances everybody’s network cloud.”
IZO Public is a typical public cloud, offering flexible compute and storage for non-critical operations, similar to services offered by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. The main difference lies in the way it routs traffic: IZO Public tags customers’ packets for priority delivery over the public Internet, using its enhanced IP service. Tata also runs a more generic InstaCompute public cloud.
IZO Private connects businesses to third-party cloud service providers through a private network run by Tata, and already supports AWS and Microsoft Azure.
For customers who desire additional performance guarantees, IZO Internet WAN claims to bring the security, flexibility and predictability of a private network to the public cloud through the power of SLAs.
IZO Internet WAN relies on Tata’s own Tier-1 IP backbone, and the company has already signed up 20 regional service providers operating across 34 countries to participate in the program. These include China Broadband Communications, Neutrona Networks, StarHub and the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT).
“Industry analysts foresee that by the end of 2017, nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments and a state-of-the-art platform is key to the success of this type of cloud implementation. PLDT is pleased to partner with Tata Communications to provide a market-leading platform that helps enterprises to meet their business needs,” commented Nico Alcoseba, head of Corporate Business Solutions at PLDT.