The company is offering the Express Connect service via its SB Cloud offshoot, that provides the Alibaba Cloud public cloud services in the Japanese market.
It will be offering two levels of service, Direct Access and VPC Connection. Direct Access will use Equinix Cloud Exchange and Packet Host’s bare metal cloud service, to allow customers to connect their data centres and private network equipment to SB Cloud data centres in Japan.
“SB Cloud plans to increase the number of connection methods to meet the diverse business development needs of customers,” said the company.
The VPC Connection service will use software defined network (SDN) architecture to connect SB Cloud’s and Alibaba Cloud’s data centres. “The service is especially suited to communications between Japan and China,” said SoftBank, listing Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The service also connects Singapore and the east and west coasts of the US.
“Connections to data centres in Germany, Australia and UAE (Dubai) are planned for the future,” said SoftBank.
The company explained: “Without going through the public internet, customers can access SB Cloud data centres in Japan securely and at high speeds via Express Connect. Since Equinix Cloud Exchange is available in 21 markets around the world, interconnection with Alibaba Cloud data centres overseas is also possible.”
It added: “With the interconnection of SB Cloud’s Japan-based data centres and Packet’s bare metal cloud service, it is possible to construct a multi-cloud environment that uses both Alibaba Cloud virtual server services and highly scalable bare metal cloud services simultaneously.”
