What is an AWS Direct Connect and Why Does it Matter for Hybrid Colocation?

AWS Direct Connect is the most secure and efficient way to connect directly with AWS. Most people connect to their AWS EC2 Instance over the public internet, ensuring more security and protecting against network congestion. It reduces latency, increases bandwidth, and provides a consistent network experience for applications to run smoothly. This is important for hybrid colocation because it allows for increased reliability and secure connections for your data. 

 The AWS Direct Connect cloud service is the shortest path to your AWS resources. While in transit, your network traffic remains on the AWS global network. It never touches the public internet, thus, reducing the chance of hitting bottlenecks or unexpected increases in latency due to re-routing. When creating a new connection, you can choose a hosted connection provided by an AWS Direct Connect Delivery Partner or a dedicated connection from AWS—and deploy it at over 100 AWS Direct Connect locations around the globe. With AWS Direct Connect SiteLink, you can send data between AWS Direct Connect locations to create private network connections between the offices and data centers in your global network. You bypass the public internet and establish a dedicated, secure connection from your infrastructure to AWS.

Many customers reach out to MOD Mission Critical, an AWS partner, to get a physical connection from a data center to a server MOD is managing or the customer is managing. MOD Mission Critical facilities provide a physical cross-connect between AWS and the customer.  Through this physical cross-connect on-site, customers can plug network cables into a patch panel directly into their servers.

What is Hybrid Colocation? 

Hybrid colocation combines on-premises or colocation servers with public clouds. For increased agility, security, and cost-effectiveness, data and applications can move between the two clouds. MOD is a partner you can trust to help connect the AWS connection privately through a pair of fibers in a data center over to MOD to manage the customer’s hybrid (private and public cloud). 

Enterprises need efficient and secure ways to move data between on-premises resources and cloud services to take full advantage of hybrid colocation and achieve maximum business agility. With MOD, clients can have physical cables that connect them and AWS directly.

Why Choose AWS Direct Connect?

The key benefits of using AWS Direct Connect include the following:

• Reduced costs: By avoiding data transfer charges between your on-premises resources and the cloud, you can lower your overall IT costs.
• Improved performance: By establishing a direct connection to AWS, you can achieve the same low latency and high throughput that you would get if your resources were hosted in the cloud.
• Greater security: By keeping your data off the public internet, you can reduce the risk of data breaches and other security risks.
• Simplified migration: With AWS Direct Connect, you can easily migrate workloads between your on-premises resources and the cloud without reconfiguring your applications or networks.

AWS Direct Connect is an essential service for using hybrid colocation to connect your on-premises resources to the cloud. You can take advantage of reduced costs, improved performance, greater security, and simplified migration by establishing a private connection between your infrastructure and AWS.

The MOD Difference

MOD Mission Critical can help your business establish a private and direct network connection between AWS Direct Connect locations and your data center, office, or colocation environment. With MOD’s help, you can optimize your cloud resources for the most efficient allocation possible among different use cases. MOD has cultivated a global ecosystem of partners that spans over 1660 networks and cloud providers in more than 100 facilities on six continents, making them the perfect partner for businesses looking for extensive reach and flexibility. We can help you establish private and direct network connectivity between AWS Direct Connect locations and a data center, office, or colocation environment. Through the MOD PaaSPort™ digital infrastructure platform, companies have access to a direct onramp to AWS, enabling the most flexible, secure, and reliable access to Amazon’s cloud-based applications and services from nearly anywhere in the world via the following models:

• Hosted Connections
• Dedicated Connections
• Hosted Virtual Interfaces

MOD PaaSPort™ full suite of services is designed to allow multi-facility, multi-cloud (hybrid), and multi-network solution deployments worldwide. In conjunction with AWS Direct Connect, this makes MOD an ideal partner for businesses looking to establish a presence in the cloud. Click here to learn more about MOD, or contact us directly to get started with AWS Direct Connect.