OREANDA-NEWS. Internap Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a provider of high-performance internet infrastructure services, today announced CloudOption™, a high-speed direct connection that lets customers access third-party cloud services, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Furthering its commitment to delivering superior levels of flexibility for customers, Internap also announced it has achieved Open-IX OIX-2 Data Center Certification, the highest standard for carrier-neutral, massive-scale network interconnection at data center facilities.

Organizations often encounter performance and cost challenges when attempting to share data between existing IT infrastructure and external cloud services. Relying on the public internet for this type of transit can be expensive and slow, and present unpredictable spikes in usage costs.

"Many of our hosting and colocation customers have existing cloud environments with non-Internap vendors and need the ability to directly connect to those external clouds in a fast, cost-effective way," said Steve Orchard, Internap's senior vice president and general manager of data center and network services. "While Internap has long provided direct connectivity between our own cloud and other infrastructure services, our new CloudOption service allows Internap customers to overcome key connectivity challenges of the multi-vendor cloud landscape. This, paired with Open-IX Data Center Certification, reflects Internap's commitment to high-performance interconnectivity that expands the networking and infrastructure ecosystem for our customers."  

Internap's CloudOption service provides customers with a direct, flat-rate, secure connection to select cloud providers, avoiding public internet and delivering superior route stability and no risk of packet loss. It allows for fast sharing of data between external cloud instances and Internap's colocation environment, enabling organizations to send and receive cloud data quickly and cost-effectively. Customers can manage the connection via their AWS and Microsoft Azure portals.

CloudOption's flat-rate billing makes budgeting easy and controls costs regardless of the amount of data sent back and forth. This reliable, always-on direct connection enables customers to focus on core business issues instead of worrying about cloud connectivity times, lost data and costly transit.

Additionally, as part of its continued strategy to offer flexible access to internet infrastructure, Internap has become part of an elite group of data center providers to earn OIX-2 certification from the Open-IX Association. OIX-2 is a best-in-class global certification for data centers looking to serve as carrier-neutral points of network interconnection. Internap's OIX-2 certification validates its ability to provide not only Performance IP™, Internap's flagship route-optimized connectivity service, but also non-discriminatory access to all network providers. This further signifies Internap's role in advancing OIX's mission of improving the global landscape of internet peering and interconnection, applying uniform, cost-efficient standards of performance.

"Internap's OIX-2 certified data centers meet our most stringent standards covering Meet Me Room access, redundancy, power, cooling, security and a number of other critical factors," said William Charnock, Open-IX Association chairman. "In meeting these requirements, Internap represents the best of our collective efforts to overcome connectivity challenges facing internet-oriented organizations everywhere."

CloudOption is available immediately to customers in Internap'sDallas, New York Metro, Santa Clara and Seattle data centers. Additional locations, including Atlanta, are expected to be available by Q1 2017. CloudOption will initially deliver connectivity to AWS and Azure, with additional third-party cloud services to be added. Open-IX OIX-2 Certification has been completed at Internap's data centers in Seattle and Atlanta locations, with others in process.

About Internap Corporation
Internap is the high-performance internet infrastructure provider that powers the applications shaping the way we live, work and play. Our hybrid infrastructure delivers performance without compromise - blending virtual and bare-metal cloud, hosting and colocation services across a global network of data centers, optimized from the application to the end user and backed by rock-solid customer support and a 100% uptime guarantee. Since 1996, the most innovative companies have relied on Internap to make their applications faster and more scalable.