Virtela launches cloud-based security and acceleration services

Fifty local cloud centers around the world are driving two new cloud-based service offerings announced today from managed network services provider Virtela. The offerings include what the company calls an “enterprise services cloud” and an “applications acceleration service.”

When branch offices of global businesses adopt cloud services, “the centralized model doesn’t work—you need something closer,” Virtela CEO Vab Goel told Connected Planet in a pre-briefing. To provide secure communications branch offices need to be protected at the network edge, Goel said.

Virtela’s new offerings work in combination with other hosted applications, adding an extra level of security and accelerating application performance, the company says. Branch offices connect to the closest Virtela cloud center using a dedicated or encrypted connection. When customers choose Virtela’s enterprise service, Virtela’s local cloud center infrastructure eliminates the need for the customer to have a premises-based firewall or router and also provides intrusion protection service.

Virtela’s acceleration service is designed to enhance the performance of enterprise applications such as enterprise requirement planning (ERP), email, backup and storage.

As organizations increasingly adopt cloud services, Goel said their focus will shift “from up time to response time.” ERP applications run between five and 13 times faster with the acceleration service, Goel said, while email performs between five and 17 times faster and backup and storage performs 10 to 25 times faster.

“People can turn it on with a click and pay by the drink,” Goel said. If customers’ applications do not run faster, Virtela says it will pay them 250% of the service charge.

Goel said Virtela is unique positioned to provide the new cloud-based services because it already has strong relationships with hundreds of carriers worldwide. Customers “don’t have to be connected to a specific service provider,” he said.