When it comes to network integration, connectivity and workload management, CenturyLink Inc. has positioned itself squarely in the hybrid-cloud ecosystem.

In August, the company announced the launch of its Private Cloud Service for VMware Inc. on AWS. CenturyLink has already seen use cases where its managed information-technology services and cloud connectivity expertise can help customers pursue new solutions.

“We’re working with an airline that wants to start building a series of initiatives to sell vacation packages and be very creative in how they market and deliver those, pulling through airline sales along the way,” said David Shacochis (pictured, left), vice president of product management at CenturyLink. “They’re going to be designing those digital initiatives in AWS, but they need access to flight, schedule, and logistics information that they keep inside of their VMware environment.”

Shacochis spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas. He was joined by Brandon Sweeney (pictured, right), senior vice president of worldwide cloud sales at VMware Inc., and they discussed how the three companies work with customers to manage applications and the critical importance of integration in an increasingly hybrid world. (* Disclosure below.)

Identifying cloud-ready workloads

The platform announced in August extended on-premises vSphere environments to a VMware software-defined data center running on Amazon EC2. CenturyLink’s Private Cloud for VMware allows customers to manage key applications in a hybrid IT environment.

“It’s a multicloud and hybrid cloud world, and we want to give customers the choice to move their workloads wherever they need,” Sweeney said. “Partners like CenturyLink help figure out which workloads are cloud-ready. That leads into more relationships, such as how to set up disaster recovery, how to offer other services through AWS against those workloads.”

In a competitive digital world where startup companies originate in the cloud and never leave, enterprises with legacy applications must decide where to place them and how to make sure databases are properly integrated. This is part of the role that CenturyLink plays in the enterprise.

“Only in IT is the word ‘legacy’ a pejorative,” Shacochis noted. “Your legacy is the value you’ve built up. If you’re an enterprise and you’re competing against somebody that is born in the cloud, how well integrated is everything?”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent event. (* Disclosure: CenturyLink Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither CenturyLink nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE