Touting its global network that spans more than 2 million miles of fiber, 33 subsea cables and 202 points of presence, Google LLC’s Cloud division today launched Cloud WAN, a fully managed enterprise backbone designed for wide-area network architectures.

Backed by a 99.99% reliability service-level agreement, the offering promises a unified approach to site, application and user connectivity with optimal performance and lower total cost of ownership compared to the multiprotocol label switching services many enterprises use.

“Our customers can now tap into the same planet-scale network that powers Google’s globally available services, including Gmail, YouTube and Search,” said Amin Vahdat, Google’s general manager of machine learning systems and Cloud AI. “No other technology company can offer this.”

Google said the offering addresses the multitude of security stacks and network configurations enterprises typically juggle to connect far-flung operations. It claims Cloud WAN provides up to 40% faster performance compared to public internet connections and up to 40% lower total cost of ownership compared with a customer-managed WAN. The service leverages Google’s Premium Tier network, which routes internet-based traffic to the geographically closest PoP, thereby reducing latency and improving consistency for applications.

Two use cases

Google highlighted two key use cases for Cloud WAN. The first is high-performance, cross-region connectivity for global organizations with geographically dispersed data centers that need to transfer significant volumes of data reliably and cost-effectively.

Cloud WAN offers several connectivity options for them, such as Cloud Interconnect for direct, low-latency links from on-premises data centers to Google Cloud, and Cross-Cloud Interconnect for multicloud connections with Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp. Azure and Oracle Corp.’s Cloud Infrastructure.

A new Cross-Site Interconnect feature, currently in preview, provides dedicated point-to-point layer 2 private connections at 10 Gbps or 100 Gbps speeds, a feature favored by government agencies, telecom operators and enterprises requiring transparent layer 2 access. Layer 2 networking is used for reliable node-to-node data transfers data across a physical network.

The second use case centers on branch and campus networks. Through Google’s Premium Tier network, enterprises can connect branch offices to the cloud, software-as-a-service applications and the internet with built-in security and low latency. Google’s Network Connectivity Center acts as a centralized hub that works with virtual private network or software defined wide area network technology from multiple vendors. Network Connectivity Center is available in 20 countries worldwide.

Google said it provides both usage-based and fixed-price models and noted that enterprises with high-volume data transfer needs will soon be able to opt into a fixed-price model for Cloud Interconnect, which will be generally available this quarter.

The company also said Cloud WAN integrates with a broad range of third-party offerings, including leading SD-WAN vendors and security service edge providers. Users can also incorporate cloud-based next-generation firewalls — which offer deeper inspection and more intelligent control over network traffic than traditional firewalls – from partners, enabling them to tailor security configurations.

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