The creation of a global cloud computing infrastructure is under way thanks to a partnership that has formed between air transport industry IT specialist SITA and Orange Business Services (News - Alert), the leading global integrated communications service provider for businesses.

The two have teamed to craft a global, high performance, managed cloud computing infrastructure. Each partner will use this infrastructure to deliver its cloud services portfolio to its markets with added global reach, reliability and minimum latency, according to company officials.  

“We know each well and trust each other,” CEO of SITA Francesco Violante said during a press conference this morning as to why SITA partnered with Orange Business Services. “This year we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of our relationship, Orange understands very well the demands of the transport industry so the partnership enables us to move faster and with more confidence than we would have with any other partner.”

“Orange Business Services was an obvious choice,” he added.

The cloud computing infrastructure will be based on six seamlessly interconnected Tier III and Tier IV data centers spanning over five continents in Atlanta, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney. Each data center will cover its respective region and will be interconnected via Orange’s high-speed MPLS network.

The infrastructure as a service platform will allow each company to present their individual portfolio of cloud computing services. Both Orange Business Services and SITA will continue oversee the service relationships with their particular end customers.

“We are in effect in a network/infrastructure sharing type of approach which helps us to move faster, to make the decisions and implementations faster with a broader set of customers from the first day,” Vivek Badrinath (News - Alert), CEO of Orange Business Services, said during the briefing.

The infrastructure, which will deliver high performance cloud computing services globally, will boast secure network connections between data centers and premium levels of protection against malicious threats. The companies promise to offer highly resilient service thanks to redundant connections, failover sites, and network-based intelligent re-routing that can transfer traffic around any disruptions, leading to significantly higher performance levels between the data centers, according to company officials. The two companies are aiming to achieve no more than 100 milliseconds of latency when their customers are operating their applications in the cloud.

While rollout of the infrastructure has already started with the data centers of Atlanta, Frankfurt and Singapore, all six data centers will be fully operation in the third quarter of 2012.

“We are very happy to be doing this with SITA which has a very large set of good quality demanding customers so that we really have an infrastructure that can create value from the first day,” Badrinath said.

The scope and reliability of this cloud infrastructure speak to the current needs of Orange Business Services’ and SITA’s customers, who are looking for sophisticated cloud computing engagements that can equally cover the global nature of their operations and deliver high performance, the officials said.

Moving forward, the two companies will look at making its cloud computing infrastructure even more competitive by partnering with other vendors in the space.

“We will be using technology from leading vendors in the market,” Badrinath said. “We are selecting vendors and partners, of course the leading technologies, that we want to procure and that we feel can bring the best value to our customers.”

Violante added in a formal statement, “Cloud computing is a network-centric concept so when we were looking for a partner to build the infrastructure for the ATI Cloud, we knew it would be strategic to partner with a global operator.”

“Sharing the building and operation of the infrastructure brings economies of scale to both companies,” he said. “Only by working together are we able to bring a fully formed, high-end cloud computing infrastructure that can meet the complex and global requirements of the air transport industry.”