SES Expands Cloud Leadership as Amazon Web Services Direct Connect Partner

17 June 2021

SES has joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect Delivery Partner program. Through a technical and business review process, AWS validated SES’s ability to connect its customers directly to their AWS services over its network of multi-orbit satellites. This provides SES customers flexible, secure, reliable access to their cloud-based applications and services from virtually any location around the world. This is a major advantage to both enterprises and government users who require reliable bandwidth while working in remote locations. SES is the first satellite operator to achieve AWS Direct Connect Partner status.

As an AWS Direct Connect Delivery Partner, SES can provide enterprises and governments with dedicated connectivity between virtually any location around the world. For SES customers, direct connectivity to AWS via satellite gives them access to their cloud-based applications and services from remote, rural or other locations with limited or no network options. Equally, the satellite connectivity delivered by SES can serve as network redundancy for critical cloud workloads in case of a fibre cut or other network outage. This capability allows SES customers to enjoy improved efficiency and productivity, while also taking advantage of the elasticity and cost savings provided by AWS, regardless of geographical location or local network infrastructure options.

AWS Direct Connect makes it easy for customers to establish a dedicated network connection between their office, data centre, co-location site or other facility and AWS at speeds from 50 Mbps up to 100 Gbps. For customers with large-scale workloads, AWS Direct Connect provides secure, flexible connections with consistent network performance and reduced bandwidth costs.

SES will use its Cloud Direct service to connect its customers to AWS data centres over its network of medium earth orbit (MEO) and geostationary (GEO) satellites. The Cloud Direct service will also be available on SES’s next-generation MEO constellation, O3b mPOWER, launching later this year. O3b mPOWER will provide SES customers with the ideal satellite-enabled cloud connection, supporting multi-gigabit services that adapt dynamically to network demand.

“Achieving AWS Direct Connect Partner status is another milestone in our cloud-first strategy to provide customers with direct access to multiple cloud providers so they have flexibility to run workloads in different clouds based on region, function, use case or other business factors,” said JP Hemingway, CEO of SES Networks. “Our multi-orbit network provides a combination of global coverage and high-performance, low-latency connections that can get customers’ data into AWS from nearly anywhere. Our next-gen O3b mPOWER system will take our cloud capabilities to a new level and set industry benchmarks for intelligent service automation and flexibility on a terabit scale.”