An agile hybrid cloud strategy can set you up for cost savings, flexibility, scalability and enhanced security. The data center you choose, if it can provide direct cloud connections, will influence how much of those benefits you reap. Another possible plus? Leveraging a multi-tenant data center can give you connectivity to private clouds, cloud services and the digital ecosystem that’s part of your multicloud deployment.
While all that is germane to enterprise IT, this blog narrows the focus to the advantages of connection to public clouds such as AWS, Google, Azure and Oracle.
According to the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report, more than half of enterprises and SMBs run workloads in public clouds. The question of whether to use the cloud has been replaced by: How should we access the cloud?
You could use the public internet, or you can opt for a direct cloud connection, sometimes called an “on-net onramp.” An onramp is a direct route over a private, dedicated, physical fiber connection from a colocation data center to a cloud provider. It bypasses the public internet and, consequently, delivers significant advantages described below.
Let’s “diverge” for a moment. We are not saying you can get by without internet connectivity; virtually every organization needs internet access. When you are finished reading this article, learn how CoreSite provides high-performing, highly secure internet connections.
Okay, let’s re-center and get back on route.
Latency – the time it takes to respond to a user request, determined by the performance of the network transporting data – impacts the user experience.
When you connect to a public cloud the traditional way, using the public internet, you compete for bandwidth with other users. In addition, your data “hops” through multiple devices along the route, and each hop represents a potential point of failure in addition to slightly slowing the transmission rate. User experience inherently is impacted. And according to a Forrester study, 65% of respondents said if the load time “of web pages and apps is slow, they [the pages and apps] might as well be down.”1
Direct cloud connectivity is like driving on your own exclusive highway, where you avoid traffic jams and have the road all to yourself. Instead of the potential of network latency that occurs via public internet connection, direct cloud connection enhances business continuity and user experience with up to 44% reduced latency.*
Use Cases
Low latency is not required for every use case. For example, latency isn’t critical for a real estate firm showing photos of available homes online, although availability is. But low latency is critical for companies that conduct sales and financial transactions online or make decisions that depend on real-time data, for example. In these cases, low latency is essential to a positive, “sticky” customer experience. Connection via the public internet can lead to network latency that disrupts your business.
Verticals that require low latency include:
Downtime for customer-facing applications can be disastrous. Users expect 24x7 availability, and outages can drive customers away. High availability is also critical for many internal applications. Unpredictable and unreliable public internet connections can bring down critical cloud-based services, interrupt access to cloud-hosted data and halt business operations. BigPanda reports that, in 2024, the cost of unplanned IT downtime averages $14,056 per minute, rising to $23,750 per minute ($1,425,000 per hour) for large enterprises.3
Direct cloud connections help assure availability. The reliability of a direct connection to deliver high availability is essential for industries such as:
In order to access and transfer large amounts of data in the cloud, you need the right amount of bandwidth – the maximum data transfer capability of a network connection, measured in bits per second. If an internet connection doesn’t have adequate bandwidth, transferring large data sets can be time-consuming and expensive.
For example, let’s say you need to transfer a terabyte of data. To move 1 terabyte of data over a 50 MB/s internet connection would take approximately 52 hours. Transferring that same terabyte of data via a 400 MB/s bandwidth connection reduces the time to 6 hours, and using a 100 GB/s bandwidth connection takes it down to 1.34 minutes. You can use this data transfer calculator to do the math yourself.
To use the highway analogy again, a multi-GB direct connection enabled though a CoreSite data center is like having a dedicated freeway that’s 100 lanes wide. The bandwidth available on a public internet connection can’t come close, and you can specify as well as dynamically adjust your bandwidth (and associated costs) according to your needs.
“AI integration is becoming essential within cloud environments, with 84% of organizations incorporating AI into their strategies. AI is increasingly supporting real-time insights and enhanced security measures, with nearly half of respondents using it to drive operational efficiency (47%) and improve data analytics capabilities (44%).”
The 2025 State of the Cloud Report, RackSpace
Use Cases
Organizations that don’t store and access large amounts of data in the cloud may not need the high level of bandwidth that a direct connection provides. But enterprises that enable customer or employee access to big data in the cloud can benefit greatly from high-performance cloud connectivity.
And, let’s not overlook a mention of AI workloads and their sidekicks – massive data warehouses – as AI continues to be integrated in cloud environments.
Verticals that often require high bandwidth data transport include:
Reducing the cost of operations is a top reason why enterprises choose to implement a cloud connectivity solution. Of course, the cost savings depend on how you connect.
When you store data in the cloud, data egress can be a significant expense. While most cloud providers do not charge to upload your data to the cloud, they do charge data egress fees per gigabyte for transferring data out of the cloud. You can’t always predict how much data consumption will take place, so companies often discover that data egress costs are much higher than expected.
As an alternative, a direct connection provides an impressive 60% to 70% savings on data egress costs – and it is a fixed predictable cost.* Your CFO will be delighted.
Use Cases
For some small organizations, it may not make financial sense to connect directly to a cloud provider. But SMBs and enterprises – and even small companies that move large volumes of data – can benefit from a direct cloud connection.
By the way, CoreSite offers virtual routing capability in the Open Cloud Exchange®. Virtual routing allows you to transfer applications and large amounts of data directly between two cloud providers.
A direct cloud connection is not necessarily right for every company or organization. But if your company leverages the cloud to gain a competitive advantage, direct connectivity delivers low latency, high availability, flexible bandwidth and cost savings. Direct connection to public cloud providers through a CoreSite data center opens the door to virtualized services your enterprise can use to get more value from data.
AI workloads are changing connectivity requirements for many companies. Using a data center to keep pace with change can future-proof your infrastructure and organization.
Buckle up, sit back and learn why CoreSite direct cloud connections are the way to fly.
Know More
We welcome the opportunity to learn about your specific business objectives and technical challenges, and exchange thoughts on how we can help you become a future-ready enterprise.
When you are ready, contact us.
In the meantime, check out this explainer video describing the performance, security and cost advantages of CoreSite direct cloud onramps.
References
1. Catchpoint, New Forrester Study: The Cost of Internet Disruptions (source)
2. Ibid.
3. BigPanda, The Rising Cost of Downtime (source)