BT has become the latest major IT services company to strike a global deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of what it calls its 'cloud of clouds' strategy.
The deal will focus on networking, security and managed services, while BT has also launched what it calls its new 'hybrid cloud landing zone', a suite of services for enterprise customers to enable them to mix-and-match public and private cloud services and technologies.
BT's so-called hybrid cloud landing zone is an integrated set of cloud deployment tools and designs. It will consist of ready-made blueprints for best practice hybrid cloud deployment, across multiple geographies and cloud environments, not just AWS.
It is intended to help customers manage the complexity of multiple hybrid-cloud environments, establish virtual networking between different geographic regions and to maintain high levels of security across both public and private cloud environments.
The strategy includes a series of ready-made blueprints for major organisations that take advantage of BT's global network scale, its in-house security services, and managed services capabilities with the aim of giving customers greater visibility and control across the entirety of their IT estates.
However, the services are not ready yet - BT claims that it is developing its hybrid cloud landing zone with AWS for early adopters to 'move in' from around the first half of 2018.
BT and AWS will also work together on a comprehensive approach to security, enabling customers to extend their existing security controls to the cloud, supporting customers with their growing compliance requirements, which from May 2018 will also include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
BT will also make a catalogue of embedded network security, anti-DDoS [distributed denial of service] and threat intelligence products available on the AWS Marketplace, potentially exposing them to a wider audience.
Longer term, BT research and innovation will include identity and access management through to the evolution of end-to-end security services, operating across multiple heterogeneous clouds. BT has already deployed a dedicated instance of its Cyber Security Platform on AWS for one multinational customer, and is working with AWS to make this a standardised and replicable offer for all customers.
BT Global Services CEO Bas Burger described the deal between BT and AWS as "just the beginning, with much more to come".