Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud have jointly launched a multicloud networking service designed to make connectivity between their platforms far easier and faster than before.
It’s a striking and even unlikely development. These two cloud giants, often fierce competitors, are collaborating on a solution that allows customers to establish private, high-bandwidth links between their environments in minutes. The service combines AWS Interconnect – multicloud with Google Cloud’s Cross-Cloud Interconnect, forming a managed, automated on-demand network pathway that replaces the stitched-together improvisation many enterprises have relied on.
Arguably, the move is overdue. Even a brief interruption in connectivity can now send shockwaves across the digital ecosystem. The October AWS outage, which knocked out countless sites, is expected to cost firms hundreds of million dollars. Enterprises that once tolerated complex manual routing between cloud providers now see such fragility as untenable. This new offering aims squarely at that problem.
Abstraction Layer
With this co-developed solution, much of the physical infrastructure headaches of moving between cloud platforms falls away. Connectivity provisioning shifts into the cloud consoles themselves, which is an abstraction layer that replaces cables and routers with clicks and APIs.
The companies have also published an open specification for cloud-to-cloud interoperability, inviting other cloud and network providers to adopt the same technical framework. It’s an unusually cooperative gesture in an industry not known for shared standards.
Early adopters include Salesforce. “Integrating Salesforce Data 360 with the broader IT landscape requires robust, private connectivity,” said Jim Ostrognai, SVP Software Engineering at Salesforce. “AWS Interconnect – multicloud allows us to establish these critical bridges to Google Cloud with the same ease as deploying internal AWS resources, utilizing pre-built capacity pools and the tools our teams already know and love.”
The emphasis on simplification is a major theme for both companies. Robert Kennedy, AWS vice president of network services, touted the release as a structural shift in cloud networking. This collaboration “represents a fundamental shift in multicloud connectivity,” he said. “By defining and publishing a standard that removes the complexity of any physical components for customers… it’s ready to activate in minutes with a simple point and click.”
Contrast with Recent Statements
What makes the announcement even more notable is the contrast with recent regulatory testimony. In filings with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority last year, both AWS and Google Cloud argued that multicloud interoperability posed little barrier for customers. Yet this new solution, and the heavy engineering that underpins it, suggests a reality that enterprises have long observed: bridging clouds at scale remains a serious challenge.
For Google, this service is part of its broader Cross-Cloud Network architecture, a framework that aims to deliver consistent networking, security and policy controls across heterogeneous environments. For AWS, it reflects a push to articulate a more open, standards-based vision of hybrid and multicloud, a trend that seems to be gaining adoption in many areas of the tech sector.
Both companies also highlight reliability and security. The joint service uses quad-redundant facilities and routers across geographically separated locations, along with MACsec encryption for traffic flowing between the cloud providers.
Keeping Up With Their Customers
Despite their competitive posture in the market, the two companies are increasingly navigating shared infrastructure trends. Enterprises are embracing distributed architectures that blend multiple cloud providers, on-premises environments, and edge locations, all of which require a stable connective fabric.
This new service is an acknowledgment that the connective tissue matters as much as the compute. And that for a growing cohort of customers, the cloud is no longer a single destination but a sprawling, multi-provider ecosystem, and one that needs a smoother set of roads.
