Telecoms.com

The Cloud Team Alliance, a partnership inked between Belgian telco Belgacom and Numergy, a French cloud computing specialist, announced this week that the group has extended its alliance to include two other European operators, Portugal Telecom and KPN.

The partnership, founded in the summer of 2013, enables participating organisations to extend the coverage of their cloud services by sharing networks and technical resources that help each operator optimise their network architectures to reduce latency.

Belgacom said the Alliance helps to offer customers a local cloud infrastructure in the countries of their operations.

“In this way, the companies can increase their range and geographic coverage in all types of cloud, in order to meet the different needs of their international customers, particularly in terms of security and with European and local compliance,” it said.

The addition of big regional operators Portugal Telecom and KPN will see the Alliance extended to Portugal and the Netherlands.

According to Belgacom could in time could constitute “a real European alternative to the offers of American and Asian players.”

“A wide range of cloud services is essential for satisfying our customers, who have different needs and often require different types of cloud services,” said Bart Van Den Meersche, executive vice president of Belgacom’s enterprise business unit.

“On the one hand, we give them advice on dealing with this complex problem; on the other, we deliver operational services that meet the strictest standards,” he said.