IBM and Comcast inked a deal that gives the cable company's enterprise customers direct connectivity to IBM Cloud.

Comcast Business customers can now receive up to 10 Gb/s of private network connectivity to IBM Cloud for public, private, or hybrid cloud deployments. Dedicated links such as this allow enterprises to more securely store data and manage business applications in the cloud, both on- and off-premise, compared to connecting over the open Internet.

Comcast already offers enterprise customers direct cloud connectivity to IBM Cloud’s competitors Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. IBM has similar deals with other major telecom providers including AT&T, Verizon and Bell Canada.

With the new IBM agreement, Comcast provides connections between its business customer sites and IBM Direct Link locations at Equinix data centers in Chicago, San Jose, California, and Ashburn, Virginia, a Comcast spokesperson said. Equinix uses software defined networking (SDN) to connect its customers.

In addition to providing direct connectivity between enterprises and IBM’s cloud network, Comcast can also connect two IBM Direct Link locations for its clients, a spokesperson said.

The deal allows enterprises to “connect to a cloud system that best fits their needs with the ability to easily scale up in the future as requirements change,” said Jeff Lewis, vice president of data services at Comcast Business, in a statement.

Demand for hybrid cloud technology is growing among enterprise customers: 73 percent of respondents to IDC’s CloudView 2016 survey say they have a hybrid cloud strategy. On the flipside, only 13 percent have adopted all of the necessary skills and processes to execute that strategy.

The Comcast-IBM deal comes as an increasing number of companies are offering direct connectivity. Last month Console announced its integration with Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute. Around the same time Equinix announced the availability of Amazon Web Services Direct Connect cloud service in its Munich data centers.