Equinix now offers direct connectivity to SAP Cloud, adding yet another cloud services provider to its Cloud Exchange platform.

Direct connections to cloud service providers allow enterprise to bypass the public Internet and establish private connections. This means companies can more securely store data and manage business applications in the cloud.

Equinix Cloud Exchange already offers direct connections to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Bluemix, and Alibaba Cloud.

Under the new deal with SAP, customers also have direct and private access to the SAP Cloud portfolio, including SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud and SAP Cloud Platform — SAP’s infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) products, respectively.

SAP and Equinix say they plan to make available other cloud services, including SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Hybris, and SAP Ariba, in the near future.

These dedicated connections are available via Equinix Cloud Exchange and the SAP Cloud Peering service in Equinix’s Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, New York, Silicon Valley, Sydney, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers, with additional markets planned for later this year.

Equinix’s Cloud Exchange is based on software-defined networking (SDN). It is available in 23 markets globally.

SAP says it has more than 300,000 software customers and more than 130 million cloud subscribers. It joined the Cloud Exchange platform “to address customer requirements for enterprise hybrid architecture,” said Christoph Boehm SVP and head of Cloud Delivery Services, SAP.

Sixty-seven percent of enterprises have adopted hybrid cloud strategies, deploying some workloads in on-premise data centers and others in public clouds, according to RightScale’s most recent State of the Cloud survey.