Fortinet and Versa Networks customers can now take advantage of Google Cloud Platform’s (GCP)’s private backbone as an on-demand underlay. The two companies separately announced support for Google’s Network Connectivity Center (NCC) today, which enables users to automatically route of branch-to-branch and/or branch-to-cloud traffic over the public cloud provider’s network.

“With the integration of Fortinet Secure SD-WAN and Google Cloud’s Network Connectivity Center, we are offering customers the unique opportunity to secure the cloud on-ramp into the cloud, between clouds and within the cloud,” Fortinet CMO John Maddison said in a statement.

Google launched NCC in preview in March alongside an integration with Cisco's Viptela SD-WAN. The service effectively shifts the hub in a traditional hub-in-spoke network into GCP, and is Google's answer to Amazon's Transit Connect and Azure's Virtual WAN transport services. NCC provides a single dashboard for provisioning and managing VPN tunnels and SD-WAN interconnects.

Both companies claim the new capability will enable customers to spin up new branch sites within minutes while enjoying the benefits of Google’s private backbone.

“Our integration with Google Cloud Network Connectivity Center enables customers to easily and intuitively configure connectivity with Google’s hub sites around the world with a Versa SASE overlay,” said Kumar Mehta, co-founder and chief data officer at Versa, in a statement.

The story is very much the same for Fortinet.

Middle-mile connectivity and cloud on-ramps have garnered a lot of attention in recent months as SD-WAN and SASE vendors alike look to provide alternatives to costly MPLS circuits and ease challenges associated hybrid cloud networking.

“Middle-mile partnerships bring a level of predictability and performance assurance to the SD-WAN that one would have had with private services like MPLS,” Kerravala said. “Now customers can have the cost benefits of SD-WAN combined with the performance of private networks,” said Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, in an earlier interview with SDxCentral.

Versa previously announced a partnership with managed service provider Apcela to provide middle-mile connectivity. And last week, Fortinet announced a similar agreement with Megaport, in a move mirroring rival SD-WAN vendor Cisco.

Meanwhile, content delivery network and domain name service security vendor Cloudflare announced integrations with VMware and Aruba appliances that enabled customers to leverage its massive backbone network, which reaches more than 200 locations around the world.