A hosting system to facilitate a customer of an operator of the system to connect to a cloud provider, the system including: a first cloud exchange co-located with and connected to first cloud provider equipment; a second cloud exchange co-located with and connected to second cloud provider equipment, wherein the first cloud provider equipment and the second cloud provider equipment are of a same cloud provider but at different geographically spaced locations or the first cloud provider equipment is of a different cloud provider than that of the second cloud provider equipment, and wherein the first cloud exchange is connected to the second cloud exchange; and a non-transitory computer readable medium including computer program instructions, the instructions configured to facilitate the configuration of a software-defined network including the first cloud exchange and/or second cloud exchange, wherein the network connects the customer to the first cloud provider equipment and/or the second cloud provider equipment.