Fatbeam LLC, a Coeur d’Alene-based fiber optics company, has developed a new product that allows its customers to connect securely to cloud services providers.

Fatbeam builds high-capacity fiber optic networks and leases connectivity through what is referred to as dark fiber, or fiber infrastructure, on a wholesale basis to businesses, hospitals, and other customers. The company’s new product, Cloudbeam, serves as an alternative to virtual private network, or VPN, connections for accessing cloud-based services.

Tony Perkins, Fatbeam’s chief operations officer, says, “With Cloudbeam, we’re now pleased to offer our enterprise customers the added peace of mind of a private and secure direct connection to their cloud service provider.”

The company contends Cloudbeam offers better performance and increased reliability through a direct and private connection. The new product offers high flexibility enabling private connections to more than 100 cloud and other application service providers, Perkins says.

The new offering is all part of a push Fatbeam is initiating to introduce a wider array of new products and services to its markets, he says.

The company operates networks in more than 40 markets in eight states—Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Perkins declines to disclose the company’s total number of clients.

At the beginning of the year, SDC Capital Partners LLC, a New York-based private investment company, bought a 51% interest in Fatbeam for $36 million.

In January, Fatbeam President Greg Green told the Journal the transaction enabled the company to pay off its higher-interest loans and add millions to the company’s balance sheet.

Green co-founded Fatbeam with Shawn Swanby in 2010. The company operates out of a 3,000-square-foot office in the Riverstone development, in northwestern Coeur d’Alene.