Equinix Announces Direct Access to Office 365 using Azure ExpressRoute
By using Azure ExpressRoute within the Equinix Cloud Exchange, direct access to Office 365 apps will soon become available for organizations that host services within one of Equinix’s 15 data center locations. Organizations that built their cloud within an Equinix facility will be able gain high speed access to Office 365 apps starting in the 3rd quarter of this year.
With Azure ExpressRoute, businesses can be assured of a secured channel that completely bypasses the public internet. This secured connection helps protect your data while simultaneously providing robust bandwidth resources that give your Office 365 apps the extra edge that they need. ExpressRoute helps businesses manage unpredictability by providing them with dedicated connection to Azure and apps hosted within Azure such as Office 365.
Chris Sharp, VP of Cloud Innovation at Equinix, commented on the announcement saying, “By offering direct access to Office 365 on Cloud Exchange, we are helping our enterprise customers get the most out of their cloud investments. Private access to Office 365 results in lower latency and higher performing connections, thus providing business grade performance and the end-user experiences that enterprises are demanding with their adoption of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.”
Microsoft and Equinix are relatively new partners. The two companies didn’t ink their first deal together until April 2014. This partnership has bloomed relatively quickly with Azure ExpressRoute now being offered in the following data center regions:
- Amsterdam
- Atlanta
- Chicago
- Dallas
- Hong Kong
- London
- Los Angeles
- New York
- Osaka
- Seattle
- Silicon Valley
- Singapore
- Sydney
- Tokyo
- Washington, D.C.
Microsoft says that using by ExpressRoute in conjunction with Office 365, organizations can deflect one of the major pitfalls of running a hybrid cloud. Within Forrester’s “Beware the Pitfalls Within Networking for Hybrid Cloud” report, the research firm notes that end user experience within a hybrid cloud should be a company’s top priority. By delivering applications through a secured, private internet route, corporate Office 365 users will be able to see a noticeable difference in their application delivery and application response time.
