Global data centre company Equinix will be among the first to offer private, managed connections to Microsoft Office 365 via Azure ExpressRoute through the Equinix Cloud Exchange.
Available during the third quarter of this year, direct access to Office 365 from inside Equinix will be available in 15 markets worldwide, including Sydney, Australia.
Equinix first launched its partnership with Microsoft in April 2014, and now offers direct connection to Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute via the Equinix Cloud Exchange.
Direct access to Office 365 will be available in all 15 markets, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Osaka, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.
“By offering direct access to Office 365 on Cloud Exchange, we are helping our enterprise customers get the most out of their cloud investments,” says Chris Sharp, vice president, cloud innovation, Equinix.
“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.”
According to a recent Forrester report, “Beware the Pitfalls Within Networking for Hybrid Cloud,” end-user experience should be a company’s top priority when considering cloud connectivity options for business productivity applications.
With this announcement, Equinix and Microsoft are aiming to enable the enterprise to use its existing MPLS or wide area network (WAN) infrastructure to get high speed, secure access to Office 365.
Azure ExpressRoute provides private connections between enterprise IT environments and Microsoft Azure, a cloud service used by 57 percent of the Fortune 500.
“Office 365 customers have been asking for direct connectivity to Office 365 since Azure ExpressRoute launched last year, and we’re pleased that Equinix will be among the first to offer it through Cloud Exchange,” adds Mike Schutz, GM of cloud platform, Microsoft.
“With network performance as predictable as a customer’s own on-premises environment, ExpressRoute for Office 365 is like having the full Office 365 productivity solution in your own datacenter.
“It is a great option for organisations that require premium, managed connectivity to their productivity services.”
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