Microsoft, in partnership with SEACOM, have today launched a cloud service that will allow customers to extend their on-premises networks into the cloud without going over the public internet.
The service, dubbed Azure ExpressRoute, enables customers to create private connections between datacentres and infrastructure on their premises or in a cloud environment.
East Africa County Manager for Microsoft, Sebuh Haileleul said that they were excited as a company to bring wholesome and high added value services to their customers – particularly over a secured and reliable connection provided through SEACOM.
He added by saying: “We know that organisations are moving towards a space where they are dealing with a lot of data that requires secure movement. This service addresses these issues by providing a private, secure and high bandwidth connection to the cloud.”
The ExpressRoute partnership has previously found great success with M-KOPA – the world’s leading pay-as-you-go off-grid solar company, headquartered in Nairobi. With the help of Microsoft’s Azure cloud, M-KOPA is able to deploy its IT technologies in a seamless and reliable manner to bring power to over 600,000 homes across East Africa. Partnering with SEACOM made sense – especially where a guaranteed network experience for users going into the cloud was and is concerned,” says Haileleul.
SEACOM will give low latency connection with guaranteed throughput and uptime and data movement between the user and the cloud resources of Azure will be seamless, similar to working within your office local network.
“This partnership is based on the strengths and capabilities of both parties to provide support not only to M-KOPA, but also to further customers. The move to the cloud and the increase in data management needs means that an offering like this could not come at a more perfect time. We are confident that Azure ExpressRoute will bring great benefits to our current and potential customers.” says Haileleul.
How it works
You can use Azure ExpressRoute to create private connections between Azure datacenters and infrastructure on your premises or in a colocation environment. ExpressRoute connections don’t go over the public Internet, and they offer more reliability, faster speeds, and lower latencies than typical Internet connections.
In some cases, using ExpressRoute connections to transfer data between on-premises systems and Azure can give you significant cost benefits.
With ExpressRoute, establish connections to Azure at an ExpressRoute location, such as an Exchange provider facility, or directly connect to Azure from your existing WAN network, such as a multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) VPN, provided by a network service provider.
Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute lets you extend your on-premises networks into the Microsoft cloud over a private connection facilitated by a connectivity provider. With ExpressRoute, you can establish connections to Microsoft cloud services, such as Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365.
Connectivity can be from an any-to-any (IP VPN) network, a point-to-point Ethernet network, or a virtual cross-connection through a connectivity provider at a co-location facility. ExpressRoute connections do not go over the public Internet. This lets ExpressRoute connections offer more reliability, faster speeds, lower latencies, and higher security than typical connections over the Internet.
