Microsoft offers businesses a 'premium' network link to Office 365

Your typical cloud capabilities are growing and evolving. Generally speaking, cloud applications, such as the ones purchased at the App store on your IPhone, run over the public Internet. This makes them more uncertain in regards to speed and reliability, which seems worth the risk to regular consumers. On the other hand, businesses are not likely to put there reputation, customer satisfaction, and earnings up to chance. With that being said, businesses that utilize big data have grown accustomed to their own hybrid environment, also known as infrastructure, so that they can provide their customers with fast wrap-up times, security, and low costs. Microsoft intends to change the way big businesses handle their big data.

In recent news, Microsoft has released Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute. With this one of a kind product you have the capability to get your own private connection to Azure. What makes this so appealing to large businesses is that ExpressRoute is a connection that bypasses the public Internet, therefore avoiding all of the uncertainty and risk that accompanies it. In broad terms Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute gives you the ability to connect your infrastructure to Azure data centers, without the involvement of the public Internet. With that being said, Azure is essentially a private cloud that provides a similar secure, reliable, and speedy connection to a businesses infrastructure.

After reading this article I decided to do some independent research on Microsoft’s website to fully understand how it works. There are two ways to create the private connection to Azure. The first is to utilize an Exchange Provider facility, or work with a network service provider. The second is to establish a direct connection using your existing widespread area network, which means that Azure would conveniently appear as just another site on your WAN. Azure is going to change the way businesses handle their own data, replacing the necessity for infrastructure that can be costly and complex to manage. With this product businesses will be able to make their connections fast, data migration and disaster recovery easier, and adding computing power and storage capacity a breeze.

This article grabbed my attention because I feel it compliments my last blog post well. With Microsoft’s recent release of Delve, generally a substitute for a businesses intranet with Microsoft Office capabilities, and now the release of Azure ExpressRoute, they are looking to provide their customers with all of the aspects and elements that are required to run a large business.

"Microsoft Offers Businesses a 'premium' Network Link to Office 365." CIO. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.