OREANDA-NEWS. September 30, 2015. We’re excited to be among the first providers in the world where enterprises can access Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365. This means enterprises can get direct connectivity to Office 365 that provides a combination of more predictable network performance, flexibility and improved reliability, as well as enhanced data privacy since ExpressRoute enables most Office 365 network traffic to avoid the public Internet.

Enterprises that use ExpressRoute in an Equinix data center also get the benefit of being able to implement more extensible hybrid and multi-cloud strategies that don’t scale well over the Internet or over typical WAN networks. ExpressRoute for Office 365 is now available through the Cloud Exchange in 16 Equinix locations around the world: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., Sao Paulo, Amsterdam, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Melbourne, and Sydney.

We are also pleased to be involved in the early phases of Microsoft Corp.’s launch of Azure Government over ExpressRoute. This offering enables U.S. local, state and federal agencies to use private networking as a way to enhance the security and performance of their network connectivity to Azure Government. To further enhance control over data, governments may also want to employ a hybrid approach where they store the data on hardware they own and can exclusively control while accessing Azure services. Two examples of the potential of this hybrid approach are found with Equinix and Microsoft partners NetApp and EMC. Initial market availability of Azure Government at Equinix will be through the Cloud Exchange in Ashburn and Chicago.

The addition of ExpressRoute for Office 365 and Azure Government over Equinix’s Cloud Exchange are just two of the most recent developments that are making Equinix an increasingly valuable platform on which organizations can become more interconnected to key network and cloud service providers. At Equinix, organizations can now directly connect to major cloud service providers (Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Compute, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer) across North America, Europe, and Asia, as well as most network service providers throughout the world.

As we continue to build a critical mass of cloud and network service providers in our data centers, we believe enterprises and government will find compelling value at Equinix over the long term.