Microsoft has come up with a general purpose VPN connection to its Windows Azure cloud that puts it on a more equal footing with Amazon’s Direct Connect service.
Microsoft and AT&T have teamed up to give Azure customers a private network-like linkage through AT&T’s NetBond service. NetBond uses an AT&T multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network to establish a VPN over the Internet from the customer to Azure.
Azure appears on the customer’s network as just another destination that can be invoked like any other, said Venkat Gattamneni, senior product marketing manager for Azure, in an email exchange on the new service. Microsoft and AT&T have bridged the two systems so that invoking them “will be a seamless experience,” said Gattamneni.
A customer can then send workloads and data over the VPN to an Azure data center, rather than using only the public Internet. Azure’s compute and storage services may be accessed through the NetBond linkage.