Cisco and Microsoft are expanding their partnership with an integration that automates site-to-site connectivity over Microsoft’s global backbone network, enabling customers to access Azure cloud through the Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub beginning in December. 

Global enterprises with workloads running in Azure that are connected via the Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub will be able to build a single or multiple overlays on top of Microsoft’s network.

The expanded partnership builds on an initiative Cisco and Microsoft began in 2019 to improve network connectivity by integrating Cisco’s SD-WAN with Microsoft’s Azure Virtual WAN and Office 365. 

Jeevan Sharma, Cisco’s senior manager of product management for cloud networking and SD-WAN, told SDxCentral that while the internet allows connection between any sites, it’s “unreliable, not deterministic, and not conducive for business.”

The multi-region cloud network allows enterprises to identify a site based on its geographic location and attach sites to regions based on geographical boundaries. Microsoft's backbone network spans across more than 60 Azure regions worldwide, and the hyperscaler has points-of-presence in over 185 locations.

In addition, Sharma said Cisco SDWAN receives Microsoft 365 telemetry data on application feedback from the Microsoft side, then uses that information to further optimize Cisco’s path selection.

Typically, enterprises rely on MPLS to connect their sites in different regions of the world, Sharma explained. However, MPLS is expensive, takes time to provision, and contracts are often long-term. 

He said having points-of-presence in the cloud allows enterprises to connect those sites in a “very fragile and on-demand manner,” adding that Microsoft's backbone provides “a similar reliability and an experience as you would get with an MPLS circuit.”

The integration also enables end-to-end data encryption, which is one of the biggest challenges that enterprises face when connecting faraway sites, according to Sharma.

Cisco claims this approach will significantly cut down the time needed to bring up site-to-site connectivity across regions and help architecturally and operationally to scale the network to support “hundreds to thousands of sites.”