Do you still need a VPN solution to protect your workloads? - blueAPACHE

Historical article: 2022. Confirm current service availability, bandwidth, support and SLA terms for your proposed design.

The way that Australian businesses work, collaborate and communicate has changed dramatically over the last 3 to 4 years as two mega-trends have combined to upend traditional ways of working:

1. Organisations are increasingly moving everything – workloads, storage, applications and services – into the cloud.
2. Work from Home is no longer a nice to have – it’s a must have, which has caused a radical overhaul of the way that IT have traditionally provided access, tools and services to workers.

One of the impacts of this change is that organisations need to implement strategies and services to secure access to business data across a range of endpoints, locations and solutions. Increasingly, Australian businesses are turning to Azure ExpressRoute and VPN solutions to solve this challenge, but what are the benefits and use cases this approach enables? Here’s everything you need to know about Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute and what it could mean for your business.

What is Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute?

Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute provides a private, uncontended, high-throughput dedicated connection directly into Azure Public Cloud. This creates private connections between Azure data centres and infrastructure on-premises or in a colocation environment. Since these connections don’t work over the public internet, they are able to offer a more stable and reliable experience with faster speeds than typical internet connections.

Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute delivers extensive business benefits

Organisations that deploy Azure ExpressRoute can leverage the following benefits:

Speed and Reliability

Providing a guaranteed network Quality of Service of up to 10Gbps, Azure ExpressRoute makes using Microsoft cloud services a natural extension of your existing network.

Access all Microsoft’s Cloud Services

Access to Azure public cloud, Microsoft 365 services and Dynamics 365 have become core to many organisations workflows. The ease of access to these services provided by Azure ExpressRoute and VPN solutions ensure your teams remain productive, collaborative and efficient wherever they are accessing the services from.

Carrier Neutral

Azure ExpressRoute and VPN services can integrate with any carrier network for your connectivity. This means that you’re not locked into an existing relationship, and you can select the connectivity providers based on your needs.

Highly Available

Offering a connection uptime Service Level Agreement of 99.9%, Azure Express Route provides a guaranteed availability unmatched by other public cloud providers.

Use cases for Azure ExpressRoute

These benefits translate into several valuable use cases solving the challenge we discussed at the start of this article.

Use Case 1 – Site to Cloud

The most common use case will be to create a secure, stable and capable direct VPN connection between the network at your workplace and the Azure Cloud. This allows you to extend your on-premises networks to Azure Cloud or Microsoft 365 using a private connection ensuring your team can seamlessly access cloud-based workloads when they are in the office.

Use Case 2 – WFH to Cloud

With hybrid working becoming the norm for many organisations, employees are demanding the same experience accessing workloads and applications at home as they have in the office. Using a point-to-site VPN access, your team can enable safe and secure access to Microsoft online services including Azure Cloud, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365.

Use Case 3 – Any to Any connection

Many organisations with multiple office locations use a WAN (Wide Area Network) system to create a trusted and secure network environment across all the locations. The IPVPN “Any to Any” connection type supported by ExpressRoute allow that WAN to be extended to include services accessed from Microsoft’s Cloud.

Use Case 4 – Remote to Cloud

With business travel returning and connectivity expectations built up over multiple years of home-based working, your road warriors need to have the same experience wherever in the world they are – especially connecting to communication and collaboration tools such as Microsoft 365 and Teams. Point to site VPN, along with ExpressRoute Premium provides global connectivity.

Choosing the right solution partner to leverage the benefits of Azure ExpressRoute

Microsoft ExpressRoute and VPN are incredibly powerful solutions that present a compelling use case to organisations who have started to migrate their workloads to the Azure Public Cloud, or who use Microsoft’s 365 services extensively and are dealing with the challenge of supporting employees who are demanding a seamless collaboration experience when they’re at home, at a customer’s site or travelling the globe. The need to access these cloud-based solutions securely from any device or location whilst maintaining user experience, means your choice of partner to help design the right solution for your needs is critical. We have over 24 years of experience supporting Microsoft solutions for Australian businesses. Our Australia-based support centre is available 24/7 and we can provide SLA based Microsoft Advanced support through our certified team of experts. Also, our robust network provides almost 100% uptime, relieving you of the burden of IT management and letting you focus on your business. To find out more, please contact us directly on 1800 248 749 or </contact/>