Silver Peak expands integration with Microsoft Cloud Services

Advanced automation for Microsoft Office 365

As cloud-first enterprises embrace leading productivity tools like Office 365, IT organisations are tasked with delivering the highest levels of performance to achieve the full productivity benefit. To help enterprises deliver the best Office 365 experience, Microsoft has defined a set of connectivity best practices for connecting branch office users over the internet to the closest Office 365 service front door. The Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform is now fully integrated with Office 365 IP address and URL web services, providing default support for Microsoft connectivity best practices. This new expanded integration extends the value of advanced capabilities like First-packet iQ™ application classification and local DNS resolution (for Office 365 endpoints), allowing EdgeConnect to identify and classify Office 365 application traffic on the first packet and now automatically directs it to the nearest Office 365 endpoint. Directing traffic to the nearest endpoint significantly reduces round trip latency for the full suite of Office 365 applications, assuring the highest levels of performance.

Automating branch connectivity to Azure Virtual WAN

For enterprises migrating applications from the corporate data centre to the cloud, Microsoft Azure offers a compelling value proposition. The Azure cloud infrastructure spans Microsoft’s worldwide footprint of global data centres, hubs and entry points interconnected over Microsoft’s private high-performance global network. The Azure Virtual WAN service provides an API-driven software-defined paradigm that enables Unity Orchestrator to perform per-branch geolocation of the closest Azure hub, and then automatically establish, monitor and maintain IPsec tunnels from each branch location into Azure. This ensures that application traffic traverses the shortest distance possible on the public internet before merging onto the Azure backbone. Using the Silver Peak cloud API, network administrators can now establish and automate integration workflows within Unity Orchestrator, enabling joint customers to build optimised network access to workloads and resources hosted in Azure VNETs, fully leveraging the performance advantages of the Microsoft global backbone network.

“Virtually all Silver Peak customers rely on a combination of Microsoft products and cloud services, and the expanded integration announced today enables our joint customers to maximise user experience with Office 365 and Azure,” said Fraser Street, vice president of technical alliances for Silver Peak. “Today’s announcement underscores our commitment to customers to deliver a portfolio of API-driven integrations to automate connectivity to the most widely deployed, business-critical cloud applications and services from recognised leaders like Microsoft.”

“Silver Peak integration enables our joint customers to easily and securely enable direct and local Internet connectivity for key Office 365 experiences across enterprise branches,” said Bill Baer, senior product marketing manager, Office 365 at Microsoft. “Such local and direct connectivity model is critical for achieving optimal users experience with performance sensitive SaaS applications, such as Office 365, and we are pleased to see Silver Peak advancing its EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution to enable it. In addition, customers looking to simplify branch connectivity and extend application workloads on Microsoft Azure can enjoy seamless connectivity to Azure with the Silver Peak integrated Azure Virtual WAN solution.”