Microsoft introduces Azure Multicloud Interconnect for private AWS links

Microsoft introduced Azure Multicloud Interconnect for AWS, a preview service paired with AWS Interconnect - multicloud to create private Layer 3 connections between the companies’ clouds. It brings several networking components that customers once coordinated separately into a managed service.

The integration gives customers a managed route between Azure and AWS without separately arranging provider circuits, cross-connects, VLANs, point-to-point addressing and BGP sessions. Microsoft documentation says traffic travels over a dedicated cloud-to-cloud path instead of the public internet. Customers remain in control of their cloud networks, routing and security policies.

Customers can start a connection from either cloud. One side generates an activation key, and the other redeems it so the services can validate the provider, region, bandwidth, account and ownership of each endpoint before provisioning. The coordination relies on AWS’s published OpenAPI specification for a symmetric API. In Azure, the service runs on ExpressRoute and sends traffic through an ExpressRoute virtual network gateway. On AWS, the connection attaches through a Direct Connect gateway and can reach VPCs through supported virtual private gateways, Transit Gateways or Cloud WAN.

The Azure preview documentation lists a current bandwidth limit of 1 Gbps. Microsoft says the service will support speeds of up to 100 Gbps from the first day of general availability. The opened sources provide neither a general-availability date nor independent performance measurements.

Microsoft points to multicloud data, application, training and inference workloads as target uses. For broader context on Azure’s AI business, DataPhoenix previously reported on Meta’s use of Azure for AI-model access. The company describes more predictable deployment, operational simplicity and faster AI development as expected benefits, not measured results.

For the preview, Microsoft lists Australia East, East US, Germany West Central and West US. AWS lists service availability in US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), Asia Pacific (Sydney) and Europe (Frankfurt). The sources do not map those regions into exact one-to-one pairs.

Microsoft and AWS say MACsec encryption is enabled by default on the physical links between their edge routers. Microsoft says customers are still responsible for workload-level encryption where needed, along with address planning, route intent, firewalls, traffic inspection, access policies and application-level resilience. Both providers describe redundant devices and links across physically separate facilities, but the resulting resiliency benefits have not been independently measured.

Microsoft’s preview limits state that the service has no service-level agreement during preview. Microsoft also says no Azure Multicloud Interconnect service fee or Azure egress fee applies during the preview. The available sources do not establish AWS-side charges or post-preview pricing.