By Sanjay Uppal, SVP & GM, SD-WAN & SASE Business, VMware
The nature of work is transforming. Organizations now support more remote workers across any number of locations. This includes branch offices, hoteling sites, remote pop-up clinics, and home offices. Microsoft Azure and the Microsoft 365 application portfolio help thousands of businesses and millions of individuals work in this new reality every day. This increased reliance on Azure-based apps and resources means the wide area network must be able to scale in a highly-automated and more secure way. And we have a solution for our customers.
Today at Microsoft Ignite, we announced the integration of VMware SD-WAN™ in Azure Virtual WAN Hub. The result is an offering that natively integrates the customizable routing intelligence of Azure Virtual WAN with the optimized last-mile connectivity of VMware SD-WAN. This integration provides the following benefits to enterprises of all sizes:
- Simplicity and ease of deployment: Enterprises can now select and deploy VMware SD-WAN directly from the Virtual WAN managed application listing on Azure marketplace. This eliminates the need for building templates and reduces complexity when connecting SD-WAN Edges to Azure. Furthermore, customers can simply consume VMware SD-WAN Edges deployed and maintained by Microsoft / VMware in Virtual WAN Hubs, as a managed service.
- End-to-end network resiliency: With this integration, customers get built-in resiliency and the full benefits of end-to-end Dynamic Multipath Optimization™ from branches and datacenters right into Azure Cloud.
- Automated connectivity from all SD-WAN locations: Customers can have thousands of locations connecting to Azure cloud with a single policy change. This architecture enables all SD-WAN branches or locations in the customer’s network or in employee homes to automatically connect to SD-WAN Edges deployed in Virtual WAN hubs and exchange connectivity information dynamically.
- Tightly integrated security: Customers gain an additional layer of security for workloads through the insertion of the Azure Firewall into traffic flowing between SD-WAN edges in virtual hubs and destinations.
- Easily leverage Azure backbone for transit connectivity: Since Azure Virtual WAN hubs are deployed with any-to-any connectivity, SD-WAN branches can more easily route traffic over Azure backbone infrastructure using native SD-WAN overlay fabric into the closest Virtual WAN hubs.
A Continuously Progressing Partnership
VMware is building powerful solutions that can meet the networking needs of Microsoft customers both now and in the future.
Last year, VMware began working with Microsoft to offer solutions for Azure Edge Zones and Azure Private Edge Zones. Edge Zones deliver Azure services and enable customers to seamlessly deploy and run Virtual Network Functions including VMware SD-WAN across Azure regions and Azure Edge Zones. VMware is the only Azure Edge Zones “public preview” SD-WAN partner, with complete automation and Azure portal integration, and available to customers for trials.
Microsoft M365 users can experience performance issues due to networking challenges, which has only been exacerbated with employees working from home. Customers can significantly improve users’ M365 experience with VMware SD-WAN through a combination of dynamic traffic steering and on-demand remediation of issues such as bandwidth, latency, packet loss, and jitter.
Whether it’s delivering the best possible experiences for M365 applications, enabling fast and more secure connectivity to business-critical resources running in Azure, or in the future, supporting new local cloud deployments through Azure Edge Zones, VMware has our customers’ Azure Networking requirements covered.
Learn More
Watch a short overview of VMware SD-WAN integration with Azure Virtual WAN Hub, and how to deploy VMware SD-WAN Edges directly inside Azure Virtual WAN Hubs.
