On the eve of Microsoft Inspire 2019, the InterCloud team was very honored to be among the first Microsoft partners onboarded in the new MSP program. I wanted to come back on its goal: offering an end-to-end managed experience to our Microsoft customers.
It’s all in our name: InterCloud has been a pioneer in cloud connectivity. When Cloud Providers launched their private connectivity services to access their Clouds, we’ve always worked hand in hand with them to offer the end-to-end private connectivity and the enterprise-grade level of service required by multinationals.
In 2014, InterCloud became an ExpressRoute partner. As Christophe Le Roux explained when he was a Partner Sales Executive Azure networking with Microsoft:
“Being already pre connected to the Microsoft network in a number of locations worldwide, InterCloud enables the customer to interconnect its resources. Because the biggest part of the job has been taken care of, customers connecting to the InterCloud backbone are able to access Microsoft’s network in a few clicks.”
Indeed, offering our customers a fully managed service based on ExpressRoute has been our obsession since Day 1 of our partnership with Microsoft. As a result, InterCloud makes it simple to privately interconnect corporate infrastructure premises to Microsoft public and private cloud resources across all regions.
Flexibility to grow
One of the dozen large enterprises accessing Microsoft Azure through the InterCloud platform, Sodexo, the services and facility management leader, chose to use Azure as an extension of its datacenters when it decided to move its workloads to the cloud.
“The global partnership established with InterCloud supports our global activities, offering services in Europe, America and Asia. The private connectivity for Azure and ExpressRoute were key in our choice; it is crucial for us to provide with secure end-to-end connectivity”, comments Bruno Hémon, CTO of the Sodexo Group.
Within Mr. Hémon’s team, Florent Trécourt, Global Network Architect, oversees the InterCloud services implementation. “Our migration to Microsoft Azure is still fresh, and we're just beginning onboarding our applications. We aim to eventually increase the capacity of our Links, and the flexibility offered by InterCloud will allow us to do so as our needs grow.”
Enhanced service at scale
Building on the solid and extensive Azure Networking experience we have built over the years with global companies, we are excited to use the springboard of the MSP program to deliver this service at scale. Our CTO summed up the whole team’s enthusiasm when commenting the program announcement by Yousef Khalidi, Corporate VP for Azure Networking:
“These new features will enable us to provide the end-to-end service experience that fulfils one of the main promises our customers look for when they join InterCloud.”
Being part of Microsoft’s specialized MSPs crew means that we can leverage new tools such as Lighthouse to automate and scale cloud management. We look forward to using it and offering our customers a faster onboarding, the ability to monitor and audit what is implemented, enhanced security with integrated RBAC as well as the potential reduction in human error based on automation.
I’d like to conclude this post with a message from Gavriella Schuster, Corporate VP of One Commercial Partner, at Microsoft Inspire that echoes InterCloud’s belief that the partnership spirit is within Microsoft is as strong as it can be:
“Cloud services fundamentally change the basis of our relationship. Cloud services collapse that supply chain and requires each of us to provide persistent and always-on services to our customers. [...] That's why I believe that we have moved from partnering to partnership, because while it may be the technology that brings us together, it is the partnership that keeps us together."
Learn more about InterCloud & Microsoft's partnership here.
InterCloud
InterCloud’s end-to-end global connectivity platform eliminates the complexity in deploying the cloud, giving businesses full control over the security, sovereignty and performance of their critical data traffic with complete peace of mind.
Working with organisations to help them transform global connectivity, reduce network complexity and accelerate growth and innovation, InterCloud is a trusted advisor to some of the world's leading brands when it comes to leveraging the cloud for future success
With offices across Europe, the company's platform is underpinned by its team of cloud experts who guide customers to implement effective strategies to leverage the power of the cloud across their organisation – making global connectivity a driver for business performance .