Highlights:

  • Alkira and Microsoft to transform the cloud networking journey of consumers to Microsoft Azure.
  • Microsoft offers growth partnerships and strong support to the selected group of start-ups.
  • Alkira CSX is a central system of the company’s Network Cloud platform.
  • Expert’s views on the Alkira–Microsoft collaboration.

Alkira and Microsoft to transform cloud networking journey

Alkira, a Network Cloud leader, recently publicized that it collaborated with Microsoft for the Start-ups program. The program comprises a selected group of developing businesses exclusively chosen by Microsoft to transform consumers’ cloud networking journey to Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft offers growth partnerships and strong support to the selected group of start-ups, including sales and marketing opportunities and technical and leadership access. The company also made an announcement regarding the availability of Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) on the Azure Marketplace. Alkira CSX is a central system of the company’s Network Cloud platform.

The Alkira Network Cloud platform is developed to offer Azure consumers with –

  • Enhanced performance
  • Manageability
  • Security

This is all done while deploying Windows workloads in the Azure cloud. The Alkira Network Cloud platform is also known to reduce the cost, time, and complexity of connectivity cloud environments.

Now, Microsoft Azure consumers can access Alkira’s solution in Azure or a multi-cloud network along with other best-of-breed products in the Azure Marketplace.

Along with the advanced underlying power of Azure, Alkira CSX is delivered as a secure cloud networking infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) that dynamically scales according to consumers’ requirements and reduces the time taken to deploy cloud networks from months to minutes.

Microsoft consumers who access Alkira’s Network Cloud via Azure Marketplace benefit from streamlined billing, abridged procurement overheads, and faster deployment, as well as the guarantee of Microsoft certification.

Expert’s views

Amir Khan, President and CEO/Founder at Alkira, commented: “The time, cost, and complexity of building networks in the cloud with end-to-end security and management visibility are major challenges holding back digital transformation. Our service was developed to help businesses overcome the trade-offs, complexity, and long lead times associated with cloud networking. The Alkira Network Cloud platform accelerates the deployment and simplifies the management of cloud workloads, leaving customers free to focus on the objectives of their business. We’re excited to be deepening our relationship with Microsoft through the Microsoft for Startups program and to be able to offer those benefits to the growing number of organizations seeking transformational solutions from the Azure Marketplace.”

Jeffrey Ma, Vice President (VP), Startups at Microsoft, commented: “Our start-up program gives new businesses access to the incredible resources of Microsoft and helps to bring the benefits of exciting new technologies like Alkira’s Network Cloud platform to Microsoft’s Azure customers. Alkira’s platform provides a powerful and flexible set of capabilities to leverage the power of Azure to deploy fully featured cloud networks.”

Mamoon Hamid, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, commented: “It’s time for the network to join the cloud era, and Alkira’s Cloud Networking Infrastructure as-a-Service provides customers a secure, simplified path to the Microsoft Azure cloud. Microsoft is progressively offering companies like Alkira the opportunity to help Azure customers on their cloud journey, and we’re already seeing it unlock value for everyone involved.”

Brad Casemore, Vice President, Datacenter and Multicloud Networking at IDC, commented: “IDC finds that enterprises are gaining greater appreciation of how modern infrastructure can support strategic cloud objectives such as business agility, application experience, robust security. That said, while enterprise architects want to help their organizations achieve greater business agility through the migration of workloads to cloud, they also want to ensure that the transition doesn’t entail compromises to operational control and management. Alkira’s Network Cloud platform addresses these requirements by helping organizations and their architects reconcile the business benefits of cloud with the need for effective control.”