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AWS Interconnect Reaches Azure in Public Preview, Closing the Multicloud Connectivity Gap

On August 31, 2026, AWS announced that AWS Interconnect — multicloud now supports private, high-speed connectivity to Microsoft Azure in public preview. The announcement completes the connective fabric across all three non-AWS major cloud service providers — Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure — giving customers the same simplified, on-demand networking experience between AWS and any of the other three.

The Azure connectivity announcement answers a question customers have been asking since AWS introduced AWS Interconnect — multicloud in preview at re:Invent 2025: "When can we connect to Microsoft Azure?" The answer is now.

From Weeks to Clicks

Before AWS Interconnect — multicloud, organizations that operated across AWS and Azure relied on complex interconnections, multiple third-party networking arrangements, or the public internet to stitch things together. Provisioning a private connection between the two clouds typically took weeks or months — contract negotiations, circuit orders, physical cabling, cross-connect coordination. The gap between "we need to connect these two environments" and "they are connected" was measured in months, not minutes.

With AWS Interconnect — multicloud, provisioning happens in a few clicks. Customers get dedicated, private bandwidth between AWS and Azure on demand — no physical infrastructure to manage, no circuit cabling to wait for. The experience is cloud-native simple: establish managed connectivity directly from the AWS Management Console or CLI and the Azure portal.

"Organizations are increasingly building applications, data platforms, and AI solutions that span multiple cloud environments. This collaboration between Microsoft and AWS helps simplify how customers connect those environments, helping to provide secure, high-performance networking with less operational complexity." — Narayan Annamalai, Vice President, Product Management, Azure Networking, Microsoft

The Open API Specification

AWS introduced AWS Interconnect — multicloud in preview at re:Invent 2025, publishing an open API specification for network interoperability that raised the bar for the industry and established a framework any provider can adopt. The specification invited the broader industry to participate. Any cloud provider willing to meet the requirements could join.

The Azure announcement is the clearest signal yet that the open-specification approach is working. AWS has collaborated with other major CSPs to bring the vision to life, and the result — connectivity to all three major non-AWS clouds through a single managed experience — is the architecture the original specification envisioned.

AWS aims to shift the paradigm on all connectivity. The stated goal is a world where customers can turn up a global network and connect to anything they want with a few simple clicks. The open specification remains available for additional providers who share that vision of simplified, interoperable cloud connectivity.

Why Multicloud Connectivity Is Hard

The enterprise multicloud reality is messier than the multicloud vision. Companies acquire other companies and end up with applications spanning different cloud providers. Independent Software Vendors need to deploy solutions across whichever environment their customers use. Regulatory requirements dictate the need to deploy applications to more than one cloud.

Multicloud is often less about choosing the ideal tool for each job and more about how businesses actually evolve. The connectivity problem that AWS Interconnect — multicloud solves is not a technical novelty — it is the operational gap between how companies want to run their infrastructure and how they have been forced to run it because connecting the pieces was hard.

Until the launch of AWS Interconnect — multicloud, organizations relied on complex interconnections, multiple third-party networking arrangements, or the public internet to stitch things together. Each of those options has tradeoffs. Complex interconnections are expensive and slow to provision. Third-party networking arrangements add operational overhead and a dependency on a vendor that sits between the two clouds. The public internet is available immediately but introduces latency, jitter, and security considerations that private connectivity avoids.

With AWS and Azure now connected through AWS Interconnect — multicloud, customers get unified management, accelerated innovation, reduced risk, and future-proof architecture. The experience is the same regardless of which cloud pair you are connecting — AWS to Azure, AWS to Google Cloud, AWS to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

What Comes Next

Together, AWS and Microsoft will continue to expand regional availability, increase bandwidth options, and deepen the experience based on customer feedback. The public preview is the beginning of the Azure story, not the end — regional coverage, bandwidth tiers, and feature depth will expand as the preview matures toward general availability.

The ambition extends beyond cloud-to-cloud. AWS aims to shift the paradigm on all connectivity — not just between clouds, but between clouds and on-premises, between clouds and edge, between any two points in a network that a customer wants to connect. The stated goal is a world where turning up a global network and connecting to anything takes a few clicks.

For now, the practical takeaway is straightforward: if you operate between AWS and any of the three major non-AWS clouds — Azure, Google Cloud, or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure — you can now provision private, high-speed connectivity between them through a single managed experience. The preview is live. The connectivity is real. The provisioning time has dropped from weeks or months to a few clicks.

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