What changed
On August 31, AWS and Microsoft opened managed AWS–Azure private connectivity in public preview. AWS customers can create an AWS Interconnect – multicloud connection to Microsoft Azure, while Azure exposes the corresponding Azure Multicloud Interconnect path over its private networking infrastructure. The products are intended to remove much of the do-it-yourself work previously required to combine physical connectivity, routing appliances, carrier provisioning and cross-cloud BGP. AWS says the Azure preview is available from selected AWS regions including Northern Virginia, Northern California, Sydney and Frankfurt, and can be provisioned through its console, CLI or API.
Why it matters
Multicloud architectures often become networking projects before they become application projects. A first-party managed AWS–Azure path reduces the amount of custom carrier and routing infrastructure teams need to own, which can simplify disaster recovery, data movement and applications split across the two ecosystems. It does not erase cloud boundaries: identity, routing policy, egress economics, service limits and regional availability still need to be designed, and the Azure pairing remains a preview rather than a generally available production commitment.
The clouds now manage the physical interconnect boundary
AWS describes prebuilt capacity pools and a managed connection between its networking services and the partner cloud. Azure similarly exposes private connectivity through its multicloud interconnect product. Instead of procuring and operating every intermediate networking layer, customers request bandwidth and endpoints through cloud-native controls.
The design is private rather than an Internet VPN overlay
The connection runs over provider-managed private networking rather than routing application traffic over the public Internet. AWS says physical links between provider routers are encrypted and can be provisioned with resilient connection patterns; Azure describes dedicated private paths based on its ExpressRoute infrastructure.
Preview availability is geographically constrained
AWS lists Azure preview availability in a subset of regions, while Azure notes that preview connections are limited to local supported regions and do not yet support arbitrary cross-region connectivity. Architecture reviews therefore need to start with the actual region pair, not assume universal cloud-to-cloud reach.
AWS is standardizing the same interconnect model across providers
Azure joins Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud in AWS Interconnect – multicloud’s provider model. Google Cloud and OCI support have already progressed further than the new Azure pairing, making the August launch part of a broader move toward cloud-provider-managed interconnects rather than one-off AWS–Azure plumbing.