AWS and Azure Launch Managed Direct Interconnect, Eliminating DIY Cross-Cloud Networking

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services have jointly introduced managed cross-cloud connectivity, pairing Azure Multicloud Interconnect with AWS Interconnect – multicloud in public preview. Built on the underlying infrastructures of Azure ExpressRoute and AWS Direct Connect, the collaboration enables enterprise teams to establish private, dedicated Layer 3 connections between an Azure Virtual Network (VNet) and an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) via an open API specification. The service delivers built-in IEEE 802.1AE MACsec Layer 2 encryption and high-capacity bandwidth, completely removing the requirement for customer-managed colocation cages, physical routers, or manual BGP peering. This integration significantly lowers the friction of running distributed workloads across the industry's two largest hyperscalers. Multi-cloud deployments traditionally suffered from operational fragmentation: network architects were forced to procure disparate telco circuits, manage overlapping IP spaces, coordinate asymmetric failover paths, and troubleshoot cross-provider latency in silos. By turning cross-cloud routing into a cloud-native, on-demand primitive provisionable via API or infrastructure as code (IaC), DevOps and platform teams gain high-throughput, deterministic network performance. This is particularly vital for distributed data architectures and cross-cloud AI pipelines, where real-time model inference or federated analytical queries must span cloud boundaries securely without traversing the public internet. Historically, hyperscalers treated multi-cloud operations as an anti-pattern, emphasizing complete platform consolidation. However, this launch represents a broader industry pivot toward pragmatic interoperability, driven by enterprise AI and data distribution. Following earlier interconnect pairings between AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, native Azure-to-AWS connectivity closes the loop for the most prevalent multi-cloud footprint in enterprise IT. Alongside developments like Apache Iceberg cross-cloud catalog federation, hyperscaler-managed backbones shift the focus from plumbing infrastructure to application-level optimization. Practitioners should begin by cataloging existing cross-cloud transit mechanisms—such as Site-to-Site VPN tunnels, SD-WAN overlays, and hosted direct connects—to identify high-latency or operationally burdensome links suitable for migration. While the managed interconnect automates routing fabric and encryption, platform teams must still account for data egress costs, regional pairing availability, and end-to-end telemetry. Teams should integrate the new interconnect resources into their existing Terraform or OpenTofu modules, map private DNS resolution across environments, and ensure that network-level access controls tightly align with identity-based security policies across both cloud perimeters.