AWS and Microsoft Azure Unveil Native Multicloud Interconnect Preview

AWS has launched the public preview of AWS Interconnect – multicloud connectivity with Microsoft Azure, enabling users to provision private, high-speed, managed Layer 3 links directly between AWS and Azure infrastructure. Built using an open API specification for network interoperability, the preview is initially available across four major regions: US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Europe (Frankfurt). The collaboration provides quad-redundant pathing across physical facilities with automated IEEE 802.1AE MACsec encryption at interconnection points. Historically, linking AWS and Azure environments required platform teams to either deploy customer-managed routers in third-party colocation facilities or stitch together AWS Direct Connect and Azure ExpressRoute manually. This process routinely took weeks or months, involved multiple vendors, and introduced operational risk during failovers. By shifting to an on-demand, cloud-native provisioning workflow, organizations can establish private links in minutes directly through the AWS Console, CLI, or Azure Portal, cutting provisioning lead times and administrative toil significantly. This rollout completes a critical milestone in cross-cloud networking. Following AWS's previous integrations with Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Microsoft Azure was the missing pillar among major hyperscalers. Rather than maintaining proprietary, walled-garden architectures, cloud providers are increasingly standardizing on open API-driven network interconnections to accommodate hybrid enterprise realities. As distributed data architectures, cross-cloud disaster recovery, and multi-model AI pipelines become commonplace, seamless cloud-to-cloud transport has shifted from an exotic edge case to foundational infrastructure. Network architects should evaluate AWS Interconnect for latency-sensitive cross-cloud architectures, such as querying databases hosted in Azure from AWS compute clusters or bridging cross-cloud analytical pipelines. However, teams must consider bandwidth costs, preview regional constraints, and egress pricing structures that still apply across provider boundaries. Practitioners should begin validating routing behavior, testing failover resiliency, and integrating the open API hooks into their Terraform and Infrastructure-as-Code pipelines to replace legacy overlay VPNs.