Alkira Teams Up with Microsoft to Transform the Cloud Networking Journey to Azure

Network Cloud pioneer Alkira announced a close collaboration with the Microsoft for Startups program, a select group of emerging businesses hand-picked by Microsoft for the benefits they offer to Microsoft Azure customers in their journey to the cloud. The select start-ups receive growth partnership and ecosystem support from Microsoft including access to technical, sales and marketing opportunities and leadership. Alkira also announced that the Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) – the core of the company’s  Network Cloud platform – is now available on the Azure Marketplace.

The Alkira Network Cloud platform which reduces the time, cost and complexity of connectivity cloud environments, provides Azure customers with increased performance, manageability and security when deploying Windows workloads in the Azure cloud. Microsoft Azure customers can access Alkira’s solution in Azure, or in a multi-cloud network alongside other best-of-breed products in the Azure Marketplace.  

Benefitting from the underlying power of Azure, Alkira CSX is delivered as a secure cloud networking infrastructure as-a-service that dynamically scales according to customers’ needs and reduces the time taken to deploy cloud networks from months to minutes.

Amir Khan, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Alkira, said: “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.”

Jeff Ma, General Manager of Microsoft for Startups, 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 added: “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, Research Vice President, Datacenter Networks at IDC said: “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.”

Microsoft customers who access Alkira’s Network Cloud through Azure Marketplace benefit from reduced procurement overheads, simplified billing and quicker deployment, as well as the assurance of Microsoft certification.