Not a day goes by in the world of IT without mention of “the cloud,” in one context or another. Public and private cloud-based services continue to transform the IT industry at a rapid pace, in parallel with the demand for better ways to manage IT infrastructures.
Public cloud solutions provide an option for IT administrators looking to reduce the amount of physical hardware they need to support by running services in a virtual environment. Another ubiquitous form of cloud service is mass public data storage, something which touches the lives of almost everyone connected to the Internet, whether they know it or not. Applications we use every day, like Netflix, Expedia, Spotify and Geico use data storage services provided by one of the cloud storage specialists. These services are attractive to fast-moving tech innovators who get to focus on what they do best without having to build their own huge storage infrastructure to support the data their apps use.
Meraki itself works with cloud hosting providers, and we understand how valuable these services can be to our customers first-hand. Back in May we announced a new software solution we call Virtual MX (or vMX) that enables Meraki customers to conveniently connect directly to a virtual MX instance within Amazon Web Services (AWS) using Meraki Auto VPN. This eliminates the tedious manual configuration associated with regular third party services or VPN peers. Once the VPN is up, Meraki SD-WAN technology ensures dependable, robust connectivity to essential services.
It’s always a good sign when the moment a cool solution is announced for one use case, you’re immediately bombarded with questions about when it will be available for other similar services, and that’s precisely what we experienced with vMX for AWS.
The service everyone wanted to know about? Microsoft Azure.
Azure is one of the largest players in cloud services, so we are excited to announce global availability of Azure Managed Application support for vMX. Customers can now order vMX (VMX100), specifying either AWS or Azure, that will operate as a one-armed VPN concentrator within its host cloud, providing easy access to hosted IT services.
Detailed setup instructions are available on our documentation site, and customers keen to try either service can now request a trial by reaching out to their Meraki contact.
To learn more about the full capabilities of the MX, sign up for one of our webinars or request some trial gear. We’d love to get the product into your hands and please don’t be shy about letting us know which service we should be connecting Auto VPN to next!
