Solving High Azure Latency & Costs with IZO™ Multi Cloud Connect

Tata Communications IZO™+ Multi Cloud Connect stands as a sophisticated, software-defined interconnect-as-a-service solution, meticulously engineered to streamline multi-cloud connectivity. It empowers enterprises to establish secure and seamless connections across their diverse applications, data centres, branch offices, and various cloud environments, all managed efficiently through a unified “single pane of glass.”

Over the years, Tata Communications has partnered with numerous customers, addressing a wide array of complex networking challenges. This read explores the critical objective of reducing latency between clouds.

Understanding the impact of cloud latency

Cloud latency refers to the measurable delay between the moment a request is sent to a cloud service and the instant a response is received. In today’s highly interactive and data-intensive digital landscape, latency is not merely a technical metric; it is a critical factor directly impacting the performance and user experience of cloud-based applications. This is particularly true for applications demanding real-time interactions, such as high-definition video conferencing, competitive online gaming, or time-sensitive financial transactions, where milliseconds can translate into significant gains or losses.

Several factors contribute to cloud latency, including the physical distance data must travel to and from a cloud data centre, network congestion along the routing paths, the efficiency of those routing paths themselves, and the overhead introduced by various network protocols. For any organisation striving to deliver seamless user experiences and ensure the optimal efficiency of distributed systems, achieving lower latency is absolutely essential.

The customer’s challenge: High Azure latency between regions

Our customer, a prominent global investment company, faced a significant challenge with their existing cloud infrastructure. They were utilising an Azure-native connectivity solution, specifically Azure’s Virtual WAN, for connecting two of their critical Azure cloud regions. While these cloud regions were intended to function as isolated data centre sites, they housed highly latency-critical data that frequently had to traverse between these regions.

The issue was multifaceted. Firstly, the Azure latency between regions was a significant concern, directly impacting the performance of their sensitive applications. The site-to-site tunnel latency inherent in their Azure Virtual WAN setup was simply too high for their demanding workload requirements. Secondly, beyond the performance bottleneck, the customer was also incurring substantial cost charges associated with other network components. These included expenses for VPN gateways, bandwidth consumption, and other related services bundled within their existing Azure-native solution. This combination of high latency and escalating costs presented a clear need for a more efficient and optimised connectivity solution.

Also Read: How a global retailer eliminated costly POS transaction failures.

Tata Communications’ solution: A unified approach to latency and cost

When the global investment company approached Tata Communications, our experts identified an opportunity to address both their Azure latency and cost problems with a single, comprehensive solution: Tata Communications IZO™+ Multi Cloud Connect.

Our proposed solution involved a strategic replacement of their existing Azure Virtual WAN setup with dedicated Azure ExpressRoute connections, provisioned and managed via the IZO™+ Multi Cloud Connect platform. This fundamental shift in their network architecture enabled a direct, private, and high-performance connection between their Azure regions, thereby bypassing the public internet’s inherent latency and congestion issues. The IZO™+ Multi Cloud Connect acted as the intelligent intermediary, orchestrating these private connections.

Also Read: Transforming an insurer’s cloud architecture with multi-cloud connect.

Immediate and future-ready benefits

The implementation of Tata Communications IZO™+ Multi Cloud Connect yielded immediate and quantifiable benefits for the customer:

• Significant latency reduction: The most critical outcome was a remarkable 16% reduction in Azure latency. This improvement directly translated into enhanced application performance and a more responsive experience for their latency-sensitive operations.

• Substantial cost savings: Concurrently, the customer experienced an impressive 17% reduction in their overall connectivity costs. By replacing the bundled expenses of Azure Virtual WAN components with the optimised pricing and direct connections offered by IZO™+ Multi Cloud Connect, their operational expenditure was significantly lowered.

• Future scalability: Beyond the immediate benefits, the solution offers customers robust future scalability. They now have the flexibility to seamlessly integrate additional or multiple Microsoft Azure cloud regions, connect with other public clouds (such as AWS or Google Cloud), or even establish secure, low-latency connections to their private clouds or on-premises Data Centre (DC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) sites. This ensures their network infrastructure is ready to adapt to evolving business needs without complex re-architecting.

As evident from this use case, even when specifically addressing a critical issue like cloud latency, Tata Communications IZO™+ Multi Cloud Connect demonstrates its versatility and ability to fit into multiple complex business scenarios. It’s a truly adaptable solution for modern multi-cloud connectivity.

Your next steps towards optimised cloud performance

If your organisation is grappling with similar challenges related to cloud latency, high costs for inter-cloud communication, or the need for a more scalable and flexible multi-cloud connectivity solution, we invite you to explore the transformative potential of Tata Communications IZO™+ Multi Cloud Connect.

Here are three things you can do next:

1. Explore our Cost Estimation Calculator: Gain insights into your potential egress cost savings by using our intuitive calculator.
2. Learn more: Dive deeper into the capabilities of Tata Communications IZO™+ Multi Cloud Connect to understand how it can revolutionise your cloud strategy.
3. Schedule a Consultation: Connect with our experts to discuss your specific setup and discover how we can help address your unique use cases. Start your trial today!