Enhancing Cloud Infrastructure: Azure's Latest Security and Reliability Boosts

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Key points

Azure Network services are evolving to meet the demands of modern AI and cloud applications, with a focus on hyperscale infrastructure, intelligent services, and resilient architecture.
Azure’s global network has tripled its overall capacity since the end of FY24, now reaching 18 Pbps, and is purpose-built to support AI workloads and cloud applications.
Azure Networking is committed to delivering secure, scalable, and future-ready solutions for every stage of the cloud journey, with a focus on security, reliability, and high availability.

According to sources, Microsoft Azure is driving the next wave of cloud transformation with Azure Networking. The cloud landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, driven by the exponential growth of AI workloads and the need for seamless, secure, and high-performance connectivity. Azure Network services stand at the forefront of this transformation, delivering the hyperscale infrastructure, intelligent services, and resilient architecture that empower organizations to innovate and scale with confidence.

Our sources indicate that Azure’s global network is purpose-built to meet the demands of modern AI and cloud applications. With over 60 AI regions, 500,000+ miles of fiber, and more than 4 petabits per second (Pbps) of WAN capacity, Azure’s backbone is engineered for massive scale and reliability. The network has tripled its overall capacity since the end of FY24, now reaching 18 Pbps, ensuring that customers can run the most demanding AI and data workloads with uncompromising performance.

We’ve learned that Azure’s network fabric is optimized for AI at every layer, supporting long-lasting, high-bandwidth flows for model training, low-latency intra-datacenter fabrics for GPU clusters, and secure, lossless traffic management. Azure’s architecture integrates InfiniBand and high-speed Ethernet to deliver ultra-fast, lossless data transfer between compute and storage, minimizing training times and maximizing efficiency.

Sources close to the matter reveal that Azure Network services are designed to support users at every stage—from migrating on-premises workloads to the cloud, to modernizing applications with advanced services, to building cloud-native and AI-powered solutions. Whether it’s seamless VNet integration, ExpressRoute for private connectivity, or advanced container networking for Kubernetes, Azure provides the tools and services to connect, build, and secure the cloud of tomorrow.

In terms of security, our sources confirm that Azure Networking is committed to delivering secure, scalable, and future-ready solutions. The company has announced several new security features, including DNS Security Policy with Threat Intel, Private Link Direct Connect, and JWT Validation in Application Gateway. These features provide smart protection, continuous updates, and blocking of known malicious domains, as well as native JWT validation at Layer 7 for web applications, APIs, and service-to-service (S2S) or machine-to-machine (M2M) communication.

As Azure continues to push the boundaries of innovation, the company is also focused on providing ubiquitous scale. With ExpressRoute 400G, High throughput VPN Gateway, and High scale Private Link, Azure is strengthening the platform’s reliability and future-readiness. These features provide multi-terabit throughput via dedicated private connection to on-premises or remote GPU sites, 3x faster VPN gateway connectivity, and increased total number of private endpoints allowed in a virtual network.

Finally, our sources indicate that Azure is enhancing the experience of cloud-native applications with Advanced Container Networking Service, eBPF Host Routing, Pod CIDR Expansion, and WAF for Azure Application Gateway for Containers. These features provide high-performance networking, essential security, and pod-level observability, reducing latency and increasing throughput for containerized applications. With these innovations, Azure Networking is empowering enterprises to harness the full potential of the cloud and AI, and is committed to delivering secure, scalable, and future-ready solutions for every stage of the cloud journey. Azure stands ready to connect, secure, and accelerate innovation at every step, and customers can get started with Azure Networking today.