Aryaka® announced today that JAS Forwarding Worldwide is using Aryaka’s WAN as-a-Service to ensure fast, reliable access to Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) public cloud platform. As part of Microsoft’s ExpressRoute program, Aryaka provides Microsoft customers with fast, reliable access to Microsoft Azure and, soon, to Office365, as well.

Like many companies migrating mission-critical applications to the cloud, JAS Forwarding Worldwide, a recognized leader in global freight forwarding and logistics, learned that application performance tends to degrade over the Internet. JAS Forwarding had already begun moving key workloads to Microsoft Azure, including Active Directory domain servers, file services, and ERP applications. However, due to congestion, latency, jitter, and other networking issues, the public Internet simply can’t deliver the speed and reliability that enterprises demand from their cloud-based applications.

JAS had also investigated traditional methods, such as MPLS, for accelerating its connections to Azure, but they were too expensive and took far too long to deploy. JAS Forwarding then looked at Microsoft’s ExpressRoute program.

ExpressRoute gives enterprises the ability to create private connections between Azure datacenters and IT infrastructure located on-premises or in a colocation environment. ExpressRoute connections do not go over the public Internet and offer greater reliability, faster speeds, lower latencies, and higher security than typical connections over the Internet.

“Microsoft is committed to helping customers embrace and benefit from a cloud-first world. Aryaka’s WAN as-a-Service solution will enable our customers to move to the cloud more easily by providing a more secure and reliable way to take advantage of the flexibility and scale of cloud solutions. We look forward to working together to help companies accelerate their connections to Microsoft Azure, and, soon, to Office365,” said Yousef Khalidi, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft.

JAS Forwarding had already been using Aryaka’s WAN as-a-Service to accelerate access for its 240 worldwide offices to a centralized, mission-critical ERP application, and JAS has been thrilled with the Aryaka service. Then, not long after JAS Forwarding dismissed MPLS, Aryaka joined Microsoft’s ExpressRoute program.

“Once Aryaka became part of ExpressRoute, our decision was an easy one,” said Mark Baker, CIO of JAS Forwarding Worldwide. “With Aryaka, we were able to deploy a fast lane to the Azure cloud in two weeks. Actually, Aryaka turned up the connection in a few hours, but we had to coordinate with the other vendors and SaaS providers we rely on, but even with those third parties factored in, Aryaka’s deployment time was amazingly fast.”

“We’re excited to have the opportunity to work with Microsoft to help JAS Forwarding Worldwide accelerate its cloud roadmap,” said Ashwath Nagaraj, CTO of Aryaka. “Business leaders are hoping to gain increased agility and higher ROI through their cloud migrations, but knowledge workers are used to LAN-like speeds. Anything less erodes productivity.”

Other reasons Baker cited for choosing Aryaka included the security provided over its global core network, the ability to get backup-and-recovery running reliably in the Azure Cloud, end-to-end network and application performance visibility through the MyAryaka™ portal, and Aryaka’s unique multi-segment architecture, which enables companies to conserve expensive enterprise bandwidth.

About Aryaka
Aryaka is transforming how global enterprises connect sites and users worldwide, and use mission-critical applications to support modern business execution demands. Aryaka’s Global SD-WAN combines a purpose-built private network, SD-WAN, optimization and acceleration techniques, connectivity to cloud platforms, and network visibility in a single solution that is delivered as a service.

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