The news
On August 31, 2026, Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN) unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) opened a public preview of Azure Multicloud Interconnect, a managed private link between their clouds. It aims to replace cross-cloud networking projects that Microsoft said can take weeks or months.
Microsoft announced the service in an Azure blog post by Narayan Annamalai, vice president and head of products for Azure Networking Services. AWS posted matching announcements the same day for its side of the connection, AWS Interconnect – multicloud, saying Azure connectivity was now in public preview. The two companies built the link on an open API specification for network interoperability, published in an AWS repository on GitHub.
According to Microsoft's documentation, a customer creates an Azure Multicloud Interconnect resource in its Azure subscription and exchanges an activation key with AWS. It no longer has to coordinate circuits, routers, cross-connects or Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing sessions itself. Traffic travels over private connections rather than the public internet, and MAC Security (MACsec) link encryption is on by default. The service runs on Azure ExpressRoute, Microsoft's private connection technology, and Microsoft said it also extends to Azure Private Link to keep the path private end to end.
The preview is narrow. Microsoft's documentation lists 1 Gbps of bandwidth, four Azure regions (East US, West US, Germany West Central and Australia East), AWS as the only supported provider and no service-level agreement (SLA). Microsoft charges no service fee and no Azure egress fee during the preview, and AWS's user guide says its side of a preview connection can be used at no cost for the duration of the preview. Microsoft said customers will be able to deploy connections of up to 100 Gbps from day one of general availability, but its post gave no date.
Microsoft pitched the service at AI projects, saying training and inference jobs often need data that sits in more than one cloud. In Microsoft's post, Robert Kennedy, AWS's vice president of network services, said customers had asked for a better way to connect workloads across the two clouds and called the old methods "clunky." He cited MACsec security by default and four-nines availability.
The numbers
- Preview bandwidth
- 1 Gbps
- Planned bandwidth at general availability
- Up to 100 Gbps
- Azure regions in preview
- 4 (East US, West US, Germany West Central, Australia East)
- Azure service and egress charges during preview
- None
- SLA during preview
- None
Why CEOs should care
For CIOs and infrastructure leaders running workloads in both Azure and AWS, this turns cross-cloud networking from a custom project into something ordered from a console. Microsoft is aiming it at AI work that pulls data from both clouds. But 1 Gbps is a test bed, not a pipe for moving large training datasets. Use the preview to test provisioning, routing and monitoring, and hold production plans until 100 Gbps, more regions and final pricing are confirmed. AWS's user guide also limits the preview to one interconnect per customer per supported region and says all 1 Gbps preview connections will be removed ahead of general availability, so preview links will not carry over.
For CFOs, the open question is price. Azure waives its service and egress charges, the fees clouds levy to move data out, only during the preview. Ask both providers how port, bandwidth and egress charges will work at general availability, and compare that with the cost of your existing colocation cross-connects or third-party network providers.
For CISOs, default MACsec encryption and a path that avoids the public internet answer two common objections to cross-cloud links. But Microsoft's documentation says the preview carries no SLA, even though AWS's Kennedy cited four-nines availability, so regulated or customer-facing systems should not depend on it yet. Boards should note the strategic signal: two cloud rivals are making it easier for customers to split workloads between them, which can strengthen a buyer's hand in renewal talks.
The bigger picture
Azure fills the last gap in AWS's multicloud lineup. According to AWS announcements, AWS made Interconnect – multicloud generally available on April 14, 2026, with Google Cloud as its first launch partner, and support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure reached general availability on July 29, 2026. With Azure in preview, AWS said the service now covers all three major non-AWS cloud providers. In Flexera's 2026 State of the Cloud report, 84 percent of enterprise respondents said they ran some or significant workloads on AWS and 82 percent said the same for Azure.
Microsoft framed the open specification as a model beyond this one pairing, saying it could extend to other large cloud providers, network service providers and telecom carriers. If that happens, private links between clouds, metro networks and offices could become a standard catalog item rather than a custom build.
What happened next
Microsoft's overview documentation, updated on September 11, 2026, still described the service as a preview limited to AWS at 1 Gbps. As of September 29, 2026, AWS's user guide still listed Azure as a preview provider, with preview connections limited to 1 Gbps.
What to watch: a general availability date, the move to 100 Gbps, final pricing including egress, an SLA, and support for other cloud providers on the Azure side, which Microsoft's documentation says will be announced separately.
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