Internet2 has established a direct peering relationship with two Microsoft cloud services: Windows Azure and Microsoft Office 365 Education. These services will enable unmetered access to both the high-performance computing and the communications infrastructure to aid collaboration.
The move to privately peer the Microsoft data centers to the Internet2 Network eliminates the need to traverse these very large data sets over the public Internet.
“Microsoft and Internet2 have agreed to establish direct peering to leverage the nation’s fastest research and education network in bringing the power and diversity of Microsoft cloud services to the entire education and research community,” said Shelton Waggener, senior vice president, Internet2.
“Big Data researchers need the power of a service like Windows Azure. With Internet2, they will be able to transfer very large data sets to and from Windows Azure across Internet2’s 100 Gigabit per second network,” said Kelli Trosvig, vice president for UW Information Technology and chief information officer, University of Washington. “This same high-performance will also be available for applications such as Office 365 Education.”
