AWS Unveils Interconnect, a Managed Connectivity Service for Seamless Multicloud and Hybrid Network Integration

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the general availability of AWS Interconnect – multicloud, a groundbreaking managed private connectivity service designed to directly link Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPCs) with VPCs hosted on other leading cloud providers. Simultaneously, AWS introduced AWS Interconnect – last mile, a new capability that dramatically simplifies the establishment of high-speed, private connections to AWS from enterprise branch offices, data centers, and various remote locations, leveraging existing network providers. This dual launch marks a significant evolution in how enterprises manage their increasingly complex and distributed IT infrastructures, addressing long-standing challenges associated with multicloud and hybrid network architectures.

The proliferation of multicloud strategies has become an undeniable trend in modern enterprise IT. Organizations are increasingly distributing their workloads across multiple cloud environments, driven by a diverse set of strategic imperatives. These include the pursuit of specialized services offered uniquely by different providers, adherence to stringent data residency and compliance requirements across various geographies, and supporting distinct teams or business units that have standardized on particular cloud platforms. While the strategic benefits of multicloud are clear, the practical realities of connecting these disparate environments have historically presented formidable challenges. Enterprise networking teams have grappled with the arduous task of managing a labyrinth of VPN tunnels, coordinating with multiple colocation facilities, and configuring intricate third-party network fabrics. This "undifferentiated heavy lifting" has consumed valuable time and resources, diverting focus from core business applications and innovation.

AWS Interconnect emerges as a strategic answer to these complexities, offering a fully managed connectivity service that streamlines and secures network pathways into and out of AWS. At its core, Interconnect provides the means to establish private, high-speed network connections with guaranteed, dedicated bandwidth, spanning both hybrid and multicloud landscapes. The service’s intuitive design allows for the configuration of resilient, end-to-end connectivity with remarkable ease. Through a few clicks within the AWS Console, users can specify their desired location, partner, or cloud provider, preferred AWS Region, and bandwidth requirements. This streamlined process eliminates the traditional friction associated with discovering and vetting network partners, as well as the inherent complexity of manual network configurations that often characterized previous approaches. The service is built upon a foundational principle of delivering a turnkey experience, abstracting away infrastructure complexities from customer teams.

The Strategic Imperative for Simplified Multicloud Connectivity

The journey towards multicloud adoption has accelerated dramatically in recent years. A 2023 Flexera report indicated that 89% of enterprises have a multicloud strategy, with 80% utilizing a hybrid cloud approach. This widespread adoption underscores the critical need for robust, secure, and performant inter-cloud connectivity. Traditional methods, such as public internet VPNs, suffer from unpredictable latency, variable throughput, and inherent security vulnerabilities. Direct physical connections, while offering performance benefits, demand significant capital expenditure, long procurement cycles, and specialized networking expertise for deployment and management. These hurdles have often limited the agility and scalability that multicloud strategies promise. AWS Interconnect directly addresses this gap, providing a managed solution that combines the performance and security of private connections with the agility and ease of cloud services.

AWS Interconnect – Multicloud: Bridging Cloud Ecosystems

The AWS Interconnect – multicloud capability delivers a private, managed Layer 3 connection, creating a seamless bridge between AWS environments and those of other major cloud providers. Initially, this service supports connectivity with Google Cloud, with plans to extend support to Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) later in 2026. A pivotal feature of this offering is that traffic flows entirely over the highly reliable AWS global backbone and the partner cloud’s private network infrastructure, circumventing the public internet entirely. This architecture inherently provides predictable latency, consistent throughput, and crucial isolation from public internet congestion and potential security threats. For enterprises, this translates into superior application performance and enhanced data security, both paramount in today’s digital economy.

Security is meticulously engineered into the service by default. Every connection leverages IEEE 802.1AE MACsec encryption on the physical links that interconnect AWS routers and the partner cloud provider’s routers within shared interconnection facilities. This robust, hardware-level encryption is automatically provisioned, requiring no separate configuration from the customer. While MACsec secures the physical layer, it is important for customers to note that each cloud provider independently manages encryption on its own backbone. Therefore, a review of each specific deployment’s encryption documentation is advised to ensure alignment with compliance requirements. Beyond security, resiliency is also a core tenet of the design. Each connection is meticulously architected to span multiple logical links, strategically distributed across at least two distinct physical facilities. This redundancy ensures that a single device failure or even a localized building outage will not disrupt critical connectivity, maintaining business continuity.

For comprehensive operational oversight, AWS Interconnect – multicloud integrates seamlessly with Amazon CloudWatch. Customers receive a Network Synthetic Monitor as part of each connection, providing vital metrics such as round-trip latency and packet loss. Additionally, detailed bandwidth utilization metrics are available, empowering organizations with the data needed for informed capacity planning and cost optimization.

In a move towards fostering broader industry collaboration and standardization, AWS has publicly released the underlying technical specification for AWS Interconnect on GitHub, under the permissive Apache 2.0 license. This open approach invites any cloud service provider to collaborate and integrate with AWS Interconnect – multicloud. To become an authorized AWS Interconnect partner, cloud providers must demonstrate implementation of the technical specification and meet stringent AWS operational requirements, encompassing resiliency standards, comprehensive support commitments, and adherence to service level agreements. This initiative not only democratizes multicloud connectivity but also sets a benchmark for interoperability and reliability in the cloud networking domain.

Operationalizing Multicloud Connectivity: A Simplified Workflow

The provisioning experience for an AWS Interconnect – multicloud connection is designed for speed and simplicity, typically taking mere minutes. The process is initiated from the familiar AWS Direct Connect console, under the new AWS Interconnect section. As demonstrated in a recent example, connecting an AWS VPC in eu-central-1 to a Google Cloud VPC in europe-west3 involves a few straightforward steps:

1. Requesting an Interconnect: From the AWS Management Console, navigate to AWS Direct Connect, then AWS Interconnect, and select "Create." The user first selects the desired cloud provider (e.g., Google Cloud), followed by the specific AWS Region and Google Cloud Region. In the example, eu-central-1 (AWS) and europe-west3 (Google Cloud) were chosen. The user then provides a description, specifies the required bandwidth, selects the Direct Connect gateway for attachment, and enters the Google Cloud project ID. Upon review and confirmation, the console generates a unique activation key.
2. Activating on the Partner Cloud: This activation key is then used on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) side to complete the connection. While a web-based console might be available in the future, the demonstration utilized the GCP command line interface (CLI). After noting the CIDR range of the GCP VPC subnet, a gcloud network-connectivity transports create command is executed, referencing the activation key, region, and network details. Following this, a peering connection is established between the GCP VPC and the newly created transport network using gcloud compute networks peerings create. This step ensures that routes propagate automatically in both directions, allowing workloads to exchange data shortly thereafter.
3. Associating Gateway and Route Tables (AWS Side): Back in the AWS console, the status of the Interconnect connection becomes "available." Under Direct Connect gateways, the attachment to the new interconnect is visible. The final AWS-side step involves associating a Virtual Private Gateway (VGW) – ensuring it’s in the same AWS Region as the interconnect – and adding a route entry in the AWS VPC’s Route tables. This route directs all traffic destined for the GCP IP address range through the Virtual Gateway, completing the network setup.

This streamlined process, which culminates in a private network route entirely managed by the respective Cloud Service Providers, significantly reduces the complexity and potential for human error inherent in manual configurations. The ability to quickly establish secure, high-performance links between clouds empowers developers and operations teams to focus on building and deploying applications, rather than wrestling with network plumbing.

Reference Architectures for Enterprise Scale

AWS Interconnect is not merely a point-to-point solution; it integrates seamlessly into more complex enterprise architectures. For deployments with multiple VPCs within a single region, AWS Transit Gateway offers a centralized routing hub. This allows all VPCs to connect through a single Interconnect attachment, enabling traffic segmentation, consistent routing policies, and the integration of advanced security services like AWS Network Firewall for deep packet inspection at the cloud boundary.

For organizations operating at a global scale, with workloads distributed across numerous AWS Regions and multiple Google Cloud environments, AWS Cloud WAN extends this model across the world. Cloud WAN provides a unified global network, allowing any region within the network to reach any Interconnect attachment globally. This is achieved with centralized policy management and segment-based routing that applies consistently across all operational footprints, simplifying global network management and ensuring consistent connectivity performance. These advanced architectural patterns are further detailed in specialized AWS blog posts, providing comprehensive guidance for enterprise-grade multicloud deployments.

AWS Interconnect – Last Mile: Extending the Cloud to the Edge

Complementing its multicloud capabilities, AWS Interconnect – last mile offers a parallel solution for connecting on-premises or remote locations to AWS. Built on the same architectural principles and design ethos as its multicloud counterpart, Last Mile allows enterprises to establish private connections through participating network providers’ last-mile infrastructure directly from the AWS Management Console.

The onboarding experience for Last Mile mirrors the simplicity of Multicloud: customers select a network provider, authenticate, and specify their desired connection endpoints and bandwidth. AWS then generates an activation key, which is provided to the chosen network provider to finalize the configuration. A key advantage of Last Mile is its automated provisioning capabilities. It automatically sets up four redundant connections, distributed across two physical locations, ensuring robust high availability. Furthermore, it configures Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing and activates both MACsec encryption and Jumbo Frames by default. This comprehensive automation delivers a resilient private connection to AWS that adheres to networking best practices, all without requiring the customer to manually configure intricate networking components.

AWS Interconnect – last mile supports a wide range of bandwidths, from 1 Gbps up to 100 Gbps, with the flexibility to adjust bandwidth directly from the console without requiring a full reprovisioning process. The service comes with a robust 99.99% availability SLA, extending up to the Direct Connect port. Similar to Multicloud, it bundles CloudWatch Network Synthetic Monitor for continuous connection health monitoring. Last Mile connections attach to a Direct Connect Gateway, which can then connect to a Virtual Private Gateway, Transit Gateway, or an AWS Cloud WAN deployment, providing flexibility for integration into various network topologies.

Industry partners have quickly recognized the value of this new offering. Scott Yow, SVP Product at Lumen Technologies, commented on the significance of AWS Interconnect – last mile: "By combining AWS Interconnect – last mile with Lumen fiber network and Cloud Interconnect, we simplify the last-mile complexity that often slows cloud adoption and enable a faster, and more resilient path to AWS for customers." This sentiment highlights the service’s potential to accelerate cloud migration and hybrid cloud adoption by removing a significant barrier. Lumen is the initial partner for Last Mile, with additional major network providers such as AT&T and Megaport already in progress, signaling a growing ecosystem of support.

Pricing, Availability, and Future Outlook

The pricing model for both AWS Interconnect – multicloud and AWS Interconnect – last mile is based on a flat hourly rate for the requested capacity, billed pro-rata by the hour. Customers select the bandwidth tier that best suits their workload requirements. For multicloud connections, pricing can vary by region pair, reflecting the underlying network infrastructure costs; for instance, a connection between US East (N. Virginia) and Google Cloud N. Virginia will be priced differently than a connection to a more distant region. When utilizing AWS Cloud WAN for global routing, traffic traversing multiple regions will impact the total cost. AWS strongly recommends reviewing the detailed pricing pages for both AWS Interconnect – multicloud and AWS Interconnect – last mile to understand the full rate card by region pair and capacity tier before sizing connections.

AWS Interconnect – multicloud is currently available in five strategic region pairs: US East (N. Virginia) to Google Cloud N. Virginia, US West (N. California) to Google Cloud Los Angeles, US West (Oregon) to Google Cloud Oregon, Europe (London) to Google Cloud London, and Europe (Frankfurt) to Google Cloud Frankfurt. The phased rollout strategy indicates a deliberate expansion into key geographical and economic hubs. As previously mentioned, Microsoft Azure support is slated for later in 2026, followed by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), broadening the multicloud ecosystem.

AWS Interconnect – last mile initially launched in US East (N. Virginia) with Lumen Technologies as the foundational partner. The planned integration of additional partners like AT&T and Megaport, alongside the expansion into further regions, signifies AWS’s commitment to making seamless hybrid connectivity universally accessible.

This comprehensive launch positions AWS as a pivotal enabler of the modern enterprise’s hybrid and multicloud strategy. By abstracting away the inherent complexities of network configuration and management, AWS Interconnect empowers organizations to build more resilient, secure, and performant architectures, freeing up critical engineering talent to focus on innovation and business value. The strategic implications are far-reaching, potentially accelerating digital transformation initiatives across industries and setting new standards for interoperability in the cloud era. Organizations eager to explore these new capabilities can get started by visiting the AWS Direct Connect console and selecting AWS Interconnect from the navigation menu, marking a new chapter in simplified, high-performance cloud connectivity.