Gulf Bridge International’s partnership with Microsoft provides secure connectivity to Microsoft’s Azure ExpressRoute, supporting regional cloud adoption

Gulf Bridge International (GBI), a high-performance, low-latency global connectivity provider, and Microsoft have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will support regional cloud adoption amongst key organisations in the region, as witnessed by GBI’s Chairman H.E. Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

The strategic partnership will enable organisations to gain faster access to the Microsoft Azure Cloud, availing high performance, security and compliance to better transform their business operations.

GBI is an ExpressRoute connectivity partner, that enables customers to benefit from low latency and private cloud connectivity. This guarantees a highly available and secure solution, that delivers a quality digital experience for mission-critical workloads. GBI’s customers and partners alike, benefit from a connection to the Cloud and connections across the globe with the lowest latency times between the region and Europe.

“We are continually exploring new ways to optimise digital experiences for enterprises, and our partnership with Microsoft represents one of the many milestones taken on GBI’s transformation journey,” said Abdulla Al Rwaili, executive director and managing director at GBI. “The partnership will enable organisations of all kinds to make the move to the cloud with confidence and provide a foundation for digital transformation. We look forward to enabling more organisations to benefit from the flexibility and agility of the cloud.”

Microsoft’s Azure ExpressRoute allows organisations to create private connections between the Azure Cloud and infrastructure on-premises or in a colocation environment. These connections do not go over the public internet, thus offering greater reliability, faster speeds, lower latencies, and higher security than typical Internet connections. Leveraging ExpressRoute connections to transfer data between on-premises systems and Azure has been known to yield drastic cost benefits.

“Our partnership with GBI is another step forward in enhancing connectivity across the country and access to the cloud.” Said Lana Khalaf, country manager, Microsoft Qatar. “As Microsoft ExpressRoute partner for Azure, GBI will provide fast and secure connectivity to customers with access to Microsoft cloud and accelerate their digital transformation journeys.”

GBI’s Cloud Connectivity solutions are built on industry-standard software-defined wide-area network (SDWAN) technology, allowing enterprises to control, manage, and monitor their network. GBI’s advanced SDWAN quality of service and application-aware options enables enterprises to allocate bandwidth to mission critical applications, providing increased flexibility and scalability.