Cisco’s “Cloud OnRamp for Microsoft 365” sees Cisco working together with Microsoft to use Microsoft 365 informed network routing. Microsoft’s Informed network routing provides a bi-directional data sharing channel between Microsoft and the SD-WAN solution, in this case, Cisco. This data, along with proactive and continuous link probing allows Cisco SD-WAN to choose the best route for Office 365 traffic.
Cisco SD-WAN allows a network admin to utilize Microsoft URL categories granularity for categorizing the Microsoft 365 apps into Optimize, Allow, and Default categories. This allows Cisco SD-WAN customers to choose to bypass their data center and go straight to the internet for Office 365 for some or all services, which is usually the preferable route.
Cisco was the first networking vendor to support Microsoft 365 informed network routing, initially for Exchange. With the recent SD-WAN 20.7.x release, Cisco is further expanding support bring integration for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. They are the first vendor to do this. This is only supported on Cisco’s Viptela SD-WAN and not on Cisco Meraki currently.
Cisco SD-WAN is Microsoft Network Partner Program (NPP) certified and also a Microsoft 365 networking partner. As part of this program, Cisco SD-WAN aligns with Microsoft’s Connectivity Principles aimed at helping Microsoft 365 customers achieve optimal end-user experience.
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