The strategic collaboration between Lumen Technologies and Microsoft Corp. has become even more important in helping to overcome one of the biggest hurdles facing digital transformation and modern IT – which is connecting all of these disparate on-premise data resources, legacy infrastructure, and cloud to allow the deployment of enterprise-wide AI in large scale.
As predictive analytics, generative-AI applications, and agent workflows become more prevalent, critical networks are often left to be stitched together from on-premise data centers, various public clouds, branches, and edge endpoints. Connecting networks to cloud transformation initiatives extends the initial vision – allowing IT managers to tie their network capabilities to their AI strategy.
Lumen, a Microsoft partner, will leverage the Azure platform to expand delivery capabilities across Lumen’s fiber backbone, cloud infrastructure and service provider customers. “AI is transforming both where applications are deployed and how companies consume and transfer data,” said Katy Brown, corporate vice president, Americas Markets and Industries, at Microsoft. “With our work with Lumen, we’re working to help our customers better match their overall network transformation with their Azure cloud and AI goals.”
Also Read: fileAI Enters Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS to Accelerate Production-Ready AI Agents Across the Global BFSI Sector
Achieve effortless network connectivity by leveraging Azure
As part of the new co-sell program, the partners will develop joint enterprise account plans where migration to Microsoft Azure, WAN transformation and AI deployment intersect. Eventually, Lumen expects to embed its cloud networking and application transit service offerings into the Azure platform and Microsoft Marketplace, giving corporate IT buyers access to procurement options that utilize their existing cloud commitments.
Businesses already have the ability to deploy cloud-native network routing, segmentation and governance with the Lumen Connect platform built on the Azure Marketplace using Alkira, a core product of the platform, without the need to deploy appliances.
“Businesses are embracing AI at a rapid pace – but many are still exploring how to link data, apps and infrastructure behind it,” said Ryan Asdourian, chief strategy and marketing officer, Lumen. “Working with Microsoft, we’re bringing cloud, network and AI planning together earlier.”
Design Principles for the Age of AI
Tackle three key priorities for technical decision-makers jointly:
- High Throughput Connectivity for Distributed AI Data: Connect disparate corporate campuses, co-location facilities, and sovereign clouds to deliver load-balanced Azure-hosted AI content and modeling pipelines without latency.
- Apply the same security policies to the mix, automagically route traffic, and gain packet visibility into all of the different environments from a single management plane.
- Flexibility and Agility of Scale: Giving development and networking teams flexibility to add new cloud platforms, microservices, and ecosystem partners without treating every release as a unique engineering problem.
The go-to-market partnership expands on a multi-year relationship between the two companies. Last year, Lumen built its Private Connectivity Fabric to connect dedicated high-capacity fiber interconnections between Microsoft data centers while migrating critical internal workloads to Azure.
As the joint go-to-market plan progresses, both partners will explore the possibility of adding new enterprise procurement options and technical integrations via Microsoft Marketplace.