Amazon and Google have quietly moved from competing over cloud customers to cooperating on the plumbing that connects them: the two companies announced a jointly developed multicloud networking service that lets organizations spin up private, high‑speed links between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud in minutes instead of weeks, promising lower latency, stronger encryption, and a managed cloud‑to‑cloud experience aimed squarely at enterprises running multicloud architectures.
Background
The announcement follows a string of high‑visibility reliability and resilience debates after a major AWS outage in October 2025 that exposed just how fragile internet‑scale dependencies can be for businesses and services. That outage—traced to cascading control‑plane and DNS problems—left thousands of sites affected and sharpened enterprise appetite for faster, private cross‑cloud connections and simpler, more predictable failover patterns. Technically, the new offering pairs AWS’s new Interconnect – multicloud capability with Google Cloud’s Cross‑Cloud Interconnect (partner Cross‑Cloud Interconnect for AWS), creating a managed, private transport that automates much of the manual circuit provisioning and routing historically required for cross‑cloud networking. Both vendors describe the specification as an open, cloud‑native API that other providers can adopt, signalling an attempt to standardize cloud‑to‑cloud networking rather than keep it vendor‑specific.What the service actually is — a technical overview
The components and how they map to existing services
- AWS Interconnect – multicloud (Preview): a managed product inside the AWS networking portfolio that provides dedicated, private links from an AWS VPC/Transit Gateway/Cloud WAN to other cloud providers, with pre‑built capacity pools and automation to simplify provisioning. AWS emphasizes privacy (encryption on physical links), integration with existing AWS networking constructs, and operational support owned by the providers.
- Google Partner Cross‑Cloud Interconnect for AWS: Google’s expansion of Cloud Interconnect that lets customers create private, on‑demand connections between Google VPCs and AWS VPCs in supported paired locations, with the service offered via Google’s partner ecosystem and designed to be provisioned through Google Console or APIs. Google documents the feature as being available in preview with bandwidth options and an aim to eliminate complex manual steps.
Key technical claims vendors are making
- Provisioning windows cut from weeks to minutes via managed APIs and pre‑staged capacity pools. This reduces lead time for migrations and temporary high‑bandwidth needs.
- Traffic confidentiality and integrity are protected using link‑level encryption (MACsec is explicitly mentioned on the AWS product page).
- Bandwidth flexibility: Google’s blog highlights preview bandwidth starting at 1 Gbps and scaling toward 100 Gbps at GA, while AWS describes dedicated capacity pools and a single attachment model that represents network capacity to another CSP. Exact GA throughput SKUs and global region availability remain in preview and will be productised over time.
- Redundancy and resiliency: the design leverages physically redundant interconnect facilities and routers and claims provider‑side monitoring and quad‑redundancy in core paths; these are intended to reduce single‑point failures in mid‑span or at exchange points. Customers should still validate region‑level redundancy in their architectures.
Why this matters now: context and market drivers
- Multicloud is not a philosophy any more — it’s operational reality. Enterprises increasingly split workloads across providers to match technical requirements (e.g., Google’s Vertex AI or TPUs, AWS’s broad managed services, and regional pricing or contract advantages). A simpler private link between clouds reduces friction for data mobility, burst compute, and disaster recovery.
- Outage risk and operational complexity drove demand. The October AWS incident made visible the cost of single‑provider failure modes and increased interest in architectures that can fail over across providers — but doing this across public internet links introduces latency, egress unpredictability and security concerns. A managed private option directly addresses these pain points.
- Regulatory and commercial pressure is encouraging more open multicloud mechanisms. Google and others have previously reduced or eliminated some intra‑cloud transfer fees in parts of the world and have publicly argued for more portability. Standardized networking APIs and cross‑provider specifications speak to that broader movement.
Strengths: where the new service delivers immediately
- Speed of deployment: Provisioning in minutes is a major operational win for migration projects, temporary high‑throughput tasks (bulk data ingestion, model training), and disaster‑recovery drills. For enterprises, shorter provisioning cycles reduce project lead time and lower operational friction.
- Security by design: Provider‑managed physical encryption (MACsec on the AWS side) and dedicated paths reduce exposure to public internet attacks and make compliance/attestation simpler for regulated workloads.
- Simplified network management: A single “attachment” that represents the capacity between clouds — combined with console/CLI provisioning — removes hours or days of manual cross‑vendor circuit engineering from the operations playbook. That reduces human error and accelerates time to production.
- Operational SLAs and monitoring owned by providers: When the providers jointly own capacity pools and monitoring, customers can expect coordinated incident response and fewer handoffs between carrier, colo, and cloud networking teams — though the precise SLA language will vary by contract.
- Immediate commercial use cases: Early adopters include large SaaS vendors that need deterministic links to multiple cloud providers for integrated services, analytics and AI pipelines. Salesforce has already been cited as an early user by the vendors.
Limitations and risks — technical, commercial and governance
Still‑unanswered operational questions
- Preview vs GA: Much of the public documentation is written from preview language. Bandwidth tiers, global availability, pricing mechanics, and support escalation pathways are not yet GA‑final. Buyers should treat early claims as subject to change and insist on testable commitments in contracts.
- Egress and billing complexity: While Google’s partner Cross‑Cloud Interconnect documentation references scenarios with no data transfer charges for traffic exchanged between Google and AWS in certain pairing contexts, the precise billing model, taxes, and third‑party partner fees will matter. Enterprises must validate whether “no charge” applies to their route, region, and interconnect model or whether it’s limited to specific previews or partners. Don’t assume universal fee elimination without contractual confirmation.
- SLA semantics when cross‑provider failures occur: Joint monitoring reduces finger‑pointing in theory, but customers must inspect whether remedies apply across multi‑provider failure modes or only to isolated underlay faults. Real‑world outages are often complex and involve control‑plane interactions that require coordinated debugging. The October AWS outage remains a reminder that provider coordination cannot entirely eliminate complex, systemic failure scenarios.
Security and compliance caveats
- Shared responsibility boundaries: Private links reduce exposure, but they do not eliminate the need for tenant‑side encryption, key management, and identity hygiene. Cross‑cloud routing policies and peering behavior must be audited.
- Data sovereignty and lawful access: Transporting regulated data between jurisdictions requires careful legal and compliance review. A private link may make movement easier, but it also creates a clear audit trail and potential jurisdictional exposure that legal teams must sign off on.
Strategic risks and market implications
- Vendor dynamics: Although this is a cooperative step, the hyperscalers still compete fiercely for higher‑margin managed services (AI runtimes, databases, identity). The new network layer lowers switching friction for some workloads, but customers remain exposed to lock‑in at the service and API level unless they design for portability.
- Regulatory attention: EU and UK regulators have been scrutinizing cloud competitiveness and portability. Any cross‑provider product that includes preferential pricing or opaque transfer rules may attract further regulatory interest. Buyers should watch how cloud‑to‑cloud arrangements interact with evolving rules on portability and fair access.
Practical guidance for WindowsForum readers and enterprise IT teams
Quick evaluation checklist (applies to pilot and procurement)
- Validate GA status for your chosen regions and ask for proof of capacity in the exact POPs/colos you use. Preview capacities do not guarantee future edge coverage.
- Run an isolated failover test with your app stack: ensure identity providers, certificates, and AD/Azure AD integrations survive a cross‑cloud failover. Test both connectivity and application integrity.
- Request detailed billing scenarios: ask for worked examples of cross‑cloud transfer costs, partner fees, and how traffic is measured in your billing cycle. Get commitments in writing.
- Confirm encryption and key‑management responsibilities. If the link uses MACsec or provider encryption, determine whether you also need application‑level encryption or customer‑managed keys.
- Map observability: ensure logs, metrics, and alerting are visible in your existing monitoring stacks (SIEM, APM). Ask how joint incidents are triaged and what escalation timelines apply.
For Windows admins specifically
- Windows Server and Azure AD integrations are widely used in hybrid enterprise stacks. If you rely on Azure AD, confirm the way authentication flows behave when fronting services across Google Cloud via a dedicated link; there are subtle behaviors around token lifetimes, conditional access and network location‑based policies that deserve testing.
- If you run SQL Server or Windows‑centric enterprise apps on AWS while using Google’s analytics/AI back end, pilot with a representative data pipeline to measure real replication latency and throughput under load. Expect performance gains over public internet links but quantify it for your workload.
Market impact: what this means for cloud competition and infrastructure
The announcement is strategically significant: it signals that the hyperscalers recognize customer demand for interoperable multicloud networking and are willing to codify that interoperability rather than make cross‑cloud connectivity a bespoke, expensive problem solved only by carriers or MSPs. That said, core product differentiation—managed databases, AI stacks, identity, and developer tools—remains where vendor competition lives. Standardized network APIs make multicloud patterns more practical, but they do not by themselves equalize higher‑layer lock‑in. Longer term, expect:- Faster migration projects and hybrid AI architectures that colocate model training on one cloud while running inference or analytics workloads on another.
- More joint technical specifications and possible community adoption of open networking interfaces for cloud‑to‑cloud links. The vendors have positioned the API spec as something others can adopt.
- Continued regulatory focus on how these arrangements affect competition, pricing and portability. Earlier moves to remove intra‑EU multicloud transfer fees and the EU Data Act opened the door to further scrutiny and potential mandates around portability.
Vendor claims vs verifiable facts — what to watch for during procurement
- Claim: “Provision in minutes” — verifiable through a paid pilot or lab test. Vendors can demonstrate this in their consoles; insist on a timed provisioning demo in your target region.
- Claim: “No data transfer charges” — caveated. Google documentation mentions no data transfer charges for certain partner Cross‑Cloud Interconnect exchanges, but billing treatments vary by region, partner model and preview vs GA. Always ask for a written accounting example and include potential partner resale fees.
- Claim: “Quad redundancy / provider‑owned monitoring” — this is a resilience design goal; verify the exact redundancy topology for the specific POPs and colo vendors you use, and test failover scenarios rather than assuming global coverage.
Conclusion
The AWS–Google Cloud multicloud networking announcement is a practical, defensive advance for enterprises moving toward multicloud architectures: it reduces the friction of private cloud‑to‑cloud connectivity, brings stronger link‑level security, and promises faster provisioning for cross‑cloud migrations and hybrid AI workloads. The move also marks a subtle but important industry shift — hyperscalers are preparing to treat cross‑cloud networking as a managed, standardized layer rather than leaving customers to stitch private circuits together in the field. At the same time, the offering is not a panacea. Preview status, regional availability, precise billing rules, SLA semantics, and the remaining risk of systemic outages all mean responsible teams must validate the service with pilots, contractual clarity, and staged rollouts. For Windows administrators and enterprise architects, the new service is an invitation: pilot practical multicloud failovers, measure the real latency and cost impacts on representative workloads, and lock the test results and SLA commitments into procurement before moving production traffic. The promise is real — simpler, faster, and more secure multicloud connectivity — but the payoff depends on rigorous testing, contract discipline, and clear operational playbooks.Source: The Hindu Amazon and Google launch multicloud service for faster connectivity
Source: Free Malaysia Today Amazon, Google launch multicloud service for faster connectivity
