Somerville Group connects schools to Microsoft cloud

ISNet, the education division of Sydney-headquartered reseller Somerville Group, has revealed integration with Microsoft ExpressRoute to promise schools a low-latency, highly secure connection to the Microsoft public cloud.

The deal will allow ISNet – which stands for Independent Schools Network – to offer Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute to its client base. At least 35 percent of Somerville's business comes from the education sector, and it provides "a dedicated national secure network focused on the delivery of services to independent schools".

This means better outcomes for schools, company founder Craig Somerville told CRN. "With the integration of ExpressRoute into the Somerville/ISNet network, an On-net customer can now access their public cloud applications like Office 365 and Azure Services within a private network space, enabling us to bring it in behind the firewall and more importantly deliver predictable performance and latency.

"One of the biggest challenges with public cloud applications has been latency, now we can deliver predictable outcomes with SLAs attached," he added.

Given the sensitivity of schools' data, the ISNet ExpressRoute service promises privacy. "ExpressRoute connections do not go over the public internet and offer more reliability, faster speeds, lower latencies and higher security," according to a Somerville statement.

Microsoft Australia education director George Stavrakakis said: “Office 365 offers students, teachers and schools innovative and efficient new ways to inspire, engage and collaborate in and out of the classroom. We are delighted that ISNet is now offering ExpressRoute to its many customers and specifically to the education sector.”  

Direct connection to public cloud

A series of Australian data centre providers, including NextDC, Equinix and Telstra, have announced Azure ExpressRoute in recent times. ExpressRoute is the Microsoft equivalent of Amazon Web Services' DirectConnect and IBM SoftLayer's Direct Link, all of which guarantee high-speed connections from private clouds into the hyper-scale providers.

Somerville connects to Azure and Office 365 via AXONVX, the virtual exchange launched by publicly listed Australian provider NextDC in July.

According to NextDC, the advantages of AXONVX for IT integrators is that they can "rapidly orchestrate complex cloud solutions, stitch together cloud services and connectivity services, and access to all major cloud platforms through one platform".

Direct connections to public cloud are fast becoming essential services from data centre providers, with Digital Reality this week announcing 'Direct Link Colo' with IBM SoftLayer.