The Microsoft Azure Peering Service (MAPS) is now live at London Internet Exchange (LINX) Nairobi, the interconnection hub in Kenya.
LINX is an official partner of Microsoft and has deployed this solution in London, Manchester and at their US interconnection hub, LINX NoVA, Northern Virginia.
One of only a handful of official partners delivering this service in Africa, the team at LINX are looking forward to providing further network solutions for the LINX Nairobi member community in Kenya.
LINX Product Development Manager, Mike Hellers, said: “We hadn’t anticipated rolling out additional services at LINX Nairobi so soon, but it’s encouraging how keen the local networks are for our services, they asked and we listened.
“The MAPS solution is a great fit for the ecosystem in Kenya. No minimum traffic levels, but the same great, low latency peering service, direct with Microsoft. We have welcomed a lot of interest from local Internet Services Providers (ISPs) for this service and plan on reaching out to Fintech and enterprise networks in the region soon too.,” added Hellers.
MAPS is a unique service that allows networks to improve connectivity with a direct connection to Microsoft (AS8075), enabling low-latency performance for end-user usage of services like Microsoft365, Dynamics365, Teams or any other Microsoft service accessible with the public Internet.
The introduction of MAPS follows close to a year since the official launch of LINX Nairobi back in November 2023. The IXP has welcomed a healthy selection of local ISPs as well as global carriers and much-anticipated content delivery networks like Meta.
