Office 365 apps open many concurrent connections—up to a dozen or more per user— which overwhelms MPLS links and appliances, resulting in a terrible user experience and driving costly upgrades. And if you’re planning on using productivity apps like SharePoint and Skype, their performance may be impeded by the latency added by centralized gateways.
Using Office 365 with ExpressRoute may seem like a reasonable solution, but ExpressRoute drives up deployment costs significantly, and it’s complex to configure and manage. So much so that Microsoft requires an in-depth customer review process of up to six months before use. And as your Office 365 traffic grows, you’re stuck with a costly bandwidth scaling model.
From the Office ProPlus, to SharePoint, to Skype—you need to understand which apps you’re using and how much bandwidth they consume. This is the traffic you must optimize separately from other traffic.
Send all your Office 365 app traffic directly to the internet locally and don’t route it through a central gateway. This reduces latency and MPLS costs, and provides the best performance for users.
Send all your Office 365 app traffic directly to the internet locally and don’t route it through a central gateway. This reduces latency and MPLS costs, and provides the best performance for users.
For Office 365 traffic, Microsoft recommends bypassing your security appliances. Such appliances can hinder latency and performance, and can trigger costly throughput upgrades.
Make sure your remote users go directly to Microsoft. VPN hairpins add far too much latency, which kills the user experience.
Make sure your remote users go directly to Microsoft. VPN hairpins add far too much latency, which kills the user experience.
Fully compliant with Microsoft’s recommendations for Office 365 connectivity
Get faster connections for Office 365 apps, including latency-sensitive apps like Skype and SharePoint
Scale elastically to user traffic demands and avoid the hassle of bandwidth planning
Easily deployed, requiring no hardware and no costly appliance upgrades
Access Control
• Cloud Firewall
• URL Filtering
• Bandwidth Control
• DNS Filtering
Threat Prevention
• IPS and Advanced Protection
• Cloud Sandbox
• Antivirus
• DNS Security
Data Protection
• Data Loss Prevention
• Cloud Apps (CASB)
• File Type Controls
ExpressRoute: Save on expensive ExpressRoute charges by going direct on more affordable ISP connections
MPLS: Shield your MPLS backhaul spend from the explosive growth of Office 365 user traffic
Administration: Eliminate the overhead of administering Office 365 connection rules—Zscaler one-click configuration automatically adjusts and implements Microsoft changes for you
Gateway: Zscaler automatically scales with your Office 365 traffic and helps you avoid time-consuming and costly gateway hardware refreshes
Performance: The Zscaler cloud enables a fast, consistent, and secure direct connection to Microsoft, and it elastically scales to connection demands.
Collaboration: Zscaler Cloud Firewall enables full control across all ports on your direct internet links, which allows you to confidently embrace O365’s powerful collaboration tools, including low-latency voice and video apps like Skype and Teams
With hundreds of retail and corporate locations, AutoNation, America’s largest auto retailer and a Fortune 500 company, was looking to deploy Office 365 companywide. They knew that routing Office 365 traffic through their gateway was impractical, and so was deploying stacks of security appliances across all their 360 locations. Resolving to route Office 365 traffic directly over the internet, AutoNation turned to Zscaler to enable fast, secure directinternet connections.
• Great user experience with direct connections, even for Office 365 audio and video applications, like Skype
• Significant reduction in administrative costs, with no need for large capital outlays
• Local DNS provides the fastest connection path no matter the location
• One-click configuration automatically tracks and implements Office 365 connectivity updates
• Office 365 dashboard visibility enables full analysis of traffic usage and patterns
• Zscaler Cloud Firewall provides complete control on direct internet links, across all ports and protocols
• Zscaler Bandwidth Control lets AutoNation prioritize Office 365 traffic and cap or throttle other traffic
• Improve security while eliminating the cost and complexity of appliances
• Deliver a fast user experience with secure local internet breakouts
• Secure SD-WAN deployments and minimize MPLS costs
• Migrate to Office 365 and public cloud services like Azure and AWS