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Last year we announced we were one of the first technology partners in the world to preview the Microsoft Azure Data Box – and now we can exclusively reveal that we were the first partner in Europe to preview Microsoft’s latest innovation, the Data Box Heavy.
The Azure Data Box is designed to transfer large amounts of data quickly and securely to the cloud. The new ‘Heavy’ edition allows for petabyte-sized offline transfers to Azure Storage.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been testing the rugged device, shipped from Microsoft’s West Europe data centre in the Netherlands, providing key feedback about the ordering and logistics process, hardware performance and general usability to Microsoft.
With 4 x 40 Gbps connectors, Azure Data Box Heavy allows for an entire data centre’s worth of data to be moved to Azure in just a few weeks, instead of the three years it would otherwise take over a network with 100 Mbps of available bandwidth.
As well as speed, the Data Box Heavy also has the benefit of security and traceability with built-in security protections for the device, data and the service.
To date, Automated Intelligence has employed the Azure Data Box for numerous customers, including moving a large UK Central Government Department to the Cloud and integrating data from Europe’s largest ever infrastructure project, Crossrail, to Transport for London’s (TfL) Cloud platforms.
We look forward to working with Microsoft in the future the employ the latest edition in the Data Box family. For more information on our Crossrail project, click here.
