Solutions > Best Office 365 Connectivity

Microsoft Office 365 and Zscaler. Better Together.

Zscaler for Office 365 has been designed from the ground up to
work flawlessly with Microsoft Office 365.

While Microsoft discusses four network concepts for O365 connectivity, there’s one conclusion for best performance and cost savings. direct internet. What does direct internet mean? There are four principles:

1

Identify and differentiate Office 365 traffic

From Office ProPlus to SharePoint to Skype – understand which apps you’re using and how much bandwidth they consume. This is the traffic you must optimize separately from other traffic.

zscaler msPartner page 0365 traffic icon

How Zscaler Helps

Zscaler one-click configuration automatically optimizes your O365 traffic. Built to work seamlessly with Office 365 endpoint web service, Zscaler automatically gets updates on Microsoft cloud changes and allows you to prioritize all O365 ports and protocols through the Zscaler cloud.

How Zscaler Helps
2

Egress network connections locally

Send all your Office 365 app traffic directly to the internet locally and don’t route it through a central gateway.

Egress network connections locally

How Zscaler Helps

The Zscaler Cloud platform enables fast, secure connections to Microsoft Office 365 over the internet directly. You improve application performance and the user experience by avoiding the added latency of backhauling and hub-and-spoke networks. And with local DNS, Zscaler always enables the fastest connection no matter the global location of the user.

Egress network connections locally
3

Assess bypassing proxies

Microsoft recommends not sending O365 traffic through your security appliances. This can trigger costly throughput upgrades, creates latency, and hinders performance.

Assess bypassing proxies

How Zscaler Helps

Per Microsoft’s recommendations, Office 365 shouldn’t be inspected. However, with Zscaler Cloud Firewall, Bandwidth Control and CASB, you get control over traffic flows, app usage and traffic prioritization. And with the Zscaler Security Platform, you get airtight security for the rest of your internet traffic over your direct connections.

4

Avoid network hairpins

Make sure your remote users go directly to Microsoft. VPN hairpins add far too much latency, which kills the user experience.

Avoid network hairpins

How Zscaler Helps

Zscaler Client Connector (formerly Zscaler App) enables remote users to go directly to Microsoft, without having to VPN back to a hub-and-spoke architecture. This provides the fastest path to Microsoft and enables the best application performance.

Deploy in minutes. No hardware or expertise needed.

With Zscaler one-click and a simple tunnel from your edge router, customers can deploy Office 365 far quicker than more complex traditional methods. The Zscaler Cloud automatically provisions Office 365 connections, and direct peering with Microsoft across the globe always delivers the fastest connection. With no hardware or administration requirements needed, organizations can easily deploy thousands of locations in no time!

Suggested Resources

Solution brief

See how Zscaler enables Office 365 connectivity

eBook

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Survivor’s Guide

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