Many organizations rely on more than one cloud provider, but networking these different environments can be a major headache. Without effective multicloud connectivity, enterprises face the risk of cloud deployments failing to deliver and alarming gaps in security. Integrated multicloud networking solutions, on the other hand, let organizations seamlessly and securely connect all their cloud and on-premises resources and manage them through a single platform.
A multicloud strategy means using more than one public cloud provider. It’s an approach that’s becoming increasingly common: Over half (55%) of organizations using hybrid cloud have more than one public cloud service.
Enterprises might use different cloud providers for different apps or purposes (an organization might run its CRM apps in AWS, and AI and analytics in Azure, for example).
Some organizations are taking this idea even further. We’re now seeing the introduction of cross-cloud strategies, where individual applications and workloads are spread across more than one cloud. This allows organizations to boost reliability, since applications will still function if one cloud goes down, and to dynamically take advantage of price changes.
Networking Multiple Clouds Isn’t Easy
In many multicloud setups, apps running in different clouds need to continuously send data to each other over the network (imagine an e-commerce platform, for example, communicating with CRM and ERP systems).
Traditional hub-and-spoke network architectures aren’t practical in a multicloud environment. Using a data center as an intermediary connectivity hub between clouds, for example, can introduce excessive latency that affects user experience and degrades apps’ performance.
Instead, multicloud strategies need direct connectivity between clouds, and between clouds and on-premises resources. These direct links are particularly important for cross-cloud strategies, since distributed applications or workloads need to communicate seamlessly and with low latency across the different host clouds.
Most cloud providers offer direct links between corporate locations and clouds, but direct connectivity services between clouds are less common, and availability varies significantly by region and provider. Directly connecting clouds to each other via VPN is an alternative, but this can be expensive and may not provide enough bandwidth for effective data flows.
It’s possible to connect clouds and other resources with a patchwork of individual services from different providers, then, but this fragmentation can stand squarely in the way of cloud success.
Complexity Impacts Performance and Security, and It’s a Hard Slog
Managing a hodgepodge of different networking services is a heavy burden for IT teams.
Each cloud provider has a different approach to networking and security, requiring different tools, skill sets, and technical solutions, and the situation only gets worse as more clouds are added to the enterprise infrastructure.
This complexity and lack of consistency can affect performance and increase the likelihood of downtime. Less than half (49%) of organizations, for example, say it’s straightforward to route traffic across multiple cloud providers, and only slightly more (54%) say load balancing is very or somewhat easy.
It also prevents enterprises from having full visibility of their networks, making it difficult to troubleshoot issues, maximize performance, and make sure infrastructure is as cost-efficient as possible.
Perhaps most worryingly, though, this complexity makes it extremely difficult to apply consistent security policies and identify and close vulnerabilities that cyber criminals could exploit.
More than half (55%) of organizations say that securing cloud environments is more complex than securing on-premises venues, and multicloud strategies only increase the attack surface. This makes regulatory compliance more of a challenge too.
Multicloud Networking Unleashes Clouds’ Potential
Instead of outdated network architectures or patchwork solutions, multicloud networking platforms offer a simpler and more holistic approach.
Multicloud networking platforms allow enterprises to directly connect all their clouds with each other and with on-premises resources, and manage all these connections through a single platform. For example, all sites on an enterprise WAN could connect to the cloud using a single transit gateway, while clouds are connected directly to each other without the need for unnecessary backhaul.
Many multicloud networking platforms are built on SD-WAN. SD-WAN cuts through complexity by standardizing the entire network infrastructure and centralizing control of many different connectivity types across all enterprise locations and resources.
SD-WAN automatically routes and prioritizes network traffic to provide the quality of service cloud demands, boost the performance of apps and services, and improve user experience.
It also gives enterprises full visibility of network traffic and performance across all connections. As a result, it’s far easier for organizations to:
• Troubleshoot problems
• Proactively increase or reallocate capacity to handle spikes in cloud traffic
• Resolve issues before they impact users
• Increase network cost-effectiveness
A consistent, software-defined network environment reduces configuration errors and provides enterprises with redundant connectivity and automatic failover options. This increases the network’s reliability and stops workloads and employees from being affected if individual links fail.
Multicloud Networking Helps Secure a Disparate Network Environment
A multicloud networking solution based on a standardized, software-defined architecture creates a consistent security environment across the whole network. This makes it much easier to identify and tackle vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, detect and mitigate attacks, and meet regulatory compliance requirements.
Zero trust and SASE frameworks enforce continuous authentication across all connections, strengthening security across complex multicloud networks and limiting the damage that attackers can inflict if there’s a breach.
At a Glance: Why Choose Multicloud Networking?
• High performance and low latency for demanding cloud applications
• Greater network reliability and comprehensive visibility for troubleshooting
• A consistent, robust security environment
• Simpler management of all network connections through a single platform
• Easier for the network to scale up as cloud use grows
A multicloud networking approach, then, provides a flexible, secure, and consistent network environment regardless of an enterprise’s location or cloud provider, and most importantly, it’s ready to support future cloud ambitions.
Multicloud Networking Helps Secure a Disparate Network Environment
How did a major healthcare provider transform network performance and user productivity and lay the foundations for multicloud migration? Find out.