For most organizations, IT is not a zero sum game. There rarely is a one-size-fits-all approach that can accommodate the wide variety of applications, resources, and services used by most businesses at enterprise scale.
The reality for most companies is that a hybrid cloud approach works best, enabling a balance between public, private, and hybrid cloud resources as well as on-prem infrastructure that can handle the multitude of applications that power the business.
When it comes to making a hybrid cloud strategy successful, one area can either stymie digital transformation or turbocharge performance to deliver new levels of agility – that area is the network.
Connecting and securing the wide array of applications and services hosted across public and private clouds can be a complex challenge. That’s why Alika Cloud Networking as a Service has proven to be such a game changer for even the largest multinational organizations.
The Alkira solution dramatically simplifies networking across all these different resource pools and clouds, and provides a holistic solution with no agents to manage or additional infrastructure overhead to maintain.
Need to boost your Hybrid Cloud strategy? Start with the Network.
Cloud-first, Single-cloud, Hybrid Cloud – A wide range of strategies
A single-purpose software company that only needs to manage a few key services might readily embark on a cloud-first, and cloud-only approach.
On the other hand, a different app developer with limited scope may find that racking and stacking bare metal appliances in a data center works best for their use case. This type of organization might loudly claim to be fully on-prem, with no cloud utilization.
The majority of enterprise IT departments do not have the luxury of being dogmatic in their approach. Tasked with supporting multiple mission-critical applications and resources, the reality of many businesses is that of hybrid cloud.
The hybrid cloud reality for most is that some resources will live on-prem, others moved to the cloud. Oftentimes, the hybrid reality introduces multi-cloud to an IT environment, whether by choice or by external forces like M&A or non-IT activities.
Depending on the needs of the business, circumstances may call for hosting an app in one public cloud provider and hosting another in a different cloud provider. Also, there may be instances when repatriating specific applications out of the cloud and back to on-prem infrastructure provides a benefit.
At the same time, mission-critical applications that were never thought of as cloud candidates may now actually be more affordable, scalable, and resilient when migrated to the cloud.
The key to successfully making a hybrid cloud model work for your business is agility. Having the flexibility to utilize the full portfolio of technologies available to the business, from data center racks to multi-cloud environments, gives IT the utmost in choice and cost flexibility.
Put Cloud Networking at the center of your Hybrid Cloud strategy
Alkira delivers the industry’s first and only Cloud Networking as a Service (NaaS). The Alkira solution helps customers connect resources to the cloud, operate more efficiently in the cloud, and expand their scale across multi-region and multi-cloud environments.
While Alkira has built cloud networking in the cloud, for the cloud era, the majority of Alkira customers are engaged in a hybrid cloud strategy. They’re using Alkira to connect vast SD-WAN deployments, branch and remote offices, remote workers, globally distributed mobile workforces, data centers, colocation facilities, and more.
No matter the deployment model – from a cloud-first strategy to one that heavily relies on physical infrastructure – modernizing the connectivity that unites it all with Alkira Cloud Networking removes complexity and delivers agility, making true hybrid deployments and digital transformation much more achievable.
Figure 1: Alkira Cloud Networking as-a-Service enables complete end-to-end segmentation, perfect for supporting hybrid ecosystems utilizing public and private cloud resources, remote users, partners, SD-WAN fabrics, data centers, and more.
The power of simplicity to do advanced things
Alkira helps customers with a wide range of cloud strategies to save time, better control costs, and simplify networking for the cloud era. The core attribute of the Alkira solution is simplicity. By dramatically simplifying the steps needed to design and deploy a cloud network, and giving IT leaders an unmatched selection of security and analytics services, Alkira cloud networking forms the centerpiece of dynamic public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.
Alkira is the only cloud networking solution that does not introduce additional infrastructure overhead to manage. The solution is completely agentless, without the need for virtual nodes to be configured, deployed, and managed on every VPC or VNet. This immediate reduction in complexity gives businesses the most valuable of business outcomes- agility.
Agility is key for a successful hybrid solution to be effective at enterprise scale. The ability to gain end-to-end visibility and control over all aspects of the cloud network, from edge to core to cloud.
Whether your goal is getting to the cloud, operating more efficiently within the cloud, or scaling to multi-cloud environments, Alkira cloud networking gives you the holistic solution you need to unify connectivity and transform your business. Alkira forms the centerpiece of innovation for many global hybrid cloud environments, and has helped customers quickly move data centers, migrate applications from one public cloud to another, or repatriate public cloud applications to new private clusters.
The combination of flexibility, agility, and control provided by Alkira is what makes it a special ingredient in the most forward-looking and transformational hybrid cloud strategies.
Schedule a demo today to see how Alkira Cloud Networking as a Service can empower and accelerate your hybrid cloud journey.
