By Amir Khan
Dec 2, 2020
Infrastructure-as-a-service and software-as-a-service have changed the game for enterprise IT. Storage, servers, applications, and IT resources now reside in the cloud, where any authorized user can access them from just about any web browser. This has stripped much of the cost, complexity, and rigidity out of enterprise computing, enabling business agility. So why don’t we have the same concept for cloud networking?
At Alkira we foresaw that cloud networking would only be truly valuable when complexity, cost and provisioning times were reduced. We thought, why not provision an entire cloud network within minutes to meet all of your existing on-premises, data center and multi- or hybrid-cloud requirements?
We just achieved that goal with the Network Cloud and we are expanding it with today’s launch of Cloud Backbone as-a-Service (CBaaS).
Now there is no need for investment in time and cost to create your own agile WAN infrastructure. With Alkira, you can easily consume cloud networking as a service, as you need it, pay only for what you consume, and flex your network within minutes to stay ahead of the unique business challenges that you see in your market.
Unleashing your cloud network to meet your real needs
WAN remains complex, expensive, time-consuming and capital-intensive to build and secure the network infrastructure you need for your individual cloud environment.
Alternatives to legacy technologies continue to prevail but they don’t address the real challenge of cloud networking, which is to provide instantaneity, complete control and flexibility over cloud networking.
For example, SD-WAN drives many business networks today, but they can be quite complex to deploy and secure the cloud networks. Those networks take specialist effort to roll out, coupled with attendant cost. They function very well, but wouldn’t it be better to have control over cost and speed of connectivity at your fingertips through a portal? Where you can simply see and quickly decide the IT pathway for your company rather than relying on conventional wisdom to dictate your strategy?
We founded Alkira knowing that innovating an as-a-service model for cloud networking would simplify the complexity, reduce cost and make it easier for you to respond to real-time dynamics you see in your own business sector. You know best, we just want to get you there at the speed of business.
Earlier this year, we unveiled our on-demand Cloud Network-as-a-Service (CNaaS) to extend cloud connectivity to any network.
Our solution is the first unified, on-demand, multi-cloud offering. It empowers networking professionals to build and operate a network as a utility, and now we have extended that to providing a cloud networking service as a backbone connectivity solution.
World’s first Cloud Backbone-as-a-Service
This is not a legacy, hardware-driven solution rebadged with an as-a-service label. Our Network Cloud eliminates network infrastructure by enabling you to easily deploy a cloud service with drag-and-drop simplicity. You can provision networks and integrate security through the Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) marketplace.
We reduced multi-cloud network provisioning times from months to minutes, driving as-a-service consumption, granular billing, a unified view of the network, and enterprise-grade security.
Today, we announce the next step in our strategy to enable secure, on-demand connectivity everywhere with the first Cloud Backbone as-a-Service (CBaaS). This offering is a global high-speed, low-latency backbone that interconnects users, sites, and clouds with segmentation. In practical terms, this means you can now expand backbone network capacity and connectivity for every site on-demand – no CAPEX, legacy hardware builds, or specialist training required.
The Alkira CBaaS is the first highly available, high-bandwidth, low-latency layer 3 backbone that can be built by you and your laptop, globally, in minutes. It has integrated network and security services and supports full segmentation capabilities, comprehensive routing controls, built-in path redundancy, multihoming support, and loop avoidance.
Now you have access to a cloud network with zero upfront costs that really behaves like the cloud – but more importantly, behaves as your business strategy requires it to. No longer do you need to work around the different networking constructs and dependencies of each cloud.
I invite you to set up a demo with our team. It takes less than 30 minutes, and you’ll see how it can be possible to deploy backbone network services as nearly quickly and easily as setting a team up with Zoom.
