7 Truths about Cloud Networking in the Modern Era
Imagine yourself settling into a first-class seat awaiting takeoff to your dream vacation destination. You relax in the spacious accommodation with ample legroom as a flight attendant prepares to serve your beverage once cruising altitude is reached. Often overlooked are the ground crew guiding the plane on the tarmac and the air traffic controllers orchestrating its entire flight path. While pilots and flight attendants get recognition, air traffic controllers remain the invisible professionals who ensure your safety without acknowledgment.
Cloud Computing Overshadows Cloud Networking
Cloud networking is akin to air traffic control, expertly directing data traffic and workloads between servers, regions, and services to guarantee seamless operation. Despite its importance, cloud networking often takes a backseat to cloud computing in conversations as servers and applications garner most of the attention. Rather than being a prerequisite step in any cloud migration or app deployment project, cloud networking has too often been an afterthought in the past. It is one of the truths about cloud networking. The reality however is that cloud network design and planning should be a fundamental first consideration. Let’s talk about some more truths.
In a perfect world, all clouds would be the same. They would all offer identical services and features with seamless interoperability and customers could use a single API for cloud integration. The reality is something different, however. Each cloud has different terminology, features and capabilities. There is the AWS Transit Gateway, the Azure Virtual WAN and the GCP Global VPC. How many networking professionals today even know what all three of those are?
The multi-cloud challenge goes far beyond terminology and feature differences. Today’s cloud offerings aren’t inherently designed to integrate with one another. Despite this limitation, companies must utilize multiple clouds to leverage their different strengths and capabilities. To bridge the communication gaps between multiple cloud environments, organizations are turning to third-party tools—ranging from firewalls and SDN overlays to DDI products and visibility tools. As long as companies rely on multiple clouds, they will depend on cloud networking to effectively route traffic and manage data flow between these disparate environments.
Cloud Networking is Rapidly Evolving
Cloud networking has evolved significantly from its early days as a basic connectivity model, which primarily relied on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to secure data transmission. In those days it was just about getting to the cloud. Today, it encompasses a much more complex and sophisticated framework, spanning multiple regions to ensure data and applications remain accessible and perform well anywhere in the world. In today’s zero-tolerance environment for service interruptions, cloud networking now emphasizes redundant connectivity to clouds and data centers. This prevents single failure points and keeps services running even during outages. Modern cloud networking also extends beyond basic traffic routing as it now incorporates sophisticated security capabilities, intelligent traffic orchestration, and comprehensive monitoring solutions. Like the cloud itself, cloud networking has matured greatly and continues to evolve.
Cloud Networking Requires a Different Skillset
There’s an undeniable reality that cloud environments fundamentally differ from on-premises infrastructure. Cloud networking accelerates service deployment by eliminating hardware procurement delays and physical troubleshooting requirements. The efficiencies are a major reason why companies are transitioning to cloud solutions.
However, networking skill sets don’t always make a smooth transition. Cloud networking presents a unique challenge, with distinct environments and terminology that can vary significantly between cloud providers. Network professionals must become fluent in provider-specific concepts like AWS VPCs and Azure Virtual Networks. While cloud vendors have made efforts to educate customers on these new concepts, many organizations rely on external cloud networking experts to bridge the knowledge gap and ensure a successful migration.
You Must Plan for the Long Haul
Nearly every IT professional has experienced post-implementation regret: “I wish we had planned for…” The reality is that cloud adoption follows a predictable pattern—once organizations begin experiencing cloud benefits, demand invariably expands. Even if your initial project is a small use case, make your network design flexible enough to accommodate multiple clouds and regions because you are bound to grow. Invest in scalability and resiliency frameworks from the outset, rather than retrofitting these critical capabilities later.
Location, Location, Location
The 3 locations are a real estate mantra, and one that you should follow as well. In this context, location refers to the strategic placement of data centers or interconnection facilities near cloud providers to minimize latency and enhance connectivity. Proximity enables faster data processing and analysis, reducing communication delays and improving overall performance.
You also need an on-ramp strategy that will ensure an easy and efficient way to connect to cloud services. Hybrid and multi-cloud architectures often require a combination of technologies or services to serve as a “bridge” that integrates different cloud environments. This bridging approach can incorporate connectivity solutions from providers like Equinix and Megaport to enhance secure, high-performance interconnectivity. These solutions provide some type of virtual routing service to deliver low-latency connectivity across the major cloud providers, thus eliminating the need for physical infrastructure.
Evolving Solutions can Assist
Here’s one more truth: Evolving Solutions brings deep expertise in cloud design, best practices, reliability, and performance. We integrate security at every layer of your cloud network, leveraging advanced security tools to protect your resources and visibility tools to monitor everything. With a strong foundation in on-prem data centers and edge computing, our experts can help you seamlessly connect and optimize your hybrid environment. This is what we do—and we’ve been doing it for a long time. Let Evolving Solutions show you how to maximize the potential of your cloud infrastructure.
