The data center has become a complicated conversation. What was once a contained and relatively straightforward environment is now hitting its limits. Ungoverned growth, multiple vendors and point solutions, and modern apps, such as AI, with increasing resource demands. This has led to:
- High-cost complexity and technical debt
- An executive-level focus on sustainability
- More business-critical workloads moving to cloud
Whether your plan is to permanently exit the data center, or you intend to continue with a hybrid IT landscape—what CompuNet often notices has been missing from these internal infrastructure discussions is the impact to the network. (We aim to change that.)
Cloud enables accelerated app development, on-demand scalability and built-in resiliency, and a managed, modern infrastructure. But most organizations, 89% in fact1, are multi-cloud. Unfortunately, it’s often late stage when the network team is brought in to address connectivity to and between clouds, when time is short and budget is all but spent. Some connectivity challenges teams face include:
- Native controls: Every cloud platform is unique, as are the configurations and controls for their network connections. This means you need people with cloud expertise—for every cloud environment. That’s a lot of overhead. It also means that DevOps has to depend on others to get apps connected, slowing time to market.
- Disjointed visibility: Clouds are inherently silos. Their management and visibility tools are limited to their own tech stack. Network or security teams looking for a horizontal view of the environment, or app owners that need to monitor app performance across layers and services, struggle to see what’s going on.
- Inconsistencies: Even if you could see everything crystal clear from end to end, enforcing consistent security and network policies across environments is nearly impossible without unrealistic manual effort.
- Missing insights: When you’re spread across environments you don’t control, understanding where costs are growing and why can be tricky. Networking egress fees are often an unwelcome surprise after an organization becomes invested in a cloud platform. Even with these fees being reconsidered by major cloud providers2, there are caveats and fine print, and visibility is still essential to understand application performance and end-to-end network health.
A New Opportunity with Multi-Cloud Networking
At CompuNet, we suggest clients view multi-cloud networking as an opportunity for developers and DevOps, security, and networking teams to rally around the table together. A multi-cloud network (MCN) is a third-party solution that overlays your distributed IT landscape and standardizes connectivity between data centers, clouds, and the edge. This provides the means to dramatically simplify network configuration and management and enables DevOps teams to deploy apps quickly, without having to understand native tooling for the destination cloud.
MCNs typically include a private backbone to provide secure, reliable connectivity between locations. This is useful if you have sensitive data, need more assurances around performance and user experience, or perhaps have unique requirements, like for more advanced encryption.
In summary, adopting MCN streamlines and accelerates your ability to deliver global connectivity at scale. But it doesn’t just have to be about connectivity; more full-features MCN solutions include security as well.
CompuNet and F5 for Multi-Cloud Networking
CompuNet understands the overarching challenges of multi-cloud connectivity. Our Multi-Cloud Networking and App Security services help our clients address networking early as part of their overall cloud and app deployment strategies. During engagements, we collaborate to understand business and technical needs to recommend the best-fit MCN solution that will stand the test of time.
Together with F5 Distributed Cloud Services platform, we can help you enforce intent -based policies across environments, monitor and troubleshoot your networks and apps through a single console, and enable collaboration across NetOps, SecOps, and DevOps.
Is MCN Right for You?
If you’re looking at too much complexity when it comes to connecting your clouds or aren’t sure where to start, CompuNet can help. Learn more about our Multi-Cloud Networking and App Security services.
Sources:
- Flexera, 2024 State of the Cloud
- Forrester, AWS Joins Google Cloud In Removing Egress Costs, Mar 2024
