A deep dive into cloud networking and how it can help your business to survive in post corona economy

The IT industry has been relying on local servers and systems for its infrastructure. However, this physical infrastructure setup occupies a lot of space and has to be maintained and updated individually. With security being a major concern, it becomes paramount for businesses to invest extensively in IT infrastructure, maintain every system and server, back them up on a regular basis and replace the obsolete hardware when required. According to a recent survey report, 96% of respondents said their company has been harmed by cloud security breaches, with the top issues reported as following:

Fig 1. Cloud Security Challenges

Moreover, it becomes crucial for IT departments to maintain track of new updates and software that will benefit the systems as even after investing a significant sum, businesses are required to refresh their gear every few years. The cost of replacing obsolete hardware with new hardware is not only wasteful for a corporation but also leads to the generation of e-waste (the discarded computer equipment, including circuit boards and other components).  This becomes a concern for the decision makers of a company — whether to opt for cloud networking or continue with traditional networking.

To avoid these challenges altogether, companies have switched to cloud-based networking as this approach reduces security threats and relieves businesses of the burden of regular infrastructure maintenance as the cloud service provider takes care of everything. Even though 90% of companies were on the cloud in 2019, this massive amount progressed by 4% in 2021. 

Also, choosing the right cloud provider is important as when connected to a public cloud network, the load balancer distributes the traffic evenly among multiple web servers to ensure smooth operation of the IT infrastructure and to avoid any overloading. So it is crucial for users to choose a cloud network provider that is reliable, and can handle data efficiently

Read on further to understand the significance of cloud networking and how businesses can benefit from it by opting for the public cloud services from a reliable cloud service provider.

Understanding Cloud Networking and its superiority over Traditional Networking

According to a recent estimate, the worldwide cloud networking and computing market size will reach $663 billion by 2024 as a result of growing technologies such as big data, AI, machine learning, data security, disaster recovery, and meeting compliance requirements.

Fig 2. Global Cloud Market Size

Cloud networking refers to network services and resources that are hosted on a public or private cloud platform and are either managed on-premises or by an external source. Organizations can either use:

• Cloud-enabled networking, where some or all of the networking resources like security, maintenance, and network management are hosted on the cloud while the server itself is on-premises. Example of cloud-enabled networking is using a cloud-based firewall to protect a non-cloud computer network.
• Cloud-based networking, where all the features, resources, as well as the server are on the cloud. Example of cloud-based networking is moving your in-house application to any cloud server.

Cloud networking technology enables speed and automation and improves the performance of the entire networking setup. As cloud networking is all about providing virtual hardware, customers can choose exactly what they need for the task, while upgrading and downgrading is effortless. It offers better flexibility, security, and administrative simplicity. 

On the other hand, a traditional network might provide enhanced security from data breaches, but its infrastructure gradually fails over time to bridge the security gaps. It is also slow to use and hard to manage as it is built on old and rigid commands and consoles. It even fails to meet the latest networking requirements like server virtualization, data center management, dynamic scalability, and handling of large network traffic. In the traditional networking set-up, when one component becomes obsolete, the entire system fails as the components depend on one another.

To sum it up, the two infrastructures are different in the following ways:

How can your business benefit from cloud networking? 

When you use on-premise servers, you run into issues like scalability and regular maintenance where appointing IT support staff and upgrading hardware over time may cost your enterprise a fortune. You can avoid all such challenges with cloud networking technology, where the cloud service provider does all those routine tasks for you at a much lower cost. Let’s look at the advantages it offers:

• Low usage cost:  Businesses will have to invest in fewer network devices and other costly hardware resources and can utilize virtual routers, software defined load balancers, and other virtualized network components that involve swift upgradation unlike physical hardware.

• Scalability: Cloud networking infrastructure eliminates the hassle of physical addition or removal of IT resources such as data storage, processing power, and compatibility checks. The volume and diversity of data are also scalable to the vendor’s installed base. This makes it much easier for businesses to scale their data requirements up or down as their business needs vary over time.
• Flexible microservice architecture : With cloud networking, SDN software receives the needed updates and features in a timely manner without disrupting other release cycles and tasks. The updates are free of cost and the user just has to agree to the update prompt when and if required. Additionally, AI models also get updated as and when the new and relevant data is received in the systems.
• Fast deployment: Cloud managed networking aids in quick rollouts, easy adoption of modern software applications and feature updates. This elevates the agility of the network architecture that is strenuous to attain in traditional on-premise systems.
• Security support: Cloud providers usually offer multiple layers of firewall to prevent data breach and malware. In case of any failure even after these measures, customer data is backed up in another server in a different location for seamless data restoration.  All network AI services also help in troubleshooting by identifying abnormal patterns in systems.

Cloud networking facilitates enterprises in executing redundancy and fail-over services as well as implementing security patches. This provides them and infrastructure vendors with enhanced security. All network AI services also help in troubleshooting by identifying abnormal patterns in systems. 

• Increased Productivity: With the usage of cloud networking, employees can simply focus on their core tasks instead of worrying about maintaining their device, updating the software, and keeping malware out of their device. Cloud providers will also backup customer data and during any failure of the cloud infrastructure, the customer will not be penalized unlike when using a personal device.

• Minimum Downtime: Cloud providers usually keep their maintenance and update schedule for the weekends and implement them with zero or minimal downtime. But when companies use Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), they can recover the backed up data from anywhere even during maintenance due to any failure.

How does cloud networking work?

Cloud networking is powered by Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology, which converts proprietary hardware, such as a variety of networking services and access control devices, into software that runs on a white-box. In addition to cost reductions at the data center, fewer network devices are required in branch offices ( located in remote geographical locations, connected to the main office by WAN). This eradicates the siloed infrastructure of enterprises, and more cloud-based routing functions are deployed to the cloud.

Fig 3. Disintegration of user resources and their connection to form a cloud. 

As for the cloud network architecture, companies use three different types:

1. Built-in networking tools: These tools can be easily accessed and are readily available as part of the IaaS service. These tools help in managing and configuring the IaaS cloud for private and public use independently. For example, the Web traffic management app ensures that your web applications can handle traffic spikes by creating more nodes with the help of load balancers.
2. Virtual Networking applications: These applications are virtually provided in the cloud network for the management of networking tasks. These include virtual firewalls and routers. For example, any VPN service or a floating IP is a virtual network application.
3. Multi-cloud platform service: This service acts as a bridge between private and public clouds, helping in the network distribution of multiple public cloud providers. For example, we can choose cloud provider 1 for development, cloud provider 2 for backup and cloud provider 3 for data analytics.

Why should you opt for ACE cloud network solutions?

Ace Cloud Hosting is an award winning hosting provider, and managed cloud service provider offering application hosting services including QuickBooks Hosting, Sage Cloud, Tax software hosting, VDI solutions, and much more to SMBs, accountants, CPAs, and enterprises. Ace Cloud Hosting also provides public cloud services.

You can expedite your cloud migration by using ACE Network Services, which offers the following resources:

• Load Balancer: Our load balancers spread incoming traffic across numerous application nodes, ensuring that the health of a single server has no bearing on the application’s overall health.

• Virtual Private Network: We help you create new flexible private networks to shape your cloud connectivity, and quickly create virtual switches over a secure connection.

• Virtual Router: We set up virtual routers to assist you in configuring virtual networks for packet routing between your network and the internet.

• Floating IP: We provide floating IPs to enable you to give your instance a dynamic identity and disperse incoming network traffic over multiple nodes.

• Public IP: We offer public IP addresses that are routable over the internet and are used to communicate with hosts outside the private network.

All the above listed services offer a diverse set of benefits at nominal pricing. They are as follows:

• Robust Network: We have a robust network to ensure maximum availability and our network robustness principles perform well against attacks to offer a stable network.
• Impeccable Connectivity: Network connectivity to commercial ISPs is the foundation of our network. Merge, expand, and adapt networks seamlessly and add resources, which help deal with varying needs.
• Developer Toolkit: Our solution allows you to manage your infrastructure with our SDK, API, and command-line interface to render a suite of tools for configuration, deployment, orchestration, and automation.
• Extra Bandwidth: Enjoy greater freedom and flexibility with extra bandwidth and storage resources. Meet demands instantly through our pay-as-you-go model.
• Quick Recovery and Backup: With our backup services, you can ensure minimal downtime and no risk of data loss. Our cloud-based backup services are quick and easy to use, with effective recovery in the event of a data emergency.
• High Traffic Applications: Our virtual machines are designed to host high traffic applications with a service level agreement guarantee of 99.99% availability, wherein you can deploy servers in seconds using the console directly.
• Terminate Vulnerabilities: Use flow log data to carefully find restricted connections or network security settings, thereby enhancing the accessibility of any services operating on the instances.

To know and understand more about our services, call us at +1-855-223-488 (United States) or +91-981-110-4802 (India). You can also send us an email ([email protected]) or visit our website.