How to Unlock a Network

Application-centric networking enables their enterprises to build networks specifically configured to meet the needs of their applications.

Many enterprises are adopting software-led business strategies to differentiate, shorten delivery cycles, and leverage first-mover advantages. Enterprises are integrating tools and technologies to help drive business outcomes faster, more reliably, and more efficiently.

DevOps, new software applications, modeling solutions help build and deploy proofs of concept faster, integrate solutions more seamlessly, and expand the capabilities of their organizations more broadly. As a result of adopting DevOps, companies can increase feedback cycles and throughput speeds and impress customers with continuous innovation. With DevOps, companies can optimize and automate processes, ranging from development ideas to production. This will increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Easier and faster

Software deployments that were once simple and distributed across a few machines have evolved to be distributed across many machines, operating systems, regions, and environments. This shift creates both competitive threats and huge opportunities.

Integration and operational costs now take up a major portion of technology budgets for IT organizations, and there is no sign of slowing down. Cloud computing and microservices (independent services that interact with the network) are making software implementation more challenging and distributed. The cost and complexity are keeping many CIOs and DevOps leaders up at night.

However, despite the many improvements in developing, deploying and integrating applications, and the changes and trends in cloud applications, containerization, DevOps, software tools, microservices, distributed architecture, etc., how does software connect to the network? Assuming that the enterprise has adopted cloud computing applications and wants to deliver them safely, reliably and quickly without the network as a barrier, while granting different access rights based on whether they are DevOps, users or IoT devices. But can it do what is required within a few minutes?

The agility enabled by modern application development practices is critical to rapidly accelerating innovation and digital transformation. However, traditional network and connectivity models are not designed to support modern application environments, increasing deployment complexity, reducing time to market, and stifling technology innovation.

Traditional networks bring trouble. VPN technology cannot support the agility required by cloud applications and DevOps. Moreover, VPNs do not scale. Cloud computing leads to complex management and connectivity of multi-cloud environments. Dedicated lines like MPLS are inflexible, limited, and expensive. The same applies to SD-WAN solutions. Dedicated lines also lead to lock-in to telcos and network providers.

There are also performance issues with many use cases, such as “pinning” edge-to-cloud traffic through the core network. Then there are security issues, the lack of zero-trust application segmentation capabilities, and the risks associated with network trust and one-dimensional TLS encryption. Not to mention that SD-WAN and VPN architectures were not designed for IoT application topologies, so enterprises will encounter complex security issues trying to strap legacy architectures together to meet the needs of new application topologies.

SD-WAN is great for online data, which enterprises can transfer between SD-WAN terminal access equipment (CPE). However, it is not compatible with enterprise IoT data. Enterprises cannot deploy custom SD-WAN CPE devices at each IoT, data center and cloud site. To complicate matters, SD-WAN uses traditional VPN technology to transmit data, which also applies to IoT. Sometimes this is good enough, but not always.

Growing businesses with a large number of applications leveraging cloud computing services eventually run into unmanageable virtual private line sprawl, since each application environment has a separate cloud instance. Every network administrator understands the difficulty of trying to scale VPN connections and hardware.

Managing access across the many-to-many relationships of modern distributed application environments has proven to be complex. DevOps teams struggle to build continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines and workflows across heterogeneous cloud environments to meet development, QA, staging, and production needs, with secure access to relevant teams within the organization.

Safety Focus

One of the more difficult challenges in securing IoT deployments, especially those with a cloud-first architecture, is mitigating attacks launched from the Internet. Due to the complexity and heterogeneity of IoT deployments, the attack surface is often broad and difficult to protect, especially when connected to public cloud environments.

Traditional network infrastructure that fully enjoys DevOps services has become an obstacle to digital transformation. It is costly, lacks flexibility, and is generally unable to deploy private telecommunication circuits and SD-WAN CPE to every edge of SaaS, cloud platforms, mobile networks, IoT, B2B extranets, and B2C.

The first wave of software-defined networks (SDNs) didn't really solve the problem intelligently. But the problem still exists; applications leave the data center and move and change, with different needs. They are dynamic and increasingly distributed.

Enterprises need to gain new network agility, which includes digital transformation and modern application development practices. Application Specific Networking (ASN) has arrived!

A new paradigm

Application-centric networking enables its enterprises to build specially configured networks to meet the needs of individual applications. It abstracts the network design topology and deployment architecture. Application-specific networking (ASN) software network solutions provide application-specific performance, security, reliability, and flexibility on any set of network and cloud platforms, enabling enterprises to control the network without building or managing the underlying infrastructure.

As a result, enterprises can define and launch instant, highly secure application links at scale without incurring additional management overhead or the requirement to use specific hardware and dedicated lines in a DevOps manner, significantly reducing costs. In addition, application-specific networks (ASNs) dynamically route traffic between different network connections, such as MPLS and broadband. Application-specific networks (ASNs) allow enterprises to network distributed applications with great simplicity through any cloud platform, any device, and any location. Application providers, DevOps, and developers use application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs) to embed application-specific networks in their applications and services. The application gains security, control, and performance, regardless of the network the application passes through.

It is recommended to give each application its own network, all software-based. Imagine a programmable network microservices architecture that enables enterprises to provide each application with its own secure, isolated overlay network, all in software. Network as code can control DevOps so that the network is deployed at the speed of continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) of DevOps, while aligning with NetOps and SecOps principles.

So what does ASN mean for business and operations? Here are some example use cases:

• Multi-cloud networking, instantly and on-demand through popular DevOps tools and APIs
• Edge-to-Cloud Computing. Enterprises connect their branches, devices, and users to AWS, Microsoft Azure, and other popular cloud platforms without telco restrictions, VPNs, MPLS circuits, or custom SD-WAN CPE.
• IoT to Cloud Platform: Securely connect IoT to fog computing and cloud platforms in a scenario-driven manner and at scale over any Internet connection.
• Extranet. Use existing Internet connections between partners, suppliers, and application providers, with application-level segmentation for superior security and compliance.
• Hybrid Cloud. Instant software-based hybrid cloud connectivity across the internet eliminates the cost of extending dedicated networks and infrastructure to cloud platforms without sacrificing security or performance.
• SaaS. Put the network inside the application. Improve the security and performance of SaaS without hardware and VPN, or integrate the network with your applications and their authentication, policy, security and performance needs.

Software-led business is disruptive when done well. It drives innovation and customer value. Businesses that fail to keep up with the changing demands, innovation, and pace will disappear. Software applications and platforms will continue to change, evolve, transform businesses, and conquer markets. Now is the time to address how applications can be connected in intelligent ways to further advance the benefits of DevOps, new software technologies, and methodologies.

Unlock the network

Application-specific networks (ASNs) offer a simplified, automated, secure alternative, providing cloud-to-cloud and edge-to-cloud models that connect users to applications using a zero-trust approach.

The reason why application-specific networks (ASNs) exist is obvious: they provide flexibility, simplicity, performance, security, and cost reduction. This is a disruptive new network model that enables enterprises to innovate and accelerate delivery cycles. Any business based on intelligent software should explore application-specific networks (ASNs) and use the "first-mover advantage" to achieve differentiation.

Furthermore, in a time of climate change, why not try greener, better ways to utilize existing Internet assets, rather than producing, installing and managing cumbersome CPE and hardware?