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Networking in the Era of Cloud Computing

What do Animoto, The Motley Fool, SmugMug, Belkin International, and the US Food and Drug Administration have in common? They all use Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services is a collection of services designed for hosting and managing web and mobile applications, data processing and warehousing, storage, archiving, and other forms of cloud computing. Amazon Web Services isn't the only cloud provider, but it's the biggest of the bunch. Its competitors include Google, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, and CSC. The majority of online data is hosted and managed by about a dozen companies. Welcome to the era of cloud computing where it's much easier and cost effective to store your data in the cloud.

Most of us have encountered cloud computing in our day-to-day lives whether we realize it or not. We watch videos on our tablets, upload files to Dropbox and Box, and back up our data to online services such as Carbonite. Cloud computing powers everything from mobile games to corporate applications and businesses are continuing to move to the cloud. In fact, many companies have moved their networks from the private data center to "the cloud" because of all the benefits it provides:

  • Maintenance: Business no longer have to manage hardware, bandwidth, and applications because the provider handles these issues. 
  • Availability: No matter where you are in the world you can take "the cloud" with you.
  • Scalability: Business save money because they only pay for the applications and data storage that they need. 

While cloud computing has a lofty name, it is powered by real computers, real networks, real storage devices, and other technologies grounded in powerful data centers such as those owned by Amazon Web Services. In order to reach the so-called cloud, most users – even enterprise users accustomed to reliable, predictable private WAN connectivity between their locations using Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) – connect through a standard public Internet connection.

But the public Internet isn't exactly reliable or optimized for application performance.. What if you had access to AWS and other Internet-based cloud services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) with the predictability of MPLS, and accelerated performance as well? That's what some companies are doing.

Many companies are using add-on technology and services such as a cloud Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) to optimize cloud performance. Cloud NaaS provides businesses with a highly optimized and reliable way to access Amazon Web Services as well as all other cloud services and Software as a Service (SaaS) around the world including Salesforce, Office 365, Google Apps, and more (Source: http://www.aryaka.com/products/cloud-network-as-a-service/). With NaaS you’re allowed to deliver network services over the internet on a pay-per-use basis. This allows business to deliver fast, consistent, enterprise-wide access over a private networks to cloud data and services in locations that were previously beleaguered by latency (Source: http://searchsdn.techtarget.com/definition/Network-as-a-Service-NaaS).

In this era of cloud computing where more applications are shifting to the cloud, even the network used to access these applications should be cloud based. If you're businesses has not yet utilized "the cloud" there's no better time to start.