Cloud Networking: Definition

Today, cloud networking has played a vital role in changing network demands and business expansion, bringing many benefits to fast-growing enterprises, which to a certain extent has proved its indispensable position in network construction. Compared with traditional networking, its storage and computing performance is more outstanding, and it can also provide better flexibility for network deployment.

What is Cloud Networking?

Cloud networking uses cloud-managed networking to enable deployment between network resources, providing connectivity between workloads across clouds, cloud services, on-premises data centers, and edge networks, as well as access to applications. It can provide security, flexibility, and easier management for network deployments, helping to improve application availability for high-intensity workloads. In addition, it also enables IT efficiency gains and cost savings for businesses, schools, homes, and even healthcare.

Cloud Networking vs Traditional Networking

As cloud networking continues to evolve, more and more network architects face the same recurring question: Should I take the company’s computing to the cloud or continue with traditional networking? There’s no perfect answer to this question and it depends on what you consider as added value.

First, traditional IT models are one of the most secure networking models. They allow data owners to tightly control their information and how it’s shared without depending on cloud servers. But this comes at a cost: You need to buy different hardware pieces and upgrade them regularly. This can be cumbersome for even the most talented IT teams.

As well, the user experience usually suffers with traditional models. Users are expecting access to data and resources at work the same way they access data and resources in their personal life – whenever, however, and wherever they like.

On the other hand, cloud networking involves far less user-owned hardware and software. Instead, network hardware and software resources are hosted in the cloud, making it possible to access real-time features on an on-demand, pay-as-you-go basis. This reduces the likelihood of redundant resources and gives network architects a better edge at tailoring specific requirements as different circumstances arise.

Cloud Computing vs Cloud Networking

A common confusion exists around the difference between cloud computing and cloud networking. Here’s a quick explanation: cloud networking is a specialized branch of cloud computing. The two services have a similar role which is to reduce local workloads by moving them to the cloud. With cloud networking, a company can create virtual network services like firewalls and routers.

Cloud computing on the other hand is the utilization of virtual resources to process computing instances. For example, large companies like Netflix and PayPal use cloud resources to power their apps, instead of localized hardware. Cloud computing can also include cloud storage which is typically cheaper and more reliable than localized storage. Cloud networking, cloud computing, and cloud storage all complement each other and can provide significant advantages to companies willing to move their systems to the cloud.

Why Cloud Networking?

Businesses today turn to the cloud to drive agility, deliver differentiation, accelerate time-to-market, and increase scale. The cloud model has become the standard approach to building and delivering applications for modern enterprises.

Cloud networking has also played a critical role in the way organizations address their growing infrastructure needs, regional expansions, and redundancy plans. Many organizations are adopting a multi-data center strategy and leveraging multiple clouds from multiple cloud service providers (CSPs).

Some benefits

Given below are the benefits mentioned:

• High Scalability: It requests the supply of resources on a huge scale without any human intervention with each service provider.
• High availability and Reliability: The servers are available at the right time without any delay or disappointment.
• Agility: It shares the resources effectively among the users and works quickly.
• Multi-sharing: By distributed computing, different clients from multiple areas share the same resources by fundamental infrastructure.
• Maintenance: It is user-friendly as they are easy to access from their place and doesn’t require any installation setup.
• Low Cost: It is very cost-effective and pays according to its usage.
• Services in pay-per-use Model: Application Programming Interface is given to customers to use resources and services and pay on a service basis.
• On-Demand Self-Service: Cloud computing offers the required services and applications to the client. With the login key, they can start to use it without any human interaction or cloud service providers. It includes storage and virtual machines.

The challenges

• Vendor lock-in: This is a risk when using public, private, or hybrid networking solutions, and it can impact an organization’s flexibility when the need comes to move among cloud services. Multi-cloud architectures reduce the risk of vendor lock-in but sometimes lead to their form of vendor lock-in (multi-vendor lock-in).
• Availability and downtime: The cost that comes with relying entirely on cloud providers to handle the updates and maintenance of networking tools, is that in the case something goes wrong, the solution is out of the organization’s control.
• Security: As mentioned earlier, it offers several security options. However, it is in the organization’s best interest to carefully audit vendors and make sure they provide the cloud networking security services they need.

How does it drive innovation?

The emergence of cloud networking has brought a turn for the network infrastructure, and cloud computing also provides some functions that network equipment cannot achieve. They create a huge database that can offer more granular data analysis. At the same time, information related to IoT devices can be shared at any time, enhancing flexibility, while network security is guaranteed by service providers. The application and popularization of AI machine learning on the cloud have also promoted productivity and will gain more favor in the future.