IBM cloud service aims to deliver secure, multicloud connectivity

IBM has delivered a SaaS package it has been developing to help enterprises connect and secure multicloud resources.

The service, IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh, implements a virtualized networking environment to rapidly enable secure connectivity between users, applications, and data distributed across multiple edge, hybrid, and multicloud environments. One of the drivers behind the cloud service is to join operational silos, giving granular network control and easy-to-consume interfaces to IT teams, IBM said.

Cloud mesh is designed to let organizations establish simple, scalable, secure application-centric connectivity, wrote Murali Gandluru, vice president of IBM’s software networking and edge, in a blog about Hybrid Cloud Mesh. “The product is also designed to be predictable with respect to latency, bandwidth and cost. It is engineered for both CloudOps and DevOps teams to seamlessly manage and scale network applications, including cloud-native ones running on Red Hat OpenShift,” Gandluru stated.

Hybrid Cloud Mesh works by deploying gateways within the clouds – including on-premises, AWS or other providers’ clouds, and transit points, if needed – to support the infrastructure, and then it builds a secure Layer 3-7 mesh overlay to deliver applications, IBM stated.

The service implements two types of gateways: an edge gateway, deployed near workloads for forwarding, security enforcement, load balancing, and telemetry data collection; and/or a waypoint gateway, deployed at points of presence close to internet exchanges and colocation sites for path, cost and topology optimization, according to Gandluru.

At the application level, the exposure to developers occurs at Layer 7, and the networking teams see Layer 3 and 4 activities, IBM said.