A critical next phase of cloud transformation: Reducing WAN complexity

Over the past two decades, cloud computing has evolved from a method that utilized extra data center capacity to the mission-critical infrastructure across enterprises that we see today. But along the way, the transformation and dramatic growth of the cloud have created increasingly complex, multi-account, and multi-region environments that can hinder, rather than accelerate, a company’s ability to deploy and manage globally connected networks.

Enterprise IT groups struggling with this complexity can transform their environments through new cloud-based networking architectures that stress simplicity across multi-environment connections, while also providing additional flexibility that can help reduce overall costs.

“Enterprises should be able to move anything, anywhere, at any time, for any reason,” says Robert DeWeese, Chief Cloud Architect of Next Generation Network & Edge Computing at Kyndryl. “This includes the ability to treat the network as a roadmap for adopting new features and technologies, so that when something new comes along, you can take advantage of it.”

DeWeese says that the complexity issues around multi-cloud and multi-region environments first surfaced when enterprises began creating multiple accounts for their cloud projects and then had to figure out how to effectively connect those accounts.

“They often had to do a complex workaround of networking, VPNs, and other components to make the infrastructure work,” he says. AWS, recognizing the growing complexity, has continued to build out its connectivity services. In 2018 it launched AWS Transit Gateway, the first big evolution in cloud networking. “Transit Gateway changed the game, enabling you to connect one account to another without a complex set of workarounds to bring traffic back to one data center just to go back into another account, or connect a VPN from one account to another,” says DeWeese.

More recently, AWS developed AWS Cloud WAN, which sits on top of Transit Gateway and makes it easier to build, manage, and monitor a global network that connects resources running across cloud and on-premises environments.

“Cloud WAN is different than older technologies in that it’s a managed service,” says Puneet Chopra, Global Domain Leader, Enterprise Networks, SDN and Cloud Based Networking with Kyndryl. The Cloud WAN service delivers three main capabilities to enterprises: automation, orchestration, and agility, which combine to reduce go-to-market times.”

“Now enterprises have a single point of control from where they can configure multiple VPC networks through a drop-down policy, the logic of which via APIs is built in the Cloud WAN, saving immense time,” says Chopra. 

Kyndryl’s Network and Edge Practice has certified and skilled technology experts who can help configure Cloud WAN and Transit Gateway to meet client needs, along with business experts who can provide guidance on the business model to deliver better ROI. “That ROI perspective is important because CIOs and CFOs are often making these purchase decisions together,” says Chopra.

Eliminating the need for complex workarounds

Additional Cloud WAN benefits include:

• A single, unified, global point of control that lets users configure an entire network from one network policy
• A centralized dashboard, monitoring and event bus that shows physical and logical topologies
• Built-in automation that lets users define their own routing, propagation, and attachment mapping that defines segment relationships through policy
• Automatic network creation by AWS (through peering and dynamic routing) based on AWS Region definitions in a core network policy.

Together, Transit Gateway and Cloud WAN give organizations more flexibility in their cloud environments by eliminating the need for complex workarounds. These advances can help organizations simplify their end-to-end connectivity infrastructure to improve speed to execution – which benefits all aspects of the business.

It’s important to work with a trusted partner to configure and deploy the services properly. Learn more about how Kyndryl and AWS are innovating to achieve transformational business outcomes for customers.