Aviatrix and Equinix introduced a joint service that provides high-performance encryption of complete enterprise environments and multicloud connectivity.

While some enterprises are satisfied with a private connection to the cloud that isn't encrypted, large, financial institutions and other regulated industries need that extra layer of security, which Aviatrix VP of Solutions Marketing Rod Stuhlmuller likened to wearing both a belt and suspenders. “They need that encryption, which is the biggest thing,” he told SDxCentral.

The joint offer is founded on Equinix's Network Edge technology, which uses software to spin up services and deploy them across an organization's Equinix Fabric environment – which connects distributed infrastructure and digital ecosystems – and into the cloud, Stuhlmuller said. Aviatrix is then able to deploy its edge software for Equinix customers via the digital infrastructure provider's marketplace.

“Say I want to deploy the Aviatrix Edge. That will spin up the service in [Equinix's] data center on their platform and then connect to Aviatrix in the cloud and provide that high-performance encryption,” Stuhlmuller said. “It takes a few minutes. You spin it up and the connectivity is there.”

“Once that is done, then you can deploy your connectivity wherever you want,” Aviatrix Principal Product Manager Madhuri Kaniganti added. “Customers are looking for the same operational model. Today, they have different operational models: one for the on-prem and one that extends to Equinix and one that sits in the cloud,” she explained. “That's the benefit that our customers love about this solution overall.”

This new service is particularly suited for large enterprises in need of management consolidation or simplification. “It allows customers who are using Aviatrix in the cloud to extend that operational model,” including connections management, visibility, and security, to all corners of an environment. “That also then connects to the Equinix Global Fabric. Now you have these large enterprises [that] get this full benefit of extending the cloud operational model all the way out to the network that connects their entire environment,” Stuhlmuller explained.

And because the service runs as an overlay, even though an enterprise might be connecting from an Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment to Microsoft Azure, for example, it looks and feels like a single connection, he added.

Evolution of cloud networking

Just within the past three months, Stuhlmuller said he's seen significant shifts in the relationship between cloud and networking professionals.

Historically, enterprise cloud teams handled cloud networking and applications while the networking team took care of data center networking. As Aviatrix grew its revenue to $75 million, it saw the traditional data center networking role shift into part of the cloud team.

That transition accompanies another “big shift” for enterprises that defaulted to public cloud providers' native services. Once those enterprises reach a certain scale, “they are feeling the pain of doing it with those native constructs,” Stuhlmuller said.

In response, enterprises are “reaching out to their networking experts in the data center, who they have not involved in the cloud to this point.” But “as these bigger enterprises get to scale, they need the expertise of that networking guy. This is how he's going to end up being part of the cloud team,” he explained.