Google Cloud is opening its far-reaching network tentacles to enterprises that are facing increasingly complex connectivity management challenges due to growing networking needs and a wide range of networking options.

The opening is under Google Cloud’s new Cloud WAN service, which takes advantage of Google Cloud’s extensive managed network backbone that it uses for its house-branded services. That backbone network spans more than two million miles of fiber, includes 33 subsea cables, and touches 202 points of presence (PoPs) worldwide.

The new platform is based on a pair of legacy Google Cloud offerings: Cloud Interconnect and Cross-Cloud Interconnect. The former is Google Cloud’s intra-cloud connection paths between a customer’s data center and Google Cloud, while the latter supports connectivity between Google Cloud and other public cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Google Cloud WAN is also using the new Cross-Site Interconnect service that uses dedicated point-to-point layer-two private connections to network application between data centers. This offering is currently “in preview in select countries,” with plans to expand to more edge locations later this year.

Enterprises can now wade into this vast networking pool in a more simplified manner that is managed by Google Cloud. The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) by enterprises is expected to exacerbate this complexity.

“It makes Google's planet-scale private network available to businesses looking to connect their own distributed global enterprises in the AI era, whether across clouds or across campuses,” Angelo Libertucci, global head of industry for telecom at Google Cloud, explained during a press briefing.

Google Cloud is claiming the fully managed service can provide a 40% reduction in total cost of ownership compared with managing multi-WAN platforms, and a 40% increase in performance compared to using the public internet.

Libertucci provided an example of a telecommunications provider with operations and customers in multiple countries. “They would typically have to build and outsource physical infrastructure to service those customers,” Lubertucci said. “Now they can partner with Google Cloud to reach those customers while reducing costs.”

The Cloud WAN service includes SD-WAN partners like Cisco, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, and VeloCloud that can provide self-managed or managed services; allows enterprises to use either cloud-based next-generation firewall (NGFW) or can integrate NGFW virtual appliances from vendors like Check Point, Fortinet, and Palo Alto Networks; and will preview a NCC gateway that can integrate security services edge (SSE) support from Broadcom, Menlo Security, and Palo Alto Networks.

Google Cloud is also tapping partnerships with network service providers, including an initial announcement with Lumen Technologies and BT for that operator’s Global Fabric network-as-a-service (NaaS) offering.

WAN management is complex and lucrative

Google Cloud is moving deeper into an increasingly complex and lucrative market. Its direct hyperscale rivals all offer some form of managed interconnection service for enterprise customers, as do smaller rivals that are more focused on managing connections between different public cloud environments.

That complexity is tied to enterprise adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud applications that require more robust connectivity. This has led to the use of SD-WAN platforms to help manage new and legacy connection options, cloud on-ramps onto different cloud-based connection options, and various security measures to guard those connections.

Telecom operators have noted this need to reduce enterprise multicloud and multinetwork confusion.

“Our large enterprise customers, they have multiple cloud providers. There’s AWS, there’s Azure, there’s GCP, Oracle, IBM, all the large cloud providers; and what has happened is the environment has become very complex as they build applications on these different clouds,” Debika Bhattacharya, chief technology solutions officer for Verizon Business, told SDxCentral in an interview last year. “Just the combinations of endpoints-to-cloud, cloud-to-cloud, data center-to-cloud, have made the whole networking environment extremely complex. You don’t have visibility across all these clouds. They don’t have tools that can manage all the different clouds.”

Dell’Oro Group recently forecast that the distributed cloud networking market would grow from $4 billion in sales in 2023, to $17 billion by 2028, “driven by enterprises’ transition to hybrid cloud environments, the rise of AI-powered workloads, and the increasing demand for elastic, software-defined networking solutions.”

The analyst firm noted WAN-as-a-service would account for nearly half of that revenue by 2028, “as enterprises transition from rigid MPLS architectures to scalable, software-defined middle-mile solutions.”

“The integration of AI across enterprise IT and the adoption of multi-cloud strategies have created unprecedented challenges for traditional WAN architectures,” Mauricio Sanchez, director of enterprise security and networking at Dell’Oro Group, wrote. “Distributed cloud networking offers a much-needed reimagining of the enterprise WAN, aligning security, scalability, and performance with modern IT requirements.”