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CloudGenix officials want to make it easier and more secure for enterprises’ remote offices to directly access applications from the cloud and to enforce the security, performance and compliance requirements of those applications.
The company on Aug. 30 introduced the Instant On (ION) 3000v, which officials said is a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) platform that virtualizes the remote office, reducing the need for complex legacy hardware and improving the security and performance of the application. A key piece of the platform, which is available immediately, is the company’s ION 3000v application-defined fabric, which enables enterprises to deploy workloads anywhere they want based on the service-level agreements (SLAs) for the applications.
“Enterprises face multiple issues with legacy hardware models for the remote office,” CloudGenix founder and CEO Kumar Ramachandran said in a statement. “Innovation is held hostage to depreciation cycles—multiple pieces of hardware to maintain, complex routing protocols to manage, and inability to deploy best-of-breed solutions.”
The vendor’s application-defined fabric means that “enterprises are no longer hostage to their hardware vendors, and have the freedom to deploy their applications anywhere,” Rmachandran said.
CloudGenix is among a growing number of companies expanding an SD-WAN market that IDC analysts expect to grow to more than $6 billion by 2020 from less than $225 million last year. Fueling the growth are enterprises needing to reduce the complexity and cost of connectivity for their branch and remote offices while improving security. Gartner analysts are forecasting the number of enterprises currently using SD-WAN technologies will increase to about 30 percent by the end of 2019 from 1 percent currently.
Trends such as the internet of things (IoT), data analytics, the cloud, mobility and the proliferation of connected devices are driving demand for greater programmability, agility, scalability and affordability in enterprise networks. Modern workloads including 4K video and collaboration applications are increasing the need for more network capacity and for new ways for remote and branch offices to access applications and workloads beyond such traditional modes as the costly multiprotocal label switching (MPLS).
CloudGenix officials pointed to guidelines for Microsoft’s Office 365, which recommends enterprises plan for a four-fold increase in WAN bandwidth and direct-to-cloud access for remote offices to ensure high-performance and security for applications. Enabling direct access to the cloud from the remote office via CloudGenix’s application-defined fabric brings with it greater security capabilities as well, ensuring that only “whitelisted” applications can leave the branch office directly and that suspicious traffic is barred from entering the remote office, officials said.
The SD-WAN space is becoming increasingly competitive as established vendors including Cisco Systems and Riverbed Technology build out their portfolios and smaller startups, including Talari Networks, Viptela and VeloCloud, run out new offerings.
CloudGenix most recently launched its partner program, which is designed to grow the ecosystem around its ION SD-WAN product lineup and accelerate the adoption of the company’s technologies. The ION offerings are built to transform legacy WANs into unified hybrid environments that are easier to manage and design and offer twice the performance of traditional WANs at half the cost, officials said.