Speeds adoption of cloud-centric enterprise wide area network transformation
Reston, VA – May 18, 2023. Apcela, a leading innovator in software-defined, cloud-optimized network services, is delivering its Open Access Network to global enterprises as they continue to migrate applications away from legacy datacenters to the cloud. The Open Access Network makes it easier for enterprise IT teams to move away from expensive, datacenter-centric MPLS links, toward a cloud-centric wide area network (WAN), while maintaining the speed, reliability, and security of private networking.
At the heart of the Open Access Network is the Arcus Transit Hub deployed globally across 120 cities, typically as points of presence in major carrier neutral colocation datacenters operated by Apcela vendors like Equinix and Digital Realty. Apcela’s transit hub network enables enterprises to easily and securely interconnect edge sites such as datacenters, manufacturing sites, retail sites, and offices, with each other and the cloud, including cloud-to-cloud, via an any-to-any WAN. At each transit hub, the Open Access Network orchestrates access connections such as Ethernet Private Lines (EPL), wireless (LTE/4G/5G), Broadband, and other edge access services across hundreds of local access vendors globally.
As organizations continue to embrace cloud computing, the traditional wide area network (WAN) architecture is struggling to keep up with the increasing demand for fast, reliable, and secure access to cloud applications and services. In a recent Gartner report, analysts Simon Richard and Sumit Rajput noted “After modifying their wide-area networks to support cloud workloads, most organizations are adopting new architectures to optimize connectivity, security and application delivery. They have moved from cloud-friendly to cloud-centric network WAN.”
Apcela’s CEO Mark Casey added, “One of the biggest challenges enterprises face when moving toward a cloud-centric WAN is uncoupling the local access from their MPLS services and providers. Traditionally, the MPLS provider sources and manages the local access links, connecting them to their proprietary carrier points of presence, or POPs, all integrated as a part of the MPLS service. Our Open Access Network decouples the access services from the network services, opening up the entire market of network services, including full price transparency, to the enterprise.”
Once edge sites are connected to transit hubs via the Open Access Network, the enterprise can tap a virtually unlimited catalog of highly orchestratable, software defined network services globally. The transformed cloud-centric WAN architecture also eases the adoption of modern networking and security frameworks such as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). While many enterprises leverage Apcela’s Arcus powered WAN orchestration platform, the network is truly open, and an enterprise can use virtually any SD-WAN platform to orchestrate their evolved cloud-centric WAN.
Casey continued, “Our transit hubs are deployed within our globally interconnected network of AppHubs on the Arcus platform, so they are the logical place to manage cloud-centric WAN interconnection. In today’s remote work environment, the AppHubs also often serve as an enterprise virtual branch office, aggregating, securing, and routing remote-user traffic from the local market globally to enterprise mission critical applications, whether the application resides in a legacy datacenter, or has migrated to public cloud or SaaS.”
(1) Gartner, Optimize WAN Architectures for Workloads That Span the Hybrid Cloud and the Multicloud, Simon Richard and Sumit Rajput, Published 20 December 2022. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
About Apcela
Apcela provides software-defined, cloud-optimized networks for the digitally transforming enterprise. Delivered as a service, we enable enterprises to easily deploy and operate a software-defined network and security architecture that was built for a multi-cloud world.
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Media Contact:
Jason Ameris
Apcela
jason.ameris@apcela.com