Today, cloud networking has played a vital role in changing network demands and business expansion, bringing many benefits to fast-growing enterprises, which to a certain extent has proved its indispensable position in network construction. Compared with traditional networking, its storage and computing performance is more outstanding, and it can also provide better flexibility for network deployment. This article will take you deeper into cloud networking.
Cloud networking uses cloud managed networking to enable deployment between network resources, providing connectivity between workloads across clouds, cloud services, on-premises data centers, edge networks, as well as access to applications. It has the ability to provide security, flexibility, and easier management for network deployments, helping to improve application availability for high-intensity workloads. In addition, it also enables IT efficiency gains and cost savings for businesses, schools, homes, and even healthcare.
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Cloud services have become widely used in enterprise network deployments. All of this is due to the multiple advantages brought by cloud networking, such as functions, cost, flexibility, etc., which have made it rush to all walks of life.
Advantages of Cloud Networking
We list some advantages of cloud networking.
Cost control. Cloud service providers usually have configured some hardware, software, and storage facilities. Enterprises can directly rent them, thus controlling a certain amount of capital expenditure.
Shortest downtime. If the network equipment needs to be upgraded, it is handled by the supplier. This avoids the problem of system downtime caused by the update process from IT team, ensuring the stability of the system operation.
More scalability. With cloud networking, IT team can assess business needs and modify capacity as needed. In the cloud, this is usually a seamless process, but in the case of traditional networks, it often results in outages.
Improved productivity. Since service providers take care of cloud networking maintenance, automated updates, and testing, the enterprise IT team can spend valuable time on more critical tasks, increasing overall productivity.
Enhanced security. Cloud networking providers offer enterprises 24-hour application access, and staff regularly troubleshoot problems to ensure the security of facilities and software.
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Cloud Networking Applications
The use of cloud networking has expanded across many key industries. Gartner predicts that cloud networking will generate more than $330 billion in revenue by the end of 2022.
Manufacturing. Machine learning capabilities delivered in the cloud automate repetitive tasks and increase productivity.
Retail. Large retail companies have many businesses and large scales. Cloud networking can help the retail industry consolidate systems, and speed up order management to solve customers' problems by deploying virtual robots for improving service levels.
Finance and banking. The various cloud services provided by cloud networking can help the financial and banking industries to follow up on data updates and process a variety of transaction businesses.
Medical industry. The ever-increasing volume of medical information can increase the storage load of a facility. Cloud storage facilities have powerful computing performance and the capacity to automatically process and track medical data.
Transportation industry. The tracking data of logistics information and other content information also need a powerful system to support, while cloud networking provides such an access platform, allowing a user to obtain data at any time.
Government. The increase in the city means more network equipment, such as surveillance cameras. Governments receive video data from thousands of locations every day, increasing the data storage burden. The advent of the cloud has lightened the data load.
When it comes to cloud networking, it is easy to think of cloud computing. Cloud computing is an Internet-based computing method, providing IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services. Although cloud networking and cloud computing overlap in performance, they are different. The former focuses on how applications are accessed, while the latter focuses on how applications run.
Cloud Networking
Cloud networking is mainly about transferring network management, control, and even data connections to cloud services. Its types are mainly divided into private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud.
· A private cloud is a place where hardware and software resources are dedicated to a single organization, as opposed to a public cloud where computing resources are shared among multiple tenants.
· A public cloud is shared by multiple enterprises that use the public internet, with on-demand computing services and infrastructure managed by third-party providers. Cloud service providers offer a variety of services to individuals and businesses that rent these services on a monthly or per-use basis.
· A hybrid cloud is a combination of public cloud and private cloud. Enterprises use it to supplement their computing performance. When the capacity of the private cloud is at its peak, enterprises can leverage the public cloud to augment the capabilities of the private cloud.
· Unlike the hybrid cloud, multi-cloud is the practice of using a combination of clouds that includes hybrid cloud. A multi-cloud approach allows enterprises to choose the best service from different cloud providers based on budget, technical requirements, geographic location, or more.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is deployed in the cloud service provider's data center, providing different levels of control layers for cloud services, namely IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. They both facilitate the transfer of user data from the front-end client over the Internet to the cloud service provider's system.
· IaaS is a cloud computing service where cloud providers can deliver and manage virtualized computing infrastructure over the Internet. Instead of creating an internal IT infrastructure, businesses can access internal resources on demand.
· PaaS allows enterprises to focus on the development, deployment, and management of software applications and services, while cloud providers do the heavy lifting.
· SaaS provides enterprises with ready-to-use software, delivered to users over the Internet. All infrastructure, including hardware, software, data storage, etc., is managed by the SaaS provider.
The emergence of cloud networking has brought a turn for the network infrastructure, and cloud computing also provides some functions that network equipment cannot achieve. They create a huge database that can offer more granular data analysis. At the same time, information related to IoT devices can be shared at any time, enhancing flexibility, while network security is guaranteed by service providers. The application and popularization of AI machine learning on the cloud have also promoted productivity and will gain more favor in the future.
Sources: https://community.fs.com/blog/cloud-networking-a-comprehensive-guide.html