The days of containing your business’s infrastructure footprint to the four walls of your office are long gone as more and more companies – from SMBs to mid-market firms to vast enterprises – leverage multiple sites, clouds and cloud-based applications to operate their business and to store and secure their operational data. This evolution to a hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructure has opened up new avenues for efficiency, collaboration and growth acceleration, but it’s also shone a light on the need for robust and secure connectivity – a critical channel through which today’s businesses can organize and integrate the various branches of their operational and IT infrastructure.
We recently sat down with Mike Fuhrman, Omega Systems’ CEO, and Alex Sulpizi, Founder of Cloudpath (now a member of the Omega Systems family of companies) to help us better understand the role network connectivity plays in the modern IT landscape and how businesses can benefit from next-generation multi-cloud operations.
Q: Most companies today are operating within hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructures – whether they even realize it or not. To level-set for our readers, how would you define hybrid or multi-cloud operations?
Mike Fuhrman (MF): At its most basic, hybrid IT is simply when you have workloads running in multiple places. Once upon a time, you might have had all core infrastructure and applications inside the perimeter of your office building, but now you might use tools or applications in the public cloud, you’re likely using SaaS applications, some data or services might run out of a private cloud or colocation facility. That’s hybrid right there, and then if you take it a step further, ‘multi-cloud’ gets a little more specific and means you’re using services from multiple cloud providers, such as Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, or SaaS applications like Salesforce.
Q: Why are businesses moving in this direction? What are the top drivers for multi-cloud adoption?
MF: There are a multitude of reasons. One key driver is budgetary; cloud adoption enables the shift from CapEx to OpEx and allows companies to avoid large, upfront investments in physical infrastructure while gaining access to elastic compute and storage resources in the cloud. Another driver is performance. When workloads are moved to the cloud, businesses can access on-demand resources that enhance application performance and scalability, especially compared to fixed-capacity, on-premise servers.
Alex Sulpizi (AS): Multi-cloud is going to provide more of a purpose-built and cost-effective solution for most businesses. The reality is there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ cloud today and so having the ability to easily provision secure connectivity between clouds and on-prem gives businesses a lot more flexibility.
MF: Exactly. There are a lot of constraints with on-premises hosting – you need to consider storage or compute capacity (which can impact performance if maxed out), management, patching, software updates, etc. All those considerations are much more quickly scaled and implemented through the cloud.
Q: Given the increasing dependence on multiple sites/clouds, connectivity between them is obviously becoming more important. In what ways are you seeing traditional Internet and network connectivity struggle to adapt to modern multi-cloud business operations?
MF: Historically, if you wanted to connect one site/application/environment to another, you’d have to call your telecom broker and order a new circuit. You’d probably wait weeks or months for that circuit to come in, and then there’s the risk of over- or under-ordering capacity-wise, as well as locking yourself into a long-term contract. It was slow, costly and generally pretty clumsy.
AS: Absolutely. Not being able to predict that capacity – which no one really can – makes for a difficult, costly and lengthy process. Not to mention, the Internet itself is merely a best-effort service. It can’t guarantee performance, reliability, or security – especially in a multi-cloud environment.
MF: Fortunately, nowadays, there are innovative and flexible solutions (*cough* Cloudpath *cough*) that customers can leverage for more affordable and scalable network connectivity.
Q: Let’s talk a little about how Cloudpath addresses these challenges.
AS: Cloudpath, at its core, gives customers a hub through which they can build secure, redundant, direct connections to various public clouds, SaaS applications, data centers as well as office sites. This hub replaces that slow, clunky process of buying a direct line and allows customers to expand connectivity over time as their business scales and evolves. Instead of guessing at capacity for each cloud provider or site, you buy one connection that dynamically scales as you add new cloud services. This simplifies the process, lowers costs, and makes it easier to manage.
Q: It was highly regulated and compliance-driven customers who originally inspired the origin of Cloudpath. For those types of businesses, security and latency are of the highest concerns. How are those factors addressed within next-gen connectivity solutions such as Cloudpath?
AS: In highly regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare, security is paramount – and we’ve always taken that to heart, so you’re right that that’s how we were originally inspired to dream up Cloudpath. Because we utilize private, dedicated connections to cloud services, we can ensure sensitive data is transmitted securely. On top of that, performance improves with this type of next-gen connectivity because you’re bypassing the public Internet. A customer in the banking industry, for example, requires a secure gateway to specific financial platforms, and this gives them a faster, more secure and consistent connection.
MF: I like to think of it as the difference between driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic and cruising in the HOV lane. That’s the advantage a solution like Cloudpath offers – dedicated, fast, and secure connections versus the unreliable, crowded public Internet.
AS: On the security front, the other advantage is once you have that Cloudpath connection established, then whether you’re connecting from the office, your home or on the road, you’re using the same IP address, so you’re effectively achieving zero trust security, but without the multi-vendor cost and complexity that’s usually associated with those types of solutions.
Q: The agility and scalability aspect is obviously also an enticing prospect for businesses, being able to add cloud access over time as your business evolves or grows.
AS: This is usually my favorite part to talk about, because it’s so compelling. We see a lot of customers start out small, replacing their traditional Internet with a Cloudpath connection, which typically provides improved Internet speed and, in some cases, a lower cost. But once connected, they have the option to test out direct cloud connections at a fraction of the cost of individual lines. When hosting an application in Azure or AWS, for example, it’s beneficial and so simple to add that additional direct connection through Cloudpath.
MF: If a customer is in any kind of industry that has waves, seasonal swings or needs that come and go over time, for better or worse, they’re either overpaying when they don’t need capacity or paying a premium when they don’t have enough. The flexibility that Cloudpath offers for those types of businesses is, honestly, a differentiator for them and their day-to-day operations.
AS: The COVID pandemic was a perfect reminder of how much we take for granted the ease of a mobile workforce. But many businesses struggled during that early transition because they weren’t set up in a way to operate at the same speed and with the same flexibility. Fortunately, Cloudpath customers were able to benefit from seamless connectivity because they could move operations to their home offices or different sites and still maintain that security and redundancy they needed.
MF: That’s a great point. We’re coming up to the end of another impactful hurricane season, so those considerations really resonate.
Q: What should we expect in the near future relative to adoption of multi-cloud infrastructures and next-gen connectivity and what role do you see Omega and Cloudpath within those evolutions?
MF: Most large enterprises are already neck-deep in public cloud and hybrid IT environments and have been for several years now, but I think smaller enterprises and mid-market firms are going to start adopting multi-cloud in meaningful ways, and they’ll quickly realize the connectivity challenges they face. Fortunately, for Omega’s customers, we’re ahead of the game with Cloudpath, so as more and more of them adopt hybrid and multi-cloud solutions over the next 18-36 months, we’re going to be ready to support them and their connectivity needs.
AS: As businesses expand their cloud and application needs and start to see the limitations of traditional Internet connectivity, they’re going to turn to their MSP first for guidance, and I’m proud that we’re ahead of the curve on that front and can lend the knowledge and expertise that our customers expect from us to help them achieve more meaningful and effective IT operations.
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