Ever since the advent of digitalisation networks have been subject to greater demands on performance, never more so than today.
The best way to tackle network shortfalls like latency? Create a solid foundation for enterprise digital transformation, says Mark Lewis, EVP of Products & Development at Platinum sponsor Interoute.
"We must deliver reliable and predictable performance in an uncertain digital world," stated Lewis in his keynote address to Comms Vision delegates. "Organisations are changing how they do business and customers are moving to the cloud where they can be subject to slow and inconsistent ISP connections."
Reducing latency has a significant impact on improving application performance; and Interoute is ever more obsessed with eradicating such inconsistencies in poor network performance and has designed its Enterprise Digital Platform and Cloud Fabric as an antidote to these blights and distractions. "The platform is entirely software defined from customer site to virtual data centre," added Lewis.
Interoute was established in 2002 and now operates a 2bn euro pan-European fibre optic network that supports 25 of the top 30 service providers in the world.
The three pillars of its strategic play are the Cloud Fabric, its software defined global network; Virtual Data Centre (VDC), the global IaaS platform; and Edge, incorporating software defined WAN and NFV, optimising access to all applications in the data centre and the cloud.
"Cloud Fabric and Interoute VDC offer faster access to applications and better application performance," said Lewis. "It differentiates against the likes of Amazon. Cloud Fabric services both private WAN and public Internet. With Interoute Edge, SaaS traffic is sent securely and directly to the application. Bandwidth to the data centre is not consumed by Internet traffic, and the security policy is pushed to the edge but centrally managed."
Lewis highlighted the power of SD-WANs to digitally transform businesses, and showed where SD-WAN fits into the next generation of IT infrastructure - the new Cloud Fabric.
"Our SD-WAN approach enables cost versus performance and SLA optimisation across all access," he added. "Dynamic path control routes and optimises traffic on the optimal, best performing path for the application."
Lewis cited research that indicates 60% of UK business are planning to move at least 40% of their infrastructure to the cloud in the next 12 months. And almost three-quarters (73%) of IT decision makers think it's important that the cloud and network are fully integrated when it comes to putting applications in the cloud. Not surprisingly therefore, the top IT challenge is having the ability to integrate legacy technologies with cloud-enabled applications. But the cost of skills for digital transformation projects is on average 31% higher than for other IT projects.
Enter Interoute's Digital Infrastructure Platform. "It's a software defined network and multi-cloud platform," Lewis added. "A single solution that delivers integrated public, private and hybrid IaaS with global private networking.
"Security is inherent, not complex. Everything is interconnected, not isolated. Developers can think outside the box, building distributed solutions that bring applications closer to users and deliver superior performance. Existing technology investments can be integrated without re-factoring applications. Simply plug them in."