Apcela, a leading innovator in software-defined, cloud-optimized network services, has launched a global network of cloud service provider (CSP) neutral multicloud transit hubs across 120 cities worldwide. The Arcus Transit Hub network is built on Apcela’s Arcus platform, and within its existing globally distributed AppHubs. It enables enterprises to easily and securely integrate core data centers, offices, and remote users with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud platforms using low-latency private network connectivity.
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 an attempt to meet these challenges, the cloud service providers are continually expanding their networking offerings to simplify networking between their own virtual private clouds, but that still leaves large gaps and significant complexity when accessing compute and data resources across legacy data centers or between IaaS platforms.
Enterprises are adopting a piecemeal array of solutions in an attempt to close the gaps, from cloud native networking constructs which differ across cloud providers, to traditional enterprise networking appliances, both physical and virtual. Supporting multiple cloud networking constructs adds layers of management complexity, while leveraging traditional networking infrastructure has its own set of shortcomings. In a report, Gartner analysts Andrew Lerner, Arun Chandrasekaran, and Jonathan Forest noted, “Virtual routers and virtual appliances offered by traditional network vendors often fail to meet the requirements of cloud and DevOps teams, particularly in programmability, integration or flexible licensing.”
"The Apcela Arcus Transit Hub was designed to solve for these shortcomings by orchestrating both the underlay and overlay networks, from datacenter to the cloud, and cloud-to-cloud, all the way to the VPC," noted Apcela’s VP of Product & Solution Engineering, Kunal Thakkar. Thakkar continued, “Our customers were asking for a product with the power and simplicity of the AWS Transit Gateway, but outside of AWS. That is the blueprint we used to build our multicloud transit hub network, which sits between clouds, enabling lower cost, private, secure multicloud interconnection.”
Apcela’s multicloud transit hubs are geographically distributed across 120 markets globally, and serve as a networking hub between compute and data storage resources, regardless of location, in or outside of cloud. Thakkar continued, "Because the transit hubs, and the AppHubs they are hosted in, are distributed across key global markets, they are logical place to manage WAN interconnection, with the added benefit of enabling the service chaining of distributed security. They can even serve as distributed on-ramps for adoption of Zero Trust Network Access, and an evolved cloud-centric WAN.”
The Arcus Transit Hub is orchestratable independently via a set of APIs, or directly intregrated with, and orchestrated by SD-WAN platforms from Cisco and HPE.
(1)Gartner, Market Guide for Multicloud Networking Software, Andrew Lerner, Arun Chandrasekaran, and Jonathan Forest, Published 12 April 2022.
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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.