Multicloud Networking Is The Next Big Cloud Market (Pt. 1)

Cloud Multicloud Networking Is The Next Big Cloud Market (Pt. 1) R. Scott Raynovich Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

R. Scott Raynovich is the Founder and Chief Analyst at Futuriom. com Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Oct 25, 2022, 02:37pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin (Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series. In Part 2 we will look at the leading players in the cloud networking industry) Cloud infrastructure has a habit of creating large markets. The most famous, of course, is Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), which is a market in the hundreds of billions for leading companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft.

Other markets, such as cloud database management systems (DBMSs), have risen rapidly. Research firms such as IDC and Gartner say that the cloud DBMS market recently crossed $100 billion in annual revenue. Cloud computing, NFT, AI, artificial intelligence getty So what’s next? There are big opportunities for networking software players to take advantage of key trends in cloud – with enterprises building out private cloud to take back some services from public cloud (referred to as “repatriation”), or organizations building infrastructure that can bridge the gap among public cloud services and private cloud services (referred to as “hybrid cloud” or “multicloud”).

Futuriom sees these trends gathering momentum as applications and use cases such as data analytics drive the need for a more diverse infrastructure spanning both private and public clouds. In a world in which “data is the new oil,” business enterprises and other organizations see the need to control more of their data. This means they will build infrastructure that can not only give them insights into their data, but also secure and control it.

Top Trends Driving Multicloud and Hybrid Cloud Cloud services, which have helped organizations quickly scale new digital applications, are still growing quite rapidly. Recent earnings announcements show the large public cloud providers, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, booking revenue growth above 40% for their public cloud platforms. These services were adopted because they give organizations a higher velocity path to launch new services and products using flexible technology platforms that can be consumed as a service.

MORE FOR YOU Patrick Byrne Of Overstock Fame Says He Was Involved In Monthslong Effort To Overturn 2020 Election Today’s Solar Eclipse Ushers-In An Election Day ‘Blood Moon’ For America Lasting 85 Minutes Progressives Retract Letter Suggesting ‘Direct Talks With Russia’ Over Ukraine After Backlash But in the rush to the cloud, other needs were neglected. For example, what about connecting crucial apps and data that may still reside in enterprise datacenters, manufacturing environments, or compute environments at the edge? Or what about private datacenters? Manufacturing assets? The Internet of Things (IoT)? These are the types of needs that will drive multicloud or hybrid cloud arrangements that in turn are driven by digital transformation. Digital transformation enables organizations large and small to connect critical data, applications, and cloud services to provide faster and better services.

The broad bucket of digital transformation includes faster analysis of data to drive automation. This requires a vast and agile new information infrastructure. Depending on the size and needs of a specific organization, they might want to build their own cloud-like infrastructure (private cloud), a service that they could host and launch from the cloud (“webscale”), or use existing public clouds, such as those from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and others.

According to a recent survey from Baker Mackenzie, the top areas of digital transformation investment include cloud computing (81%) and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) (80%). Futuriom primary research also shows there is indeed a groundswell of hybrid cloud initiatives developing in the real world. In a recent survey of 103 senior-level IT and networking managers , we asked how many folks were using multicloud, with 63% saying they were using two or three public clouds (defined as IaaS or platform-as-a-service — PaaS), and 17% using more than three – meaning that 80% of those surveyed were using multiple clouds.

The bottom line is that public cloud services have become the bread and butter of many IT initiatives, but they have limitations. They don’t share data well among different services such as competing services or private clouds, and they can become very expensive, according to our research with end users. For these reasons, organizations will look to hybrid cloud infrastructure as a potential solution.

For that, multicloud networking (MCN) will be a key. MCN Will Be Crucial for Multicloud and Hybrid Cloud One of the barriers to true multicloud and hybrid cloud operations is networking technology. Most traditional networking technology was built for another era – the era of client/server applications, in which an organization controlled both the hosting of the applications as well as the network connectivity.

These days, in the cloud, applications can be hosted anywhere. Network data flows can also cross many boundaries such as those of cloud hosting providers, communications providers, and enterprise networks. In our survey work, there evidence that networking has been a hindrance to enabling multicloud and hybrid cloud operations.

Of those surveyed, 81% said that MCN can help simplify or accelerate hybrid or multicloud adoption. 81% of survey respondents said that MCN can help accelerate hybrid or multicloud adoption. Futuriom.

com To control, secure, and manage the data on the networks crossing these boundaries, enterprises will need a new type of networking software – an architecture that can connect these disparate IT resources while at the same time maintaining control, visibility, and security over the network connections. Gartner has referred to this as Multicloud Networking Software (MCNS), but we just call it MCN. In the recent Futuriom MCN survey, 46% of respondents selected a definition of MCN as “providing network connectivity and application networking with security and performance across multiple or hybrid clouds.

” The second and third definitions were “providing basic network connectivity (underlay) to and within a cloud service” (29%) and “providing application networking within a single cloud service” (24%). Judging from these results, the bulk of respondents (75%) picked a definition that focused on integrating with public cloud or hybrid infrastructure. It also appears that most people would like the broadest package of cloud networking possible.

Another key goal in our survey was to flesh out some of the more important features and use cases for MCN. In a broad sense, one of the themes we have heard in our discussions with end users is that they need a more robust MCN infrastructure that provides security, visibility, and compliance. You can’t manage what you can’t see.

This was a clear goal demonstrated in the survey results. Of those surveyed, 85% said that cloud-native MCN can help improve overall security, visibility, and governance of the networking infrastructure. Only a small number, 8%, said it wouldn’t help with these goals.

Of those surveyed, 7% weren’t sure. Cloud Networking Investment Should be Large Investors and technologists considering this transition to cloud networking infrastructure have a couple questions to ask. The want to know if it is a smaller cycle shift, or adjustment, to existing technology (a technology cycle over a decade or less), or a larger shift in technology representing a larger technology transformation taking many decades.

It’s arguable that cloud networking, like cloud infrastructure, is one of the great multi-decade transformations akin to mainframe-to-PC or Internet. A few more top-level views we see in the cloud networking and MCN market: End users see MCN and hybrid cloud networking as critical infrastructure. Of those surveyed, 47% would like to build cloud-native networking technology that is integrated with cloud provider constructs and connectivity models, and 24% would like to increase their use of public cloud infrastructure using networking overlays.

Survey and research indicate that demand for MCN technology is expected to grow quickly. Of those surveyed, 87% are expected to make investments in MCN and cloud-native networking over the next 1-5 years, with 41% saying they will invest substantially. All of this means there’s a big shakeup coming in the networking space that is likely to affect the largest players – including incumbents such as Arista Networks, Cisco, Dell, HPE, and Juniper Networks.

The decisions they make now about how they adopt their enterprise and datacenter networking products for hybrid and multicloud may well determine their future position in networking. Software players such as VMware and cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have recognized this shift, investing in their networking infrastructure to make it easier for customers to adapt. But there’s also a robust market for startups providing innovation in this area.

These include companies such as Aviatrix , Alkira , Arrcus, Graphiant , and Prosimo . One such startup, Volterra, was acquired in 2021 by F5 Networks. This will be a fertile area of M&A as larger companies look to boost their cloud networking and MCN capabilities.

Later in the week, we’ll take a deeper dive into this wider MCN ecosystem, which also includes additional ecosystem participants such as service providers and datacenter hosting providers. Follow me on Twitter . Check out my website or some of my other work here .

R. Scott Raynovich Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.