With digital transformation, the continued expansion of cloud adoption and data processing and analysis at the edge, businesses are rethinking their networking strategies. Companies are considering customer end-user support and services across a constantly shifting landscape of physical locations.

Businesses need to be able to swiftly and safely exchange data with their data centres, the cloud, numerous offices, remote workers, partners, and customers. This presents a challenge for some businesses given the cost, time needed to set up, and the absence of private connections between some of these various interested parties or consolidation points.

According to IDC, “by 2022, more than 90 percent of organisations globally will depend on a mix of on-premise/dedicated private clouds, many public clouds, and legacy systems to satisfy their infrastructure needs”.

With firms looking to upgrade their networking while preserving control, visibility, and data security, there are several solutions to consider.

Last month we took you through Aruba’s EdgeConnect solutions. This month, we are broadening the lens to examine how two offerings together can deliver value greater to your organisation.

Aruba Edge Connect

With the acquisition of the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for WAN Edge Infrastructure – Silverpeak – Aruba has expanded its SD-WAN capabilities to incorporate solutions from flexible small branch connectivity through to the enterprise. Edge Connect is the fabric that provides secure connectivity for all locations of all sizes. It includes automated integration with cloud-based security providers, automated provisioning, intelligent traffic steering and delivers centralised QoS and security policy configuration when used with Aruba Central.

The 2020 IDC report – Worldwide SD-WAN Infrastructure Market Shares – cites the growth of the SD-WAN market with a growing trend towards partnerships between “SD-WAN vendors, public cloud providers, and “SD-Core” middle-mile players that enable enterprises to create direct connections and low-latency on-ramps between SD-WAN offerings and public clouds…More than ever, applications and workloads, which are more distributed in the cloud era and have gained unprecedented importance in the context of digital transformation, set the agenda for agile, intelligent, and secure networking across the WAN.” The integration between Aruba’s EdgeConnect Enterprise solution and Megaport Virtual Edge is one of these partnerships.

Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE)

Megaport is a software defined network (SDN) service provider that helps businesses connect public and private cloud, data centre backhaul and provides Internet Exchange Services.

Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE) is a Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) solution that connects client branches to the cloud.

MVE acts as a gateway, connecting SD-WAN equipped businesses to the Megaport ecosystem. This gateway offers cloud-agnostic, direct, and secure access to Megaport’s extensive ecosystem of cloud providers and other services.

The virtualised network design allows for greater flexibility in selecting transport services by isolating network software controls from WAN connections. These services include broadband internet, satellite, MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching), and mobile 4G/5G networks.

The Megaport SDN is a private network that is not open to the public.  MVE, in contrast, is connected to the Internet, allowing SD-WAN devices to connect to Megaport’s private network. The Megaport SDN is accessible from one or a few hops across the public internet connection. 

MVE and Aruba

MVE integrates with Aruba. EdgeConnect to advance enterprise cloud transformation with a comprehensive edge-to-cloud networking solution covering all aspects of wired and wireless local area networking (LAN) and wide-area networking (WAN).

We, as your IT partner delivering EdgeConnect can install and configure the private overlay network, along with managing the connections between networks and the policies that govern them.

As a Megaport user, your business can instantiate virtual Aruba EdgeConnect instances on MVE, enabling the extension of Aruba’s SD-WAN fabric to the very edge of Megaport’s global, private SDN.

MVE keeps applications and traffic on the Aruba SD-WAN fabric for a longer time, reducing the risk and unpredictability of using the public Internet while simultaneously providing the immediate benefits of higher performance, increased security and efficiency. With Aruba EdgeConnect traffic riding on Megaport’s global, private network, organisations can drastically reduce egress costs. The joint solution can accelerate data transfer to better service the edge and simplify commissioning and maintenance. What does it all mean for your business?

The combination of Aruba EdgeConnect and MVE offers a branch-to-cloud connection over Megaport’s worldwide SDN.

You can use SD-WAN and internet connections to streamline your IT connectivity while lowering costs. Virtual instances of Aruba EdgeConnect on Megaport’s global platform mitigate the challenge of the unpredictability of end-to-end internet connections and latency that can affect the performance, availability, and security of important services and resources.

Businesses using Aruba EdgeConnect can now take advantage of Megaport’s worldwide ecosystem, which consists of more than 700 data centres and over 360 service providers, in addition to more than 230 cloud on-ramps, some of which include AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Salesforce.

Conclusion

MVE unifies computing and networking. Unlike traditional networking systems, Megaport provides flexible networking capabilities that minimise operational costs and enhance time to market. Megaport collaborates with the world’s leading cloud service providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as the world’s major data centre operators, systems integrators, and managed service providers.

Combining the Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN technology with Megaport’s SDN allows clients to improve network and application performance while cutting cloud expenses. As your IT partner, we can help determine if MVE and Aruba EdgeConnect are the right fit for your business.