News

Viptela Onramps Branch Networks to Cloud

New service extends reach of SD-WAN-based networking fabric to public cloud platforms.

• By David Ramel
• 07/17/2017

Viptela Inc. extended its SD-WAN-based networking fabric to public cloud platforms with the launch of a new service called Cloud onRamp.

The new offering expands the reach of the company's Viptela Fabric platform in order to connect branch networks to the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) and Microsoft Azure public cloud platforms.

In addition to software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) functionality, the Viptela fabric handles Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) use cases.

Cloud onRamp can connect branch networks running on the Viptela Fabric to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) -- AWS and Azure -- or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings -- Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365 and NetSuite -- in the cloud.

On the IaaS side of things, it can automatically instantiate virtual instances of Viptela's vEdge Cloud router within the AWS or Azure cloud platforms.

"These instances automatically transform the cloud into an extension of the enterprise branch (as opposed to an extension of the datacenter) to optimize the user-experience," Viptela said in a statement. "Cloud onRamp can segment public cloud workloads through policies that enable the creation of multiple VPNs on top of a single fabric. The entire infrastructure is centrally managed for connectivity, security, policy and access control."

Viptela's Ariful Huq provided more details on that aspect of the service in a blog post last week. "The traditional approach of making public cloud an extension of the datacenter goes away and you are able to connect branches directly to public cloud providers," he said.

To work with SaaS applications like Office 365 or Salesforce, Cloud onRamp uses vEdge routers installed in branch locations, regional colocation facilities or datacenters for performance and availability monitoring, while dynamically determining the best path on the Internet to reach the applications.

Viptela -- which is being acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. -- said the vEdge routers act as cloud gateways to the SaaS resources, providing real-time network and application optimization according to ever-changing network conditions.

"Cloud onRamp for SaaS gives enterprises visibility into the availability and performance of SaaS applications from designated Internet exit points," Huq said. "These exit points can be the branch vEdge for Direct Internet Access (DIA) or remote Internet gateways hosted in the datacenter or regional DMZ. Visibility to SaaS performance is provided through a Viptela Quality of Experience (vQoE) score for over 20 well-known applications. The vQoE score utilizes performance data from real-time probes sent by designated vEdge routers towards the SaaS provider."

For the AWS cloud, Viptela's Cloud onRamp is provided in an AWS Marketplace offering called "Viptela vEdge Cloud Router," where it's described as an "Industry leading virtualized SD-WAN router with a centralized provisioning and management tool capable of managing on premise and cloud deployments."

Along with pricing information, the marketplace entry provides this product description:

Viptela vEdge Cloud is a software router that supports all of the capabilities available on Viptela's industry leading SD-WAN platform. The vEdge cloud router allows customers to seamlessly and securely connect all their branch and data center end-points into public cloud environments. Value proposition of the vEdge cloud router includes:

• Directly connect branch to cloud instances improving access to public instances
• Resilient connectivity from the cloud by utilizing multiple transport links, that is, IGW and VGW
• Application visibility and steering from the cloud
• Centralized control and policy management across all branch and cloud endpoints
• Homogenous branch and cloud environments

The corresponding Azure Marketplace entry can be found here.