News

Cisco SD-WAN Weds Google Cloud for Hybrid/Multicloud Solution

• By David Ramel
• 04/21/2020

Cisco's software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) offering will integrate with Google Cloud to create what they claim is the industry's first "application-centric multicloud networking fabric" -- Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud -- coming in the first half of next year.

Building upon an existing partnership with the two industry giants, the new solution will target organizations using hybrid and multicloud strategies. Applications on such platforms will be distributed across and integrate with network services to optimize their security, compliance, performance and experience quality.

"For the first time, the industry will have full WAN application integration with cloud workloads: The network will talk to apps, and apps will talk to the network," Cisco said in a blog post today (April 21). "Critical security, policy, and performance information will be able to cross the boundaries of network, cloud, and application. This integration will extend into hybrid and multicloud environments, like Anthos, Google Cloud's open application platform, supporting the optimization of distributed, multicloud microservice-based applications."

A companion Google post claims new capabilities will include:

• A flexible, on-demand network that allows customers to automatically provision a reliable, global network that grows with enterprises' business needs. In most cases, customer traffic enters Google's network directly from their last mile provider and stays on Google's network while it traverses the globe. Combining Cisco's advanced SD-WAN capabilities with Google's software-defined backbone, customers get an end-to-end network that not only optimizes connectivity between branches, stores and to the cloud, but also provides telemetry for troubleshooting and diagnostic purposes.
• Automated application and path-aware routing takes the complexity out of mapping business services to the appropriate network. The Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud solution allows customers to publish all of their services in a single place with the ability to define the intent of how the network should treat those services in an automated fashion, reducing time to onboard new services on to the network. With a combined view of network telemetry, this solution also provides the most optimized path to interconnect Anthos-based services hosted in hybrid/multi cloud environments.
• Stronger, smarter security thanks to Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud's end-to-end security, which seamlessly integrates network control and available application-layer security controls based on workload and user identities. With this rich set of controls, customers get security at multiple layers, resulting in stronger protection for their applications.

The new solution furthers an extensive, years-long partnership between the two companies, such that it has its own site.

For example, VCRM reported a 2017 agreement in which the firms teamed up for a new hybrid cloud solution.

The partners will invite select customers to participate in previews of the offering before year's end in advance of a general availability rollout planned for the first half of 2021.