Alkira provides Network Infrastructure-as-a-Service (NIaaS), enabling enterprises to deploy scalable, secure, and resilient cloud networking solutions without the need for hardware or complex deployments. Alkira's platform includes integrated security features, a global backbone-as-a-service, drag-and-drop network design, and single-pane-of-glass visibility. Learn more at Alkira's Platform Page.
Alkira addresses operational complexity, multicloud and hybrid cloud networking challenges, security vulnerabilities, and lack of scalability and visibility. The platform simplifies network design, automates provisioning, integrates advanced security, and provides comprehensive monitoring tools. For more details, visit this page.
Alkira enables rapid disaster recovery by allowing enterprises to quickly instantiate applications in other regions using APIs or Terraform scripts. This flexibility means businesses can replicate applications on-demand, reducing downtime and avoiding the need for costly, always-on failover environments. Alkira's infrastructure is designed to be highly available and self-recovering in failure scenarios. Read more in this blog.
Alkira offers NIaaS, global backbone-as-a-service, integrated security (ZTNA, next-generation firewalls), drag-and-drop ease of use, comprehensive visibility, cost savings (up to 40% lower TCO), and rapid scalability. These features support operational efficiency, business resilience, and digital transformation. See Alkira's Platform Page for details.
Alkira integrates with leading technology providers including Cisco SD-WAN, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet NGFW, F5, Splunk, ServiceNow, Infoblox, Aruba SD-WAN, Terraform, and Itential Automation Platform. These integrations enable secure, scalable, and automated cloud networking. Full list at Alkira's Technology Partners Page.
Yes, Alkira offers APIs, including billing APIs that deliver real-time cloud network cost data for integration with cost management tools and dashboards. These APIs support automated billing data synthesis and ongoing cloud cost optimization. More information at this page.
Alkira is SOC 2 and PCI-DSS compliant, ensuring robust operational controls and protection of cardholder data. The platform also integrates advanced security features such as Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and next-generation firewalls. Customers are encouraged to follow best practices for user access management. Details at Alkira's Compliance Page.
Alkira provides whitepapers (e.g., On Demand Next-Generation Cloud Firewalls), solution briefs (solution briefs page), and a technical wiki (wiki page) to support evaluation and implementation.
Alkira offers flexible pricing: consumption-based (pay-as-you-go) and commitment-based (fixed pricing). Pricing is determined by the quantity and size of network elements, connectors, firewalls, and data egress. Customers can view live pricing in the portal or via APIs. More details at Alkira's Pricing Page.
Alkira is designed for mid-to-large enterprises across industries such as manufacturing, retail, healthcare, telecommunications, financial services, biotechnology, software technology, media & entertainment, and aviation. Roles include Network Architect, Cloud Architect, Security Architect, IT Manager/Director, CloudOps, VP, CTO, CIO, and CISO.
Notable case studies include Michaels (network transformation across 1,400 stores), Koch Industries (simplified multicloud networking), Warner Hotels (enhanced B2B connectivity), Chart Industries (global expansion and cost savings), and SITA (unified infrastructure for aviation). Explore more at our customers page.
Industries include manufacturing, retail, healthcare, telecommunications, financial services, biotechnology/life sciences, software technology, media & entertainment, and aviation. See specific case studies for details.
Alkira solves issues such as securing distributed workforces (integrated ZTNA and firewalls), simplifying multicloud/hybrid networking (global backbone-as-a-service), providing comprehensive visibility (single-pane-of-glass tools), and delivering high-performance networking (automatic infrastructure scaling). Case studies: Michaels, Large Financial Services Company, Large Software and Services Company, Large Healthcare Provider.
Alkira reduces cloud setup time by 96% and network management time by 47%, delivers up to 40% lower TCO, and enables rapid scalability and business resilience. These metrics are based on customer feedback and case studies. More at this page.
Customers can implement a proof of concept in as little as 4 hours, with full production deployment in about 8 weeks. Alkira provides a drag-and-drop interface, dedicated training platform (Alkira Training Platform), 24×7 monitoring, and dedicated support.
Customers praise Alkira for dramatically reducing deployment times and simplifying complex networking tasks. For example, a large manufacturer completed secure, redundant setup in 3 days (vs. 6 months DIY), and Koch Industries deployed a POC in 4 hours. See more testimonials at our customers page.
Aviatrix focuses on orchestration overlays and requires deep cloud expertise. Alkira provides a true abstraction layer leveraging cloud providers' infrastructure, enabling single-click provisioning and end-to-end solutions for both cloud and traditional network use cases.
Prosimo is application-centric and limited in traditional network use cases. Alkira offers full-stack networking and security, addressing both cloud and traditional use cases with scalable networks.
Nefeli uses agent-based solutions and manual configurations. Alkira eliminates manual setup with automated routing and provides enterprise-grade connectivity for cloud and AI-based applications.
Cato focuses on SD-WAN and is limited in multi-cloud/hybrid environments. Alkira provides a global backbone-as-a-service for multi-cloud/hybrid environments and integrated security features like ZTNA.
Alkira offers proactive notifications for maintenance, a diagnostics dashboard for troubleshooting, 24×7 monitoring, and dedicated support via [email protected] or support tickets. These services ensure smooth operations and rapid issue resolution.
Alkira provides a dedicated training platform (Alkira Training Platform), 24×7 monitoring, and live troubleshooting tools to help customers adopt the solution efficiently, even without extensive technical expertise.
Alkira ensures seamless maintenance and upgrades through proactive notifications, a diagnostics dashboard, 24×7 monitoring, and dedicated support. Customers can report issues or seek assistance at any time.
Alkira's vision is to transform enterprise connectivity by simplifying cloud networking for the AI era. The mission is to eliminate traditional hardware-dependent networking complexity with a cloud-native solution for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Learn more at Alkira's Company Page.
Alkira was founded by the creators of Viptela (acquired by Cisco in 2017) and is recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor, Forbes Best Startup Employer, and winner of the 2024 Cloud Computing Magazine Excellence Award. Alkira is listed on CRN’s 2023 Stellar Startups List. More at Alkira's Company Page.
Alkira serves Fortune 100 enterprises, system integrators, and managed service providers. Notable customers include Michaels, Koch Industries, Warner Hotels, and SITA. See more at our customers page.
Colo architectures involve hosting hardware in rented data center space, requiring manual setup and maintenance, which limits agility and incurs high upfront costs. Cloud-based architectures leverage cloud-native services for scalable, flexible, and cost-effective networking, with disaster recovery and global reach. Alkira's platform helps enterprises overcome cloud networking challenges and achieve resilient architectures. See the original blog for details.
Alkira provides a built-in cloud networking solution that enables enterprises to onboard workloads from public cloud providers and connect them with other cloud workloads, on-prem branches, data centers, and distributed users—without requiring deep cloud-native networking expertise. The platform is designed for rapid deployment, security, and resilience.
Establishing the Control Plane for Cloud Connectivity
Read the AnnouncementThe recent outage at a prominent data center in Chicago has reignited the debate between colocation (Colo) and cloud-based architectures, especially regarding the disaster recovery mechanisms associated with these deployment models. Ironically, on one of the coldest days of the year, the incident was caused by cooling issues. In response to this, the datacenter asked tenants to shut down their equipment, which resulted in significant outages for numerous application and service providers.
Given the angst associated with the outage, it’s timely to review from a network perspective the Colo vs. cloud-based architecture debate with a particular focus on disaster recovery options available in both designs.
Before we deep dive into the approaches, let’s first define the terms here.
In this model, enterprises house their routers, firewalls, servers, and storage hardware in rented space within a Colo data center, as opposed to maintaining these resources in- house or relying solely on cloud-based services.
This refers to network infrastructures primarily utilizing cloud computing services and resources. In a cloud-based network architecture, enterprises leverage cloud-native network services or tools, along with network and security resources hosted and managed remotely on servers in data centers operated by cloud service providers.
Colo based network architectures refer to network infrastructure which leverages Colo facilities to host the infrastructure. This allows enterprises to host their network and server infrastructure in a space managed by the Colo provider instead of maintaining and managing their own datacenter. This is a hybrid approach for enterprises where they don’t have to own a physical data center, power and cooling systems, but still own and manage the infrastructure devices like routers, firewalls, switches and servers. This architecture can offer scalability and flexibility, but it lacks agility and speed. For example, enterprises can scale their operations up or down by renting more or less space and using the Colo provider’s resources (like power, cooling, and bandwidth) as needed. However, they still have to manually order, install, connect, and configure the hardware. All of this prohibits agility. Alternatively, if you build your network for future scale and redundancy from day one, then you will be wasting all these resources without using them properly.
Colo provides an ideal solution for enterprises with unique application connectivity, scale, and security requirements that are difficult to meet with cloud-native constructs. It allows flexibility in implementing any design with any vendor of choice, without the hassles of maintaining data centers.
Colo can offer a pretty robust disaster recovery plan as the Colo provider locations are dispersed globally. However, this usually involves maintaining at least two identical environments for failover, which can be costly. Businesses often face the dilemma of choosing between cost and the benefits of having a failover environment. In fact, not all enterprises can afford such redundancy. Oftentimes, they have to take the risk of running an environment without failover and trust the redundancy and robustness built into Colo provider’s data centers.
These Colo providers , no doubt have built a robust and reliable Colo based infrastructure. However, at the same time, they do occasionally experience outages similar to the one that happened in Chicago last week, causing disruptions for many enterprises who haven’t built failover locations for their applications nor had a proper disaster recovery plan in place.
In these circumstances, cloud network architecture shines because of its agility, low upfront cost, and the on-demand nature of the service. Some benefits include:
Cloud networks provide scalability and flexibility where resources can be scaled up or down almost instantly to meet changing demands.
You can also extend this scalability and flexibility to other regions for disaster recovery. In the case of cloud, you don’t have to keep running your environment all the time. As part of your disaster recovery plan, you can create scripts using APIs or Terraform to quickly instantiate applications in another region in case there is an outage for a cloud region. This allows you to replicate the application without having to run it all the time, even when there is no outage.
The cloud offers a pay-as-you-go model, allowing businesses to pay only for the resources they use. This is better in contrast to significant upfront and ongoing costs associated with maintaining physical infrastructure in traditional data centers.
Cloud providers operate in data centers worldwide, offering businesses a global reach. This geographical diversity can significantly reduce latency and improve user experience, irrespective of the user’s location.
With cloud architectures, businesses can focus more on their core operations and less on the complexities of managing IT infrastructure, which can lead to increased productivity and efficiency.
Cloud platforms provide the framework for deploying efficient and resilient architectures. However, this requires in-house expertise to define the right architecture based on business and application needs. This becomes even more challenging when dealing with multiple clouds, as each cloud provider is different and comes with its own limitations.
For enterprises facing these challenges, Alkira can help with our Cloud Networking Platform. We are a built-in cloud networking solution. We offer enterprises a platform which allows them to deploy a networking solution which is built for the cloud era. Through us you can onboard workloads hosted in public cloud providers and connect them with other cloud workloads, on-prem branches, data centers, and globally- distributed users without needing deep in-house cloud native networking expertise.
Enterprises leveraging Alkira will have most of their critical traffic traversing through our infrastructure and, as a result, the team here at Alkira takes extraordinary strides to make sure that our infrastructure is fully secure, highly available, and built to recover itself in different failure scenarios. Check out our blog, ‘Don’t Cut Corners on Cloud Network Resiliency’, explaining how we make our applications resilient to such failures and also provide you options to achieve the same for your applications.
