MPLS Replacement
Achieve high-performance, secure connectivity worldwide in minutes at a fraction of the cost of MPLS.
Use Cases
Multi-Region Connectivity
Quickly connect regions with encrypted IP connectivity and manage your entire network through one portal.
WAN Modernization
Upgrade legacy WANs and integrate existing SD-WAN networks into a seamless global backbone.
Solution Highlights
Leverage Alkira’s Cloud Infrastructure
Build a secure, low-cost, high-speed, and highly available backbone across regions using Alkira’s cloud infrastructure.
Extend Regional SD-WAN Meshes
Utilize Alkira’s cloud network to expand SD-WAN meshes globally, ensuring seamless connectivity across regions.
Extend Segmentation Across Regions
Seamlessly extend segmentation to isolate users and workloads, enhancing security across regions.
How Does Alkira Global Backbone
Compare to Legacy WAN?
| Capability | Alkira Global Backbone-as-a-Service | Legacy MPLS / VPN WAN |
|---|---|---|
| Provisioning Speed | ✓Global connectivity deployed in minutes | Weeks to months for MPLS circuit provisioning |
| Cost Model | ✓Consumption-based, pay for what you use | Premium per-megabit pricing with long-term contracts |
| Cloud Integration | ✓Native connectivity to all major cloud providers | Requires separate cloud interconnects per provider |
| SD-WAN Support | ✓Extends existing SD-WAN globally without replacement | SD-WAN and MPLS managed as separate, siloed systems |
| Segmentation | ✓End-to-end across all regions from a single policy plane | Per-environment VRF configuration, no global consistency |
| Visibility | ✓Unified flow visibility across the entire global backbone | Fragmented per-circuit monitoring with no cross-region view |
Better Together
Alkira and Lumen: Powering the Programmable Network
Alkira and Lumen have come together to deliver the programmable, secure, and AI-ready network enterprises need to connect applications, clouds, data centers, users, and AI workloads, with greater agility, visibility, and control.
FAQs
What is Global Backbone-as-a-Service?
+
How does Alkira replace MPLS and traditional WAN architectures?
+
What are the key benefits of using Alkira’s global backbone?
+
How does Global Backbone-as-a-Service support multi-cloud and global connectivity?
+
Additional Resources
Revolutionizing WAN: How Alkira Cloud Backbone as-a-Service Transforms Enterprise Connectivity
Enterprise networking is at a critical turning point in the era of cloud computing, generative AI, and distributed workforces. Traditional WAN architectures—rooted in MPLS, SD-WAN, and colocation facilities—struggle to keep up. They’re complex, expensive, and often too slow to deploy to support the fast-paced needs of modern organizations. Alkira Cloud Backbone as-a-Service is changing the…
Episode 22: China Connectivity – A Global Cloud Backbone without Borders
China’s connectivity is heavily regulated and technically complex. In this design zone video, we will show how Alkira can help simplify multicloud connectivity.
Whitepaper: WAN Migration to Alkira Cloud Backbone
WAN Migration to Alkira Cloud Backbone Wide Area Networks (WAN) are fundamental to any enterprise’s global connectivity needs. The benefits of a specific WAN solution do not only depend on the vendor, functionality and the features being used, but they also heavily rely on the architecture and its relevance in the context of the deployment…