Your DevOps team could build a great new service in days, but thanks to the complexity of networking in the cloud it could take months to roll out. Even then, you could end up with an operational nightmare.
JOINT SOLUTION
A technical alliance between Alkira and Itential brings simplicity, agility and order to cloud networking.
The joint solution will enable customers to deploy, manage, and operate enterprise grade networks for cloud and on-prem with full end-to-end automation, reducing time to market for business-critical services.
Cloud Complexity
= Cost + Delay
Virtualisation should accelerate deployment and allow businesses to leverage huge economies of scale.
Yet while IT spending continues to increase, the gap refuses to close between the potential of cloud and real-world return on investment.
CIOs continue to complain that cloud delivers less than they hoped. Respondents to the 2023 Flexera State of the Cloud report estimate an average 18% cloud spend over budget. The same group calculates that 28% of their cloud investment is wasted.
Complexity is the major cause of this waste. Complexity in the deployment and operation of cloud networks adds time and cost. Building DIY networks in the cloud is challenging even with a single cloud provider. Adding multiple clouds, security and business continuity guardrails increases the challenge exponentially.
Complexity is unavoidable: 87% of enterprises already use multiple clouds and 72% use a mixture of public and private clouds.
While cloud makes it possible to build new applications faster than ever, the networks needed to connect them securely to customers and partner ecosystems are slow to deploy, costly to manage and difficult to adapt.
Even after they are successfully deployed, DIY cloud networks have complexity baked in, leading to ongoing operational challenges and higher costs.
What Alkira does
Alkira abstracts the complexity of cloud networking.
It is hyperscale infrastructure that connects remote users, cloud regions, multiple clouds, SaaS applications, data centers and existing SD-WAN fabrics.
Networks are provisioned in the Alkira portal using a point and click graphical interface, which also enables the insertion of high-level network services including firewalls, WAN optimization and directory services. Alkira virtual hubs automatically take care of the network plumbing.
Using Alkira, customers can cut the time taken to build networks that unify clouds and on-prem from months to minutes. A single management console provides end to end visibility simplifying day 2 operations.
Alkira infrastructure is delivered entirely as a service with no hardware or software to install or agents to manage. Customers can access near-infinite capacity but pay only for what they use.
What Itential does
Itential simplifies and accelerates hybrid, multi-cloud network automation.
Itential is the only cloud-native automation solution built to support both network and cloud infrastructure, making it easy for enterprise organizations to reduce manual operations, deliver services faster, simplify network change management and maintain security with standardized configuration and compliance.
The Itential Automation Platform (IAP) is a low-code solution that seamlessly connects IT systems with network technologies for end-to-end network configuration, compliance, automation, and orchestration.
Itential’s solution puts networking teams in control of every domain of the network using the tools and skills they already have, helping organizations evolve from manual processes to self-serve, automated networking.
Learn more about Itential here.
What we do Together
The partnership of Itential and Alkira provides a holistic and comprehensive solution for customers to automate their entire network.
Itential’s API-first approach to automation enables teams to integrate with their entire ecosystem and deliver a federated source of truth for the entire network. Customers use the Itential Automation Platform to automate the deployment of their Cloud Service Provider assets as well as deploy and provision their on-demand networking platform from Alkira for multi-cloud and cloud-to-onPrem networking. Itential is also used to deploy 3rd party services within Alkira’s Cloud Exchange Point (CXP) for customer requirements of Next Gen Firewalls (Palo Alto, Cisco Firewall, Checkpoint, Fortinet, zScalar ZIA), DDI Services (Infoblox) and Alert & Monitoring (Splunk, ServiceNow). Once deployed, customers can use Itential for Day 2 operations and changes of these services in CXP as well as their on-prem devices.
Networks are constantly changing. By integrating these two platforms at the API level, network teams can build automations that combine Alkira’s unique cloud features with Itential’s ability to ensure compliance and consistency across physical and cloud infrastructure.
Cloud networking is complex. Alkira and Itential have teamed up to make sure that’s no longer your problem.
Itential + Alkira:
See how the Itential integrates with Alkira to orchestrating end-to-end network processes for self-service delivery.