
Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2015. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Harshal Pimpalkhute, product marketing engineer, at A10 Networks
New L4-L7 Services Needed for Tomorrow’s Cloud IaaS Environments
Cloud
IaaS deliver vastly greater business agility, service provisioning times, and
economics. These environments require that underlying infrastructure be
automated and scalable to build an on-demand delivery model providing dynamic
and consistent services in a shared, multi-tenant environment. In order to do
so, it is critically important to have a seamless integration of application
networking services with other data center infrastructure to deliver dynamic
L4-7 services and automated policy enforcement for service-level agreements (SLAs) and compliance in a shared, multi-tenant
environment. Customers have now come to expect the same L4-L7 Application
Delivery Controller (ADC) services in
cloud and virtual environments as they receive via on-premise Data Center. As
Cloud IaaS gains momentum, in 2015 Programmability, Rich Analytics and Secure
Cloud Interconnects and are going to be key areas of innovation for L4-L7
Services. Let's examine these areas briefly for next year:
Programmability: As cloud
infrastructure gets deployed across segments, customers are looking for
flexible components that can interoperate with each other. An open standards-based
approach that maximizes infrastructure design options will be critical to
success of any product in the cloud domain in 2015. Organizations need tools to
manage traffic flows in a highly shared multi-tenant environment. Standards-based
RESTful APIs designed from the ground up for cloud and virtualization interoperability
will be leveraged heavily as we see more deployments of Cloud IaaS. The
availability, consistency and capability of these APIs will dictate the success
of a product in the cloud economy. In 2015, APIs will be used for a multitude
of use cases ranging from the obvious - provisioning, monitoring, maintenance -
to the more evolved use cases such service chaining and life cycle management.
Rich Analytics: Virtual Machine (VM)
sprawl was an issue that plagued administrators after virtualization became
mainstream. With Cloud gaining momentum operators will have to address
infrastructure sprawl. Powerful analytics providing insights into virtual
machine data, application traffic patterns and network utilization are going to
be key to manage Cloud IaaS. Operators can use this data for capacity planning,
managing user experience, and ensuring network efficiencies. In 2014 we saw
eco-systems related to analytics gaining momentum; In 2015 analytics we be a
central theme in technology selection and deployment. Tools to provide
visibility, trends and usage data will be required to ensure networks don't run
into the same challenges related to infrastructure sprawl.
Secure Cloud Interconnects: As more
applications are virtualized and moved to the Cloud, and business critical data
flows off premises, organizations will need new measures to ensure that data is
not compromised. Secure cloud connectivity is emerging as an important
consideration for Cloud datacenter design. In 2015, the security factors will
also influence the policy considerations for Cloud Architects. Application
network services will need to be able to ensure that security policies rules
are managed dynamically as workloads move through different domains, to ensure
compliance to varying security levels. While data sovereignty continues to be
an important topic for organizations, secure cloud interconnects are going to
play central role with more workloads and business sensitive data transferring
to the Cloud in the new year.
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About
the Author
Harshal
Pimpalkhtue is Product Marketing Engineer at A10 Networks. He is the lead for
A10 Networks' products and solutions for Cloud IaaS. In this role he interfaces
with customers and partners to take to market L4-L7 solutions that help cloud operators
navigate technology transitions to Cloud IaaS. He has more than 13 years of
experience in software development and product management. Harshal's domain
expertise includes Data Center, Enterprise and Service Provider networking
solutions.