Alkira Inc. emerged from stealth mode today, and unveiled Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX), the first unified, on demand, multi-cloud offering. Alkira CSX enables cloud architects and network engineers to build and deploy a point and click multi-cloud network in minutes, with the flexibility to turn services on and off as the business requires, with no upfront CapEx. The service is simple to deploy and operate - no certified training is required. Alkira CSX is available today at www.Alkira.com.

"Now more than ever, businesses rely on a mobile workforce and applications accessed in the cloud, securely and on demand. This shift requires that IT organizations have extreme agility, automated scaling, and the highest level of network resiliency," said Amir Khan, CEO and founder of Alkira. "Alkira CSX reinvents cloud networking, delivering as-a-service consumption of a global multi-cloud network with unified services, security, intent-based policy, visibility and governance. Alkira CSX seamlessly connects to your corporate infrastructure and enables customers to secure and connect a multi-cloud environment in minutes, providing businesses the agility they need to navigate through volatile market conditions."

"Alkira is a game-changer that empowers networking professionals to build and operate a network as a utility and address the challenges that enterprises face connecting and supporting multiple clouds," said Ernest Lefner, co-founder and co-chairman of ONUG, the largest open networking user group. "Alkira is like having your own personalized virtual co-location capability for cloud network access. It comes with a rich suite of secure and resilient unified services that enable on-time and at scale cloud connectivity. Alkira CSX handles the heavy lifting in operationalizing virtual cloud networking including the delivery of new capabilities like patching, security, monitoring, troubleshooting, visibility and upgrades, which are all handled transparently."

Alkira CSX addresses enterprise customer requirements including:

• Resilient network connectivity - from on-premises to clouds - including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure.
• Cloud-to-cloud connectivity within and across regions.
• Regionalized cloud to Internet or SaaS connectivity.
• Integration of a global multi-cloud network services suite including security, global load balancing, and IP address management.
• A rich operations suite with a unified dashboard.
• Granular billing for multi-cloud network and services for better financial management and control.

"Alkira Cloud Services Exchange is the first unified multi-cloud network with an integrated network services marketplace, deep network insights and governance - resiliently delivered on demand and as-a-service," said Atif Khan, CTO and founder of Alkira. "At the heart of Alkira CSX are Alkira Cloud Exchange Points (CXPs), which are globally distributed multi-cloud points of presence, providing a full routing stack and network services capabilities. CXPs natively leverage cloud capabilities, when and where needed. Alkira CSX and CXPs are built on top of Alkira's Multi-Cloud Fully Integrated Routing and Services Technology (Multi-Cloud FIRST) architecture."

With Alkira, organizations no longer need to study and work around the different networking constructs and dependencies of each cloud. Alkira CSX portal offers an intuitive design canvas with dramatically simplified graphic modeling of the network, including network services, network segmentation, and visualization of intent-based policy applied across multi-cloud networks.

"At Global Eagle we've been impressed by the speed and ease of the Alkira multi-cloud network service. It took under one hour to design, deploy and provision connectivity from on premises to applications in the cloud across two regions," said Andrew Rae, Head of IT Infrastructure and Networking at Global Eagle. It is an efficient and effective way to have multi-region cloud connectivity with seamless security services."

Alkira CXPs provide a single point of entry into the entire customer multi-cloud environment. The architecture has built-in scale, availability, redundancy, and end-to-end cloud independent network segmentation. This allows customers to globally segregate different types of traffic and move compliance workloads to the cloud while accelerating their cloud adoption.

Alkira will go-to-market through a partner ecosystem.