Alkira announced the integration of Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN with the Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) cloud networking-as-a-service solution, enabling enterprises to establish end-to-end network connectivity with cloud workloads. Edge application traffic traversing the SD-WAN fabric to the cloud can now be symmetrically steered using Alkira intent-based policies to firewalls residing in Alkira CSX.

The Alkira CSX portal provides operational controls across the entire cloud network deployment, giving customers powerful visibility, governance, control, and troubleshooting tools. Aruba Orchestrator complements these features with  centralized policy orchestration, monitoring, and reporting for all EdgeConnect SD-WAN instances, including EdgeConnect virtual appliances, deployed within Alkira CSX.

"The end-to-end architecture we've implemented with Alkira brings enterprise networking and security to edge-to-cloud and multi-cloud transformations, and provides customers another option for deploying a best-in-class SASE architecture," said Fraser Street, WAN Technical Alliance Co-ordinator at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.  "Joint customers obtain in-cloud network configuration and traffic management, thereby simplifying deployments, enhancing security, and speeding troubleshooting."

"Enterprises are struggling with the complexity of cloud migration, unified network segmentation and the implementation of stateful security services," said Atif Khan, Chief Technology Officer at Alkira. "Aruba EdgeConnect solves the edge-to-cloud connectivity problem, and Alkira CSX solves the segmentation and security issues using intent-based policies and firewalls.  We connect the dots so customers don't have to."  

An added benefit of the joint solution is that SD-WAN deployments can now be regionalized by attaching local Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN fabrics through the high-bandwidth, low latency Alkira cloud backbone. Segmentation between cloud workloads and SD-WAN sites handling regional cloud application traffic obviates the need for costly long-haul private circuits when Internet access is not a viable solution.