Forward Networks offers visibility and intent capabilities across the entire network estate, including on-premises, hybrid-cloud, private cloud, public cloud, and multi-cloud instances. And this week, the company announced enhancements to their Forward Enterprise platform.
To find out more, VMblog spoke with David Erickson, Co-Founder and CEO of Forward Networks.
VMblog: To kick things off, can you explain what your company announced this week and what the enhancements will do for customers?
David Erickson: We're
extending the award winning capabilities of Forward Enterprise to the
Cloud. The platform now provides
unprecedented visibility into network configuration and behavior in hybrid
multi-cloud environments. The new cloud capabilities will give enterprise IT
teams a 360-degree view of both physical and virtual environments, as well as a
single pane of glass for end-to-end in-depth connectivity analysis and policy
and security verification.
VMblog: What
industry pain point are these new capabilities addressing?
Erickson: For
most companies, the visual representation of the cloud - is a cloud. Once traffic leaves the on-prem network it's
difficult to understand it's path and behavior. By adding support for the three
major cloud vendors to Forward Enterprise, we're addressing that need head on.
Enterprises can now enjoy hop-by-hop visibility in a single pane of glass.
VMblog: Are you
seeing a demand for capabilities like the ones you're launching? Is this
product generally available now?
Erickson: This
product enhancement is a direct result of customer requests. Trying to suss out traffic behavior and
verify security policies in the cloud is one of the primary struggles facing IT
shops. Currently available tools from
the cloud provider address these issues within proprietary clouds but ignore
the reality of hybrid multi-cloud environments.
Our platform presents information in a vendor-agnostic actionable manner
for cloud experts and beginners alike.
VMblog: Does
the new functionality deliver visibility into all major cloud vendors
(GCP, AWS, Azure)?
Erickson: Yes,
our platform offers integration with top cloud platforms, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google
Cloud Platform (GCP). In addition, the platform computes all possible traffic
paths for unparalleled insight into network behavior, including how some
changes can impact network behavior and compliance verification.
VMblog: What is
the impact for SecOps teams being able to use this platform?
Erickson: For
SecOps teams the single pane of glass offers a source of truth and the ability
to look at the same data as NetOps and other IT professionals with actionable information in an intuitive, vendor-agnostic
manner. The platform also delivers the ability to verify cloud security posture
with timely alerts when an incident arises, along with verification and intent
checks that essentially automate compliance audits and allow administrators to
continuously verify their security policies are in place and functioning as
expected.
VMblog: What is
the impact for NetOps teams being able to use this platform?
Erickson: Proving
network innocence in the event of an incident now takes seconds. Rather than
wasting time trying to manually trace traffic, the NetOps team can query the
network like a database and understand the posture in seconds. It's also possible to search the cloud for
issues and pinpoint them right away.
When there's a performance issue or outage, seconds count, and we help
reduce the time to troubleshoot from hours (or days in some cases) to minutes.
VMblog: How
does this launch fit into your 2022 and future looking plans? What's next for
Forward Networks after this?
Erickson: We will
focus on our customer needs and follow their lead for future enhancements which
may include additional device support, API integration, or additional features
that address ease of use and capabilities.
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