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VMblog Expert Interview: Forward Networks Enhances Hybrid Multi-Cloud Visibility and Monitoring; Impacts SecOps and NetOps Teams

interview-forwardnetworks-erickson 

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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Published Friday, February 25, 2022 7:31 AM by David Marshall
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