Global enterprises and businesses have been through some unprecedented times in the last few years. Driven by the pandemic, organizations have had to completely rethink their business models as well as how and where they engage with their customers. What is clear is that traditional approaches are inadequate to address the changing needs.
The Network Needs a Rethink
From a network perspective, there are some key technology shifts underway for Enterprises, CSP and Cloud providers:
- Transition to 5G
- Cloud to multi-cloud
- Rise in Edge computing
These technology shifts have fueled a slew of next generation applications, including Web 3.0 and Metaverse, that are demanding increased bandwidth and lower latency.
According to Gartner, “Digital transformation is pushing enterprises to be more distributed and expand to the edge. I&O leaders must plan for the growth of IoT and related data at the edge, protect their enterprise from edge growing pains in security and connectivity, and prepare for changes in edge computing use cases.”
As a result of all these trends, there is no longer a neat transition in the network from access to aggregation to core to cloud. The boundaries begin to blur between Enterprise, CSP and Cloud domains with connections multiplying across the edge, colocation facilities, private and public clouds and with workloads spread across the internet.
This necessitates a rethink of the transport network - it now needs to behave like an overlay fabric that stretches across all domains and the multiple use cases. One that is scalable, agile, programmable, and secure. In addition, it needs to be capable of being deployed on a variety of hardware options, whether purpose-built switches/routers or servers as well as anywhere: on premise or in the cloud.
Legacy transport networking unfortunately does not address these changing requirements. The traditional solutions are hardware and use-case centric, inflexible and have high Total Cost of Ownership.
Network Different with Arrcus
Arrcus solves this problem by removing hard boundaries and disaggregating the network stack - a layer of software that can be delivered on merchant silicon and/or cloud. This leads to a highly programmable and secure network fabric that is scalable based on consumption, capable of being distributed from edge to core to cloud with up to 40% reduction in total cost compared to traditional alternatives.
Arrcus engineered the Arrcus Connected Edge (ACE) platform to deliver on the needs for a new reality. This includes the capabilities to dynamically and automatically provide networking services for edge devices, wherever they reside, as well as powerful automated management tools to quickly deploy and manage services at the edge.
This enables multiple use cases such as:
- Datacenter switching
- Access and aggregation routing
- Core routing
- Multi-cloud connectivity (MCNS)
- Multi-access Edge computing
The ACE platform brings together a set of solutions geared at building edge-native features, API-based programmability, and automated management functions to quickly deploy and manage services at the edge. Technologies bundled into ACE include Arrcus’ industry-leading network operating system (NOS), ArcOS, network automation and orchestration tool (ArcOrchestrator), integrated analytics platform for visibility and observability (ArcIQ), and a converged platform for telecommunications and compute (ArcEdge).
This comprehensive platform is built with extensive APIs, which enable quick integration for many use cases and vertical markets. The most important aspect of the API and automation capabilities is that it enables businesses to build specific solutions using logic and policy. One of the important trends in the development of the edge is the emergence of high-performance, multi-vendor solutions. The ACE platform is based on open standards and protocols and can be in implemented in multi-vendor environments to develop customized solutions for different edge use cases.
Several large enterprises, colocation providers and CSPs have already deployed ACE platform and have benefited from having a flexible and programmable infrastructure. CoreSite, a leading Colocation provider has deployed the ACE MCN solution to enable it’s Open Cloud Exchange (OCX). The Open Cloud Exchange® is an enterprise network services solution that enables customers to deploy high-performance hybrid architectures in a quick, secure, and economical way. CoreSite is leveraging the ACE MCN solution to extend its software-defined networking platform through automating additional provisioning functionality within AWS and Microsoft® Azure Cloud and direct cloud-to-cloud communication capabilities on CoreSite’s fully managed virtual routers.
At Arrcus we’ve engineered the next generation platform to deliver on the needs for a new reality. One that is scalable, agile, programmable, and secure. A network without boundaries so your business can grow without restrictions.