In 2017 I had the pleasure of moderating a panel of leading industry experts at Capacity North America where we mostly discussed the benefits of private connectivity, or interconnection. However, things became a little more contentious when one of the panel members suggested that the public internet works just fine. This sparked a debate on the panel that I'll never forget.
The whole premise of the panel discussion was to demonstrate that there was a rich ecosystem of private networking products and services available to the enterprise customer solving for key issues such as security, vulnerabilities in managing route tables, performance etc. So, why the heck would the Internet be OK if we knew its flaws. Well, as many an early stage software developer or founder can attest to, they have little concern for these risks in most cases and/or may not even be aware that other solutions exist. Plus, their network architectures are typically very basic where they might be running ALL of their environments in one or two CSP regions.
Yes, the public Internet can "work just fine", but as those small startups have ever evolving and growing needs, so does their network security posture and stance. Plus, there is the whole cost consideration and scaling issues of running everything in the cloud. At some point in time it may make sense to adopt a multicloud or hybrid cloud architecture and this is where certain networking technologies at Layers 2 and 3 become critical. AWS and Azure pioneered this area of cloud networking when they launched AWS Direct Connect in 2011 and Azure ExpressRoute in 2014, respectively. Prior to the launch of these products, enterprise customers were stuck with the public Internet, traditional peering arrangements, or simply managing a WAN (Wide Area Network) on their own via more traditional telecommunications products such as MPLS and others.
Since 2011 a whole new segment in the market has emerged, commonly known as SDN (Software Defined Networking) specific to cloud interconnection and/or NaaS (Network as a Service). In fact, many analysts didn't know what to do in the early days and struggled to classify what startups like Console and Megaport were actually doing.
Without demand for these private networking products (eg AWS Direct Connect) companies such as Console, Megaport, PacketFabric and NaaS product offerings through data center operators such as Equinix Fabric, Digital Realty Service Exchange and others simply wouldn't exist.
Every year, AWS, Azure and Google Cloud in particular make critical announcements around their respective cloud interconnection products and cloud networking products in general.
If you're interested in learning more about these products and how they help solve networking problems for enterprises please request a consultation.
You'll find regular updates on key announcements in the market, on our blog here and on our LinkedIn page.