Cisco and Google Cloud have expanded their partnership to integrate Cisco’s SD-WAN with the cloud provider’s fully managed Cloud WAN service.
For Cisco SD-WAN customers, the integration provides a new, secure way to tie together geographically dispersed enterprise data center sites with their Google Cloud workloads using Google’s core global network backbone. The Google backbone can offer better performance, reliability and security than accessing those resources over the public internet, Cisco stated.
“Users can dynamically extend connectivity to new regions and sites in a matter of minutes,” wrote Raj Chopra, senior vice president and chief product officer with Cisco’s security business group, in a blog about the news.
In addition, the integration taps Cisco security support as well as Google Cloud’s Network Security Integration service to secure transactions across hybrid environments. “Customers can greatly benefit from the native security features and service insertion capabilities provided by Cisco and Google Cloud, which help ensure consistent protection across users and locations,” Chopra stated.
The integration makes use of other previously integrated components. For example, Cisco SD-WAN Cloud OnRamp for Multicloud automates the process of extending the SD-WAN fabric into Google Cloud Virtual Private Clouds (VPC). That lets customers use existing Cisco SD-WAN security policies and controls in the Google Cloud, Cisco stated. Then, Cisco vManage can orchestrate connectivity and policies across both the on-premises Cisco SD-WAN fabric and the Google Cloud WAN environment, according to Cisco.
Google Cloud describes Cloud WAN as a new fully managed, reliable, and secure enterprise backbone to transform enterprise WAN architectures, according to a blog by Muninder Singh Sambi, vice president and general manager of networking for Google Cloud. “Cloud WAN provides up to 40% faster performance compared to the public internet, and up to a 40% savings in total cost of ownership (TCO) over a customer-managed WAN solution,” Sambi wrote.
Looking back, the rapid adoption of SaaS and cloud applications led to a WAN transformation and the emergence of SD-WAN via direct internet access, Sambi asserted. “Then, to enhance application performance, enterprises built colocation-based cloud on-ramps, which, while improving latency, introduced complexity and costs. This evolution led to a proliferation of security stacks, with a mix of security service edge (SSE) and self-managed appliances, creating an inconsistent security posture,” Sambi wrote.
“Consequently, enterprise connectivity has become inherently complex and difficult to manage, marked by diverse networks with fragmented security, and requiring a constant balancing of reliability, speed, and cost,” Sambi wrote.
The Cloud WAN service is designed to simplify those challenges.
“Looking ahead, as SD-WAN and cloud networking become increasingly intertwined, expect more automation, AI-driven optimizations, and tighter integration between on-premises and cloud networks,” Sambi said in a statement.
The Cloud WAN integration is just the latest in a variety of integration work done between the two vendors in recent years. The companies have integrated SD-WAN connectivity and management packages as well as tied together Cisco networking and Google Cloud’s hybrid cloud offerings in the past.
Source:: Network World