Alkira, Inc. – Reinventing Networking for the Cloud Era with Global Unified Network Infrastructure

Cloud adoption continues to accelerate. Organizations are increasingly transitioning business-critical applications from on-premise data centers to the public cloud and SaaS environments. In contrast, the network (and network services) has not made a similar transition or does it operates in true concert with the cloud. The network (and network services) is under ever-increasing pressure to provide an agile, high performing, and cost-effective solution to cloud business needs. In response to this rapid adoption of the cloud, compute, and storage has evolved beyond virtualization and automation to as-a-service offerings. Cloud architects and engineers are now focused on choosing the service attributes they want to consume, such as compute instances and storage volumes, rather than worry about implementation details. Complexity has been eliminated, and cloud computing has become a business enabler for computing and storage. Workloads are becoming increasingly distributed across multiple cloud regions and multiple clouds. Better cloud networking agility is critical to your success.

Alkira, Inc. is one such firm that has reinvented networking for the cloud by delivering the Alkira Cloud Services Exchange™. It is the first unified multi-cloud network with integrated services, visibility, and governance, all delivered as-a-service. Alkira was founded in 2018 by a computer networking team that created the multi-billion-dollar SD-WAN market. It is a multi-cloud network that can take you to and across clouds in minutes instead of months. The firm offers network where services, like firewalls, live and scale in the cloud. A network you draw instead of build. A network delivered as a service. Alkira has reinvented networking for the cloud era by delivering the network cloud, the first global unified network infrastructure with on-demand hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity, integrated network and security services, end-to-end visibility, controls and governance, all delivered as-a-service.

The joint solution from Cisco and Alkira allows organizations to seamlessly extend their security services to the cloud with Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (formerly FTD), providing granularity, control, and simplicity; unmatched by the native cloud deployments. Cisco firewalls are integrated into the Alkira Network Services Marketplace, which is part of the Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (Alkira CSX) solution, the industry’s first cloud network infrastructure as-a-service (CNaaS) platform.

The Alkira Difference

Everything as a service: Instantiate or delete whatever you want, wherever you want. No contracts that lock you in, no engineering work with complex configurations and no risk to stress you out.

Instant agility on tap: Sites, policies, users, workloads all come and go. React instantly. Scale services up and down elastically.

Turnkey – nothing to learn: Hiring and retaining network engineers with deep WAN expertise are hard to do. With Alkira there’s nothing to learn and no new hardware to buy

Safe strategic partners: Public clouds constantly invest in their networking infrastructure. Engineers, fiber plant and money are no object for them. They depend on the same infrastructure.

Revolutionary Cloud-Based Solutions and Services Offered

Global On-Demand Multi-Cloud Network: Alkira is the industry's only solution with single-click provisioning of the global multi-cloud network and network services. Cut provisioning time from months to minutes. Alkira Cloud Services Exchange™ (Alkira CSX) is the industry's first as-a-service unified multi-cloud network with integrated network services marketplace, visibility, and governance. It removes obstacles to the successful cloud and multi-cloud adoption. Leveraging a globally distributed virtual infrastructure of Alkira Cloud Exchange Points™ (virtual multi-cloud points of presence with full routing stack and network services capabilities), organizations can establish a global on-demand cloud and multi-cloud network connectivity. Remote access VPNs leverage the “trust, but verify” model, which cannot protect against modern-day attacks. Users get authenticated but gain unrestricted access to the entire network. Attackers can move laterally compromising systems. Datacenter VPN termination increases cloud applications latency.

On-Demand Network Services Marketplace: The firm leverages a globally distributed virtual infrastructure of Alkira Cloud Exchange Points™ (virtual multi-cloud points of presence with full routing stack and network services capabilities). Organizations can extend their security policy enforcement capabilities into the cloud with Palo Alto VM-Series Firewalls. Palo Alto VM-Series Firewalls can secure both communications from remote sites into the public clouds and the SaaS/Internet and the communication between multiple public cloud instances in the same public cloud or across multiple public clouds. With Alkira CSX, your multi-cloud network and Palo Alto VM-Series Firewall security are offered as-a-service, on-demand, when you need it.

Cloud Visibility and Governance: It is Industry's only solution with single-click provisioning of the entire global multi-cloud network and network services. Connect users and sites to public clouds and connect public clouds, while cutting provisioning time from months to minutes. Alkira Cloud Services Exchange Portal is a single web interface for designing, provisioning, and operating your entire multi-cloud network. The firm is leveraging industry-leading graphical visualization. Alkira solution offers insights into numerous critical visibility elements for applications, networks, and network services, allowing organizations to deploy not only global multi-cloud network and network services in minutes, but also achieve operational excellence.

Cloud DMZ: Building on-premises DMZ environments typically requires installing and configuring hardware equipment in data centers or colocations. These legacy architectures are inflexible and hard to scale with business demand. Do-it-yourself cloud DMZ environments are bound by restrictive cloud limits and a lack of enterprise-grade controls. Firewall service insertion is complex and routing support is rudimentary. Enterprises need a simple, elastic, and cost-effective way to establish feature-rich DMZ environments for on-premise, cloud, and multi-cloud applications. Most enterprises are running applications in public clouds, but depend on an archaic DMZ in a colocation or data center for access. Alkira builds a better DMZ within public clouds closer to your workloads. The company provides dynamic public IP address allocation; DNS resolution and network address translation.

The Passionate Leader behind the Success of Alkira, Inc.

Amir Khan is the Founder, President, and also serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Alkira, Inc. He is a computer networking visionary who founded and led Viptela’s market-leading, cloud-first, Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) business before its acquisition by Cisco. As prescient as he was in identifying the $8B opportunity for SD-WAN, Amir recognized that the network hampered the cloud journey and founded Alkira in 2018 with CTO Atif Khan to reinvent networking for the cloud era. Amir’s vision is to deliver the Cloud Network as-a-Service (CNaaS). Alkira has delivered the industry’s first Network Cloud, a global unified cloud network infrastructure delivered as-a-service with 1) connectivity for hybrid and multi-cloud networks 2) integrated network and security services, and 3) end-to-end operational visibility and governance. Alkira CSX, is an on-demand, as-a-service, point and click, unified CNaaS that enables cloud architects to design, build, and deploy a global multi-cloud network in minutes. Alkira enables enterprises to implement 50% less firewall capacity, and reduce TCO by up to 40 percent. Before Viptela, Amir held leadership roles at Cisco, Juniper, and Nortel. He holds four patents.

Mr. Amir earned an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mississippi.

“Our vision is nothing short of the complete reinvention of networking. A vision of a multi-cloud capable network that behaves like the cloud and is consumed as-a-service like the cloud.”