Hybrid and remote work has never been easier or more accessible since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cloud services grew in popularity as people began to access systems remotely. While the terms cloud computing and cloud networking are frequently interchanged, the two service types support different components of your IT system.
Cloud computing is a service delivery model that uses the internet or the cloud to deliver services. It provides internet-based resources such as servers, storage, databases, software, analytics, and intelligence.
Cloud networking is a method of using the cloud to manage and link network resources. VPNs, firewalls, and load balancers are among the resources included.
Routers, servers, hardware, and other resources all fall under the umbrella of cloud networking. Cloud networking, like cloud computing, can help your company save money, increase productivity, and scale quickly. Connectivity services, application delivery services, and application protection services are three major types for cloud networking services. Let's look at each of these areas in more detail.
Services for Connectivity
In today's business world, your company may have multiple physical sites or a globally distributed workforce. Your network keeps your employees linked to the information and applications they need to do their jobs, such as your CRM.
Cloud networking services can make it easier and more secure for your users to access resources on your corporate network, even if they aren't close enough to connect directly, by allowing your company to link network resources in a variety of ways and supporting your users.
An Azure VPN Gateway, which may be used to enable connectivity between Azure resources, connectivity from an on-premises network to Azure resources, and branch-to-branch connectivity in Azure, is one cloud networking tool that can help enterprises overcome connectivity challenges.
Many business users rapidly became accustomed to accessing corporate resources via the internet when it became available after the epidemic, however you may have stumbled into the following issues:
🟣If your company relied on on-premises resources, you probably quickly discovered how difficult it was to make these resources available to users while they were away from the office.
🟣Furthermore, having critical data accessible to any person or device outside your network exposes your company to security breaches and hackers.
Cloud networking allows for a variety of connectivity arrangements, including:
🟣Site-to-Site (S2S): establishes a secure link between two or more networks. This can be used to link geographically dispersed offices to the corporate network so that they can share resources as a unified network. When you add the cloud to the mix, you may connect your on-premises network to your cloud environment via a site-to-site VPN to access services and resources housed there.
🟣Point-to-Site: establishes a secure link between your virtual network and a single, authorized PC. This is an excellent way to give remote workers access to your company network's resources and services.
🟣VNet-to-VNet: establishes a secure connection between two or more virtual networks.
Different CSPs provide different connectivity services to ensure that your cloud network is always connected. A VPN Gateway is an important part of PEI's Azure Always-On VPN service, which gives remote workers secure access to all Azure and on-premises resources over a smooth, always-on VPN connection.
There are a variety of cloud connectivity services available to ensure that your cloud network connectivity is secure and that users are more productive. VPNs (virtual private networks), VPC (virtual private cloud) networks, Virtual WAN (wide area networking) services, and Cloud DNS (domain naming system) services are among the cloud networking connectivity options. Additional connectivity services from Microsoft include ExpressRoute, Azure Bastion, and Azure Peering Service.
You may discover more about Microsoft's Azure services for each of these categories here if you're interested in Cloud Networking Services.
Services for Application Delivery
Application Distribution Load balancing, a software-based solution that distributes internal and external web traffic between numerous cloud servers to guarantee that one does not become overburdened, is frequently used in networking. Businesses are at risk of latency and downtime when one server is handling too many requests.
Application Delivery ensures that the cloud-based apps you want are delivered quickly and efficiently through cloud-based networks. Content delivery networks, application delivery controllers, WAN optimization controllers (WOC), firewalls for cloud-based apps, and secure gateways are all part of Application Delivery Networking.
Azure Application Gateway, for example, is a web traffic load balancer that allows organizations to control traffic to their web applications while providing a positive experience for employees and consumers. One application of Azure Application Gateway is to make your business applications secure and available to users without the need for a VPN.
It's an Application Delivery Controller (ADC) as a Service for Microsoft applications, with various layer 7 load-balancing capabilities. Instead of exposing your web apps directly to the internet, PEI strongly advises offloading all public inbound web traffic through a Microsoft ADC.
Services for Application Protection
Application Protection Services are available in a variety of cloud-based packages that you can mix and combine to keep your network safe.
🔸DDoS Protection: Cloud providers should provide some sort of DDoS protection to ensure that apps running in your cloud environment are protected from DDoS attacks.
🔸 Web Application Firewall (WAF): A WAF protects your web applications from typical web vulnerabilities like SQL injections and cross-site scripting, which can compromise the security of your cloud environment, waste excessive resources, and create business downtime. WAFs have established rules, but they also allow you—or your Cloud Services Provider—to implement custom security rules for extra security protection.
🔸Network Firewalls: Cloud-based network firewalls protect your network resources from potential threats. You may establish, enforce, and log application and network connectivity policies using a cloud-based network firewall. You can create rules that require VPCs to access particular domains using allowed protocols, as well as web filtering rules that block access to known problematic URLs. You can identify and stop potential network risks by monitoring traffic flows with your firewall.
How to Begin with Cloud Networking
Sereno provides cloud networking services to support each of these categories, and we can help you mix and match solutions to ensure that your cloud environment is secure. For small and mid-sized organizations, we specialize in Microsoft Azure solutions. Sereno is dedicated to assisting you with your cloud transition and even provides Azure Consulting Services to help you maximize your Azure platform.
Sereno frequently uses Microsoft's Azure VPN Gateway, Azure Application Gateway, and Web Application Firewall. In terms of connectivity, the Azure VPN Gateway—Azure Always On—ensures that your users never have to worry about reconnecting or going through numerous login processes. Sereno can assist in the setup of network infrastructure for stable VPN connections as well as the configuration of Azure Always On VPN components to ensure that your remote workers have a safe and quick connection to critical network resources.
Azure Application Gateway is a more comprehensive solution that can be used in conjunction with other Azure services to ensure that your network connection is always up and your systems are safe. This is a traffic routing system that distributes traffic to several servers. You can boost speed by automatically routing web traffic to server pools optimized for the exact sort of content being requested using Application Gateway's URL-based routing features and more. This implies that your staff and customers will have faster, more responsive access to applications.
Sereno also offers security solutions such as the Azure Web Application Firewall. The Web Application Gateway pairs well with Azure Application Gateway to provide centralized protection for web apps. Sereno can also create a custom Network Security Groups for your business to provide firewall access from the internet to servers.
