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Sometimes I come across ideas and think to myself “of course, that’s so obvious and elegant”. Alkira is the latest innovation from the founders of Viptela and provides Network Infrastructure as a Service (NIaaS). Alkira leverages the reliability of modern Internet over legacy MPLS, virtualised network infrastructure over hardware, and cloud providers over legacy ISPs for global backbone connectivity. This all allows Alkira to deliver against the most relevant use cases in the market today, such as access to cloud and SaaS, secure SD-WAN, remote and third-party access, global backbone, and secure Internet access.
The foundation of the Alkira solution is CXPs (Cloud Exchange Points). CXPs can be considered Points of Presence (PoPs), which are built on fully virtualised infrastructure within the three main cloud providers, AWS, Azure, and GCP. The CXPs are interconnected at the backend using mesh connectivity over the cloud providers’ network to achieve a high speed, resilient global backbone. This backbone effectively operates as an underlay for the Alkira solution and is transparent to the customer.
Customers are provided with a Topology Map which allows a simple point and click solution build out. Choosing from a global list which includes Americas, EMEA and APAC (including China), customers select their CXP locations and use the map to create their topology using connectors. The connectors define connectivity both external to the CXP but also within the CXP. The list of connector includes, but is not limited to, those below.
- Cloud Connector: Links from the CXP to AWS VPC, Azure vNET, GCP VPC, or Oracle Cloud VCN.
- IPSec Connector: IPSec links from customer sites and data centres to the CXP.
- SD-WAN Connector: Integration with SD-WAN solutions such as Cisco Catalyst, Meraki, Aruba, and Fortinet.
- Internet Connector: Internet breakout from the CXP.
- Alkira Secure Connector: ZTNA access to the closed CXP.
- Service Insertion Connector: Allows for the insertion of firewalls and load balancers (Palo Alto, Check Point, Fortinet, and Cisco) within the CXP.
Keeping things high-level, the last items to mention are Segments and Groups, both of which are used to provide secure isolation within the CXP. Segments are functionally equivalent to VRFs and provide a Layer 3 boundary, while Groups can be used to provide macro-segmentation within the Segments.
The Network Topology screenshot below shows two CXPs, site connectors on the left and cloud connectors on the right. For a full demo you can go to https://lnkd.in/eJE76SRN. I hope this has provided a useful overview of the Alkira platform. Next week, I will be looking at use cases and business benefits that Alkira brings to the market.
