According to the Flexera, 2020 State of the Cloud Report, 93% of enterprises have developed a multicloud strategy, and 87% have a hybrid cloud strategy. Meanwhile, IaaS is forecast to grow 23.9% year over year," according to Gartner's Public Cloud Services Forecast.

Enterprises, however, are facing challenges securely connecting to their cloud deployments. The Internet offers only best-effort connectivity with inconsistent network quality, which can significantly impact application performance, while direct cloud interconnects require customers to plan for capacity and global reach upfront, which can lead to underutilization and spiraling costs. What if enterprises could have seamless, automated connectivity to multiple IaaS environments, without all the complexity?

In August 2020, Cisco announced a collaboration with Megaport, a global software-defined cloud interconnect (SDCI) provider, specifically to enable programmable cloud interconnects to bridge enterprise SD-WAN sites to clouds in minutes instead of weeks, with strong performance and high reliability.

Today, we announce availability of the integrated capabilities for Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect with Megaport Virtual Edge in the Cisco SD-WAN 17.5 release, enabling customers to create network connections to their multicloud deployments in a few clicks through the automation capabilities of the Cisco SD-WAN vManage controller.

"Our work with Cisco to integrate Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE) with the new Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect will add significant value for businesses looking to improve edge network connectivity. By enabling global organisations to deploy secure, reliable multicloud connections in a matter of minutes via MVE from Cisco SD-WAN, our collaboration will give enterprise IT unprecedented control and visibility over their networks."

-Vincent English, CEO of Megaport

Top 5 Advantages of Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect with Megaport Virtual Edge

1. A ready to go backbone -This collaboration will offer Cisco's SD-WAN customers access to the existing Megaport backbone, reaching across 24 countries and more than 220 cloud on-ramps including leading IaaS and SaaS vendors.Through vManage, Cisco SD-WAN customers can create the connections in 10 minutes or less.
2. 99.999% reliable backbone connection -Backed by service-level guarantees for assurance and availability, customers can choose to connect their branches to cloud deployments or other branches. Enterprises can unlock the power of direct connections to cloud service providers and benefit from increased performance and security over using the public internet.
3. Cost savings -Customers of this solution will benefit from two cost-saving measures: the first being a discount on cloud egress fees from the top IaaS players, the second being a discount over traditional connectivity methods.
4. Latency reduction -Traditionally, your packets needed to go through multiple service providers to reach their destination, adding latency at each hop traversed. With this solution, your packets will go through the last-mile partner, then directly through the private Megaport backbone to their end destination, removing any congestion risks.
5. End-to-end optimization -Through Cisco SD-WAN fabric extension over the Megaport underlay, SD-WAN will optimize the packet flow end to end.

As enterprises increasingly rely on public cloud providers and SaaS vendors for their applications, the Cisco and Megaport collaboration will continue to provide a unique new level of cloud connectivity that is fully integrated and automated within Cisco SD-WAN.

To learn more about this integration, please refer to the content below:

• What is SDCI? video
• Cisco Cloud Interconnect At-a-Glance
• Cisco SD-WAN Middle-Mile Optimization video
• Cloud OnRamp solution page
• Cisco Launches SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect Ecosystem with Megaport blog

Check out our Cisco Networking video channel

Subscribe to the Cisco Networking blog

References

Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report

Gartner, Forecast Analysis: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, Colleen Graham. Et al., 3 June 2020.