Cloud computing is the talk of the town these days. Wonders of cloud computing shows us how much technology has progressed over time. It offers users access to unlimited applications, data reservoirs, and services. However, the problem we still encounter that reduces cloud’s effectiveness is the network. Many organizations made a fly for cloud infrastructures without completely considering the limitations caused by the network on the performance, including the security perspectives and what network security software they can have to improve it.

Increasing network bandwidth in hopes to solve these problems won’t work any longer. It is actually true in the case of hybrid and public cloud solutions. People are now shifting towards a new approach, network optimization. It ensures that the application itself is in order. Let’s dive into the details of how and why network optimization is necessary.

The most popular method on the list to remove congestion from hybrid and public cloud platforms is to boost your internet and WAN edges. WAN edge can be optimized through compression, localized content cache, and changing TCP window sizing. The go-to methods to increase the speed of remote cloud services.

However, ever since SD-WAN we have arrived, it has been a game-changer. Network Security Software called software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) routes intelligently between two or paths to remote cloud services. These routing decisions are based on various variables such as link bandwidth availability, low latency, and least packet loss. It has been playing a vital role in connecting remote locations to cloud services.

If users are trying to connect from home offices or roads, the network architecture is also required to opt for a different approach. Before cloud computing hit the markets, user data and apps were stored in private data centers. Remote users are provided with VPN technologies to connect securely to the main corporate office.

Now that people prefer data spread over cloud server, it doesn’t make sense to remove users’ access to VPN tunnels only to go back to the internet or expensive WAN links. Network designers should start working on the data flow streamlining decreasing network hops as much as possible. This can be achieved by directly accessing public cloud resources via IPsec VPN, SSL VPN, or secure web access using HTTPS.

If you have to cater global audience, a globally distributed cloud infrastructure would be your best chance for the latency-sensitive applications. Having it globally distributed will speed up client-server access time in various regions they are deployed. This way, users can access the resources closest to them in terms of geography.

Network engineers are now trying to get a better understanding of the application performance end-to-end to come up with optimized network security software. Despite the fact that it helps them to understand the dataflow within an application but also between servers and the overall distributed architecture or different clouds.

Clear understanding of dataflow using network performance management (NPM) tools allows engineers to optimize resource distribution. It helps to alleviate the congestion decreasing latency. It helps an organization to enforce Quality of Service (QoS) identification, implementation, and policies to prioritize business-critical apps.

All the above-listed network technologies are there to improve cloud services and Computing Solutions. The final goal for every cloud service provider should be a complete, software-driven network intelligent infrastructure. Easier said than done from cost and implementation point-of-view. The cloud providers are currently focused on solving network-optimization problems within specific areas, like WAN. However, deploying optimization policies over the complete architecture should be the end goal.