There is something about cloud services that make certain firms ignore the principles of information technology, things like network management, change control, and capacity management. While moving to Cloud Hosting Solutions, numerous firms become so focused on developing the cloud platform that they lose focus on other crucial aspects of their enterprise.

Network infrastructure is one of the most crucial elements that firms need to need to retain control of. Indeed, the network is more important than ever to IT operations in the new cloud-based world. And with the cloud hosting data and crucial servers, network traffic will only increase, as users access that computing resources and data from both corporate headquarters and remote locations. In essence, the network becomes part of the cloud in the cloud-based world.

For numerous businesses, it is likewise crucial to concentrate on ways to amplify the efficiency of their current networking and networking budget. This is especially true for small businesses that must add network capacity to facilitate increasing network demands as their current users access the cloud, along with new offices and locations as the company scales and recruits more staff. And while the resources of large businesses are much greater than their smaller counterparts, they still face considerable pressure to minimize costs and do more with less.

As firms look for a way to optimize their networks to work with cloud platforms, certain strategies come to the forefront, comprising:

• WAN optimization: WAN optimization, also referred to as WAN acceleration, is a combination of techniques developed to manage your network traffic by mitigating redundancies and inefficiencies in your traffic, thereby reducing your overall traffic demands. Some famous WAN optimization techniques comprise:
  • Caching: It involves the use of pre-populated, locally stored data like images and other elements that are usually requested by the browsers of your user. Caching sends a given image, for example, a corporate logo, to a given remote site. Subsequently, a local device caches this image, which can then save that image, serving it up locally. This saves the usage of bandwidth.
  • De-duplication: By performing a single, complete backup of a given file, de-duplication eradicates network traffic associated with data backups, thereby only sending changed portions of those files over time, instead of the entire file.
  • Compression: Compression makes use of a number of techniques and algorithms to mitigate the size of the data being sent across the network, eliminating irrelevant portions of the file in question, thereby mitigating the amount of traffic being transmitted.
• Broadband bonding: Broadband networks bring substantial promise for both large enterprises and SMB, offering the option of relatively large bandwidth at a rate that’s quite cost-effective. However, in terms of reliability and size, broadband circuits are usually limited. However, by making use of broadband bonding, you can fuse various internet and broadband connections into a unified, single connection that offers fault tolerance and scalability.
• WAN traffic management: Numerous firms don’t manage their network traffic effectively, limiting the effectiveness of their networks and wasting their network resources, and moving into the cloud, usually, only amplifies the problem. WAN traffic management uses techniques like traffic monitoring and traffic shaping to identify and prioritize crucial traffic, increasing network efficiency.

All in all, the important thing to keep in mind is, as the cloud evolves, it is clear that the cloud and the network are rapidly becoming the same. The cloud is becoming a function of the network, and the outcome of utility computing – when you think about it – is that eventually, computing will become a network function.