Configuring the right network for your cloud infrastructure

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Anthony Savvas.

The networking impact of cloud computing is potentially critical to any organisation, with staff accessing databases, applications and other material over the internet from a corporate network or from other alternative remote locations. Whilst the cloud can be used to store company data and deliver applications without the overheads of dedicated in-house servers and other hardware, the third party hosting the data or applications is not usually responsible for the network links from the customer to its facilities.

Companies therefore have to plan how they connect their corporate networks to third party cloud providers to ensure they have enough affordable and reliable bandwidth to serve their users’ needs. They must consider cost, service level agreements, security, network back up/failover to the cloud provider, network management, and any specialist "network to the cloud" service offerings on the market…

Cloud data explosion
The Cisco Cloud Index forecasts how dramatically clouds are transforming business IT and consumer services. The study predicts global cloud traffic will account for nearly two-thirds of total global data centre traffic. Globally, said Cisco, cloud traffic will grow from 39 per cent of total data centre traffic in 2011 to 64 per cent (almost two-thirds) of total data centre traffic in 2016…

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