Aruba SD-WAN Accelerates Cloud On-ramp Access to Google Cloud and Network Connectivity Center

By: Nav Chander, Sr. Director of Service Provider Marketing at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.

The consequence of the global pandemic exacerbated the importance of accelerating cloud and digital transformation, resulting in more than 90 percent of enterprises purporting to now have a multi-cloud strategy in place, according to the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report.

As enterprises accelerate their transformation to a cloud-first strategy, IT teams have to manage the complexity of connecting resources across on-prem locations and the cloud to ensure access to all workloads from anywhere.

Google Cloud is one of the leading public cloud providers that enterprise customers rely on for hosting their cloud workloads, and Aruba is already a Google Cloud partner. Google Cloud has certified Aruba EdgeConnect and Aruba SD-Branch SD-WAN platforms for deployment on Google Cloud. Also, Aruba’s new one-click automation enhancement in the Aruba Orchestrator makes it simpler for enterprises to deploy virtual EdgeConnect SD-WAN appliances in Google Cloud without otherwise having to manually create Google Cloud resources.

EdgeConnect and SD-Branch are available for download from Google Cloud Marketplace using a “bring your own license” model.

Aruba SD-WAN Integration to Google Network Connectivity Center

Today, Aruba is announcing the integration of our Aruba EdgeConnect and Aruba SD-Branch SD-WAN platforms to the Google Cloud Network Connectivity Center. With this integration, Aruba delivers the advanced SD-WAN application performance, network control and secure connectivity for enterprises to host and access their cloud workloads in Google Cloud in an automated,  dynamic manner from any WAN edge.

The Aruba integration with Google Cloud enables dynamic edge-to-edge and edge-to-cloud secure connectivity with Aruba and the industry’s most advanced SD-WAN platforms; Aruba EdgeConnect and Aruba SD-Branch, optimizing  application and network performance for any legacy or cloud-hosted application over any network and from anywhere.

EdgeConnect unique capabilities include:

• Path Conditioning: improves application performance with private-line-like user experience over the public internet by overcoming the adverse effects of dropped and out-of order packets that can occur with broadband internet and MPLS connections
• First-packet iQ™ Application Classification: identifies over 10,000 applications on the first packet to deliver trusted SaaS and web traffic directly to the Internet while directing unknown or suspicious traffic to the data center firewall or IDS/ IPS
• Tunnel Bonding: optimizes real-time traffic performance by steering applications over bonded links or tunnels to form a single logical overlay connection applied over any broadband or MPLS link, or any combination of links based upon business intent
• Aruba Boost WAN optimization allows companies to accelerate performance of latency sensitive applications and minimize transmission of repetitive data across the WAN in a single, unified SD-WAN edge platform.

SD-Branch unique capabilities include:

• Centralized Management—A single pane-of-glass provides unified management, AIOps, and security for wired, wireless, and SD-WAN and includes a centralized software licensing model.
• Zero Trust Security—embraces a scalable security methodology from edge to cloud for consistent role-based enforcement and context-aware controls in a variety of branch networking requirements.
• Dynamic Segmentation—enforces context-aware zero trust policies for users and IoT – eliminating manual configuration of numerous VLANs with a single VLAN deployment.
• End to End QoS—provides application visibility and policy enforcement for over 3200 apps from Wi-Fi to WAN to the cloud.

The two platforms support built-in automation and orchestration of SD-WAN connectivity across the Google Cloud global infrastructure backbone, allowing for unparalleled secure access speeds and capabilities.

Google Cloud Network Connectivity Center Benefits

Network Connectivity Center helps customers improve the cloud-connected SD-WAN experience to create, connect and manage cloud networks on Google Cloud’s infrastructure.

Network Connectivity Center simplifies deployment, configuration, and management of on-premises networks and cloud connectivity. It provides a centralized management model, allowing connectivity between on-premises locations to application workloads hosted in Google Cloud, using connectivity types such as a cloud VPN, cloud Interconnects, and third-party router appliances.

Aruba and Google Cloud customer eSilicon, highlights this shift to public cloud for a company that designs and coordinates the manufacturing of custom integrated circuits for today’s leading-edge semiconductor markets such as high-performance computing, 5G infrastructure, networking and artificial intelligence.

eSilicon had a traditional MPLS-based WAN connecting its global locations with applications and services running in a corporate data center. However, when eSilicon decided to migrate all of their corporate applications to run on Google Cloud, a traditional WAN approach no longer made sense. eSilicon chose an EdgeConnect platform to accelerate WAN access to the Google Cloud-hosted cloud applications with the EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform along with Boost, enhancing end-user productivity and accelerating time to market.

Why Aruba and Google Cloud

For enterprise organizations, the goal is to simplify cloud operations and support with the highest application performance for any application on any cloud and to deliver superior quality of experience (QoE) of applications, no matter where the application is deployed. With the integration of Network Connectivity Center, Aruba continues this mission and empowers Google Cloud customers to more effectively interconnect applications and WAN Edge workloads running on Google Cloud for hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud deployments. Together, Aruba and Google Cloud provide a cost-efficient, reliable, and operationally simple network for connecting branches, data centers, and cloud workloads around the globe.

https://www.arubanetworks.com/partners/google-solutions/