Cloud Connectivity is one of the fastest growing needs for organizations in 2021 as they look to expands across IaaS, PaaS and SaaS environments.  If you are asking, “How do I connect AWS to Azure” or “Do I need call my telco for a connection to Cloudflare”?  You are not alone.

There are 4 common Options to connect AWS, Azure, GCP and Oracle Cloud to each other & this generally includes other SaaS & PaaS providers as well.

 

Option #1:  Software Defined Cloud Connection

Connecting AWS to another public cloud can be accomplished in 20 minutes or less.  Yes, you read that right.  Using pre-built Edge Networking, new players in the cloud connectivity space have emerged to offer a high-capacity (1Gig to 100Gig) Layer 2/3 connections.  This a private, non-internet backbone with virtual cloud routing and H/A or VRRP capabilities.

Read the AWS Direct Connect Checklist to support routing to any SaaS, IaaS, PaaS environment & your On-Premise/Remote users

 

Pros: 

– Excellent option to route Cloud to Cloud

– Supports High Availability (HA), (BGP/MEDS) and more

– Install in hours

-Contract terms can be hourly or monthly vs. a 12 – 36 month commitment.  Flexible for Cloud!

We’ve helped countless organizations start passing data from start to finish before they can finish a Netflix show.  Plus, pricing is very flexible.

Cons:  Connecting your On-premise offices & remote users is unavailable natively.  If you happen to be in one of the well-known 3rd party colocation facilities, there could be a SD Router available to use.  Options around this is to build a mult-tiered hybrid solution which is what most companies need.

Option #2:  Traditional telecom carrier

  1. On-Premise to your Cloud: On-prem connectivity is generally from your Data Center where you still utilize colocation or yor corporate offices.  Most organizations will take advantage of a telecom carrier to facilitate the A Location (your cloud) to the Z Location (your Datacenter/office)

Option #3:  Layer 1 Cross-connect

Fiber X-connects, also known as “Old Glory” for their testament to the early days of building out colocation datacenters.  X-connects are wonderful, fast and reliable.

Pros: Well-known performance & readily availably in all major colocation facilities.

Cons:

  • Pricing is higher
  • Longer lead times to install (open a ticket, wait, test and use). A week is generally the common SLA colocation provider dependent.
  • Static & Physical unlike virtual connections.

Option #4:  Public Internet

Pros:

  • Internet is everywhere, cheap and most AS upstream providers are peering well with the onramp locations to your cloud requirement of choice.
  • Great for Testing your Cloud to Cloud connectivity & applications. If a IPSEC VPN tunnel or ZTNA connection works well with increased latency, guess what?  Your private Software-Defined connections about will work even better.

 

Cons:

-Security

-Lack of inherent Zero Trust

-You own and manage setting up the connection and building your VPN(generally)

-Overhead loss.  IPSEC for example adds overhead (aka lost bandwidth capacity) to your connection.

-Slower with deeper latency and BGP convergence issues with anomalies across the ecosystem.

 

In the end, you do need to consider your use case independent of what the provider you are speaking with would like to provide to you.