With distributed workforces becoming the norm worldwide, network security challenges have escalated. Governments have responded by enacting stricter governance and compliance policies, while malicious actors have continued to innovate in their attacks.
That is why Fujitsu’s, Equinix’ and Cisco Systems’ vast portfolio of connectivity and security offerings fit perfectly into the Power of 3 paradigm to ensure seamless collaboration and cyber resiliency. A key building block of the Fujitsu Power of 3 ecosystem is fluid, virtualized, secure and programmable networking. Only when this fundamental capability is established, can the power of truly digital connectivity and collaboration be unleashed.
Enabling Hybrid Work
Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, enterprises have had to move much of their workforce online – often at short notice, without a long runway to upgrade their network and remote access systems. This is where Cisco’s networking solutions for hybrid work come in, enabling the enterprise to quickly access work-from-anywhere arrangements.
Cisco offers flexible, secure remote access for an uninterrupted employee experience, helping them stay productive by connecting the distributed workforce to collaborate effectively. It helps optimize application experience with real-time performance monitoring.
Cisco’s software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) Cloud Interconnect solution supplies the dynamic and flexible cloud and network connectivity needed to seamlessly and securely tap into the powerful business-driven Fabric portal by Equinix.
Since 2019, when customers were empowered to leverage Cisco virtual routers and SD-WAN on Network Edge to extend their networks into cloud providers across the Equinix Fabric, the two giants of connectivity have collaborated further to integrate their infrastructures.
This tight partnership has resulted in network connectivity drawing on the best of both worlds: Equinix’s dynamic and flexible interconnection and data center colocation, coupled with the policy, control, and application optimization delivered by Cisco SD-WAN.
With an SD-WAN backbone in place, not only is the Cisco-Equinix fabric easy to set up; it is also fully programmable for custom automation through REST API calls.
Value-added SD-WAN benefits
Not only do Cisco’s SD-WAN solutions make it painless to migrate from legacy networking, they incorporate value-add that only Cisco’s deep experience in network security can offer. Thanks to Cisco SD’s zero trust model, the whole bring-up process and operation of virtual SD-WAN routers in Equinix data centers has the same industry-leading security standards as every Cisco SD-WAN deployment.
By using IPsec encryption on SD-WAN tunnels over Equinix, network interconnection communication meets the highest security standards.
Next, in terms of performance and scale, Cisco’s SD-WAN virtual routers scale from few hundred Mbps to 10 Gbps or more, depending on VM instance type and feature set used. The virtual router throughput is a function of the number of vCPUs and memory. If the performance of a single Cisco SD-WAN virtual router is not enough, a horizontal scale model can be used. In this model several virtual routers will be created, and the traffic will be load-balanced across all available routers.
For integration with any Cloud network, Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect provides a simplified automated user experience to enable programmable end-to-end connectivity for Site-to-Cloud and Site-to-Site communications in minutes, with reliable and high-performance connections using middle-mile providers’ infrastructure. Security is again assured through the native use of SASE.
Multi-cloud connectivity with Cisco is also painless and secure with Cisco Cloud Onramp suite for SaaS, IaaS and data center colocation needs.
Finally, the Power of 3 ecosystem takes advantage of Cisco’s proven security credentials to protect remote workers accessing the corporate network with their own smart devices in high-risk public areas. Cisco’sSecure Remote Workersuite tackles the all pain points of securing remote workers’ access through privileged access management, scalable VPN, zero trust eXtended Detection and Response, advanced malware protection, and real-time malware and behavioral analytics and threat hunting.
The Cisco formula
We can see now that all the SD-WAN architectural features offered by Cisco have best-in-class security baked in. In addition to leveraging Cisco’s trusted experience in optimizing and simplifying SD-WAN optimization and reliability, the trilateral Fujitsu Power of 3 partnership also leverages the firm’s tight integration with Equinix, thereby ensuring minimal disruptions and painless implementation and management.
Combined, Cisco’s rich array of SD-WAN solutions offer all the standard advantages of software-defined networking enriched by seamless integration with the Equinix Fabric and powerful business-driven network ecosystem, which we will elaborate on in the next blog.
All images are sourced from the ‘Work Is Changing. Is Your Network Ready?’ infographic.
