How to extend the business value of hybrid and multicloud networking with DNS traffic steering

In the latest edition of its “Cloud Hype Cycle,” Gartner places multi-cloud network operations at “the peak of inflated expectations, dangerously close to the ‘trough of disappointment.’” This can reflect the state of both hybrid and multicloud. Networking at a holistic level has many nuances behind Gartner’s assessment.

The problem is that hybrid and multicloud are the present and future of networking. It seems to be an area that simultaneously produces inflated expectations, profound disappointments, enlightening revelations, and surprising productivity. Let’s take a closer look at what this means.

Today: Applications in multiple silos

Most applications, services, and content streams are already delivered across multiple clouds and hybrid environments. We know this because IBM® NS1® is the authoritative DNS provider for many of these assets. Our internal dataset shows that 80% of our customers have workloads on more than one cloud provider.

Nevertheless, if you have multiple clouds Available It is not the same as proliferating the delivery of applications, services, or content. Across multiple clouds.

Application traffic flowing through IBM NS1 Connect’s infrastructure shows that clouds are almost always used in silos. Although multiple clouds often deliver one-off applications in parallel, use cases where multiple clouds deliver synchronized applications at the same time are rare.

For example, we found one enterprise customer using nine separate public clouds, ranging from the “big three” of AWS, Azure, and GCP to smaller providers like Tencent and DigitalOcean. We found that there was no overlap between cloud providers in the DNS records associated with those clouds. All records pointed to a single cloud only.

The Future: Distributed, Multi-Infrastructure Applications

Application workloads are already benefiting from a single cloud or hybrid environment. The next step is to leverage the benefits of multiple environments simultaneously, including cloud, edge, and on-premises infrastructure. Ideally, this happens through an abstracted management layer that uses policies to implement connectivity decisions across environments. The benefits of a distributed approach to application connectivity are clear.

microservice

The unique value of cloud-specific microservices is that they can be applied to specific parts of an application workload without having to keep the entire application in one place. This is a “best-of-breed” approach that increases functionality without vendor lock-in.

Performance

Latency for cloud services can vary from moment to moment and is dependent on a variety of factors including geography, routing path, and service availability. A multi-cloud approach allows businesses to choose the environment that best suits their applications at any time.

expense

Application delivery costs vary greatly between cloud providers. In particular, base usage commitments can play a significant role in determining the overall cost of getting your application on the end user’s screen. A multi-cloud approach lowers overall delivery costs by providing the cheapest option at any given moment.

resilience

When downtime or service interruptions occur (and will occur), network managers need the flexibility to direct application traffic to alternative workloads. A true multi-cloud delivery framework ensures that applications continue to run even when a single cloud is unavailable.

The value of traffic steering in application delivery

NS1 has long recognized the value of delivering applications, services and content from multiple back-end infrastructure providers. We have been helping our customers handle multiple layers of infrastructure for years. These customers use innovative traffic shaping capabilities to improve the business metrics they care about.

Leveraging highly granular Real User Monitoring (RUM) data, we helped these customers improve performance by steering traffic to transit CDNs and clouds that offered the lowest latency at the best cost. We used data from the NS1 Availability Monitor to steer traffic around outages and service outages to keep applications (and revenue) running.

Now that NS1 is part of IBM, we’re starting to extend the proven value of DNS traffic steering deeper into the networking stack. NS1’s traffic steering finds the best connection between the cloud and end users. IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh optimizes internal connectivity between cloud-based application workloads. Together, the two solutions deliver applications optimized for performance, cost, and availability at every connection point.

DNS Does More: Optimize End-to-End Application Delivery

The multicloud network operation software market is developing rapidly. Many startups are already focused on the large-scale customer challenges that define their industries. But when you look at the scope of challenges these startups have chosen to solve, they are surprisingly narrow.

Almost all emerging multi-cloud networking solutions are focused on optimizing inter-cloud connectivity for internal use cases. Extending optimized connectivity to end users is almost an afterthought, let alone networks outside of these vendor ecosystems. IBM is taking a more holistic view. By connecting NS1’s authoritative DNS network to its hybrid cloud connectivity solution, IBM is providing optimized end-to-end connectivity regardless of customer use case.

The value of faster connections, lower network provisioning costs, better network resilience, and higher availability is not limited to just inside the firewall. This extends to the end-user experience with applications that perform better, are always on, and are more affordable. This ultimately means applications that deliver higher customer satisfaction, better customer retention, and higher revenue per customer.

We believe that a lot of customer value can be realized by optimizing connectivity at every point of the hybrid cloud application delivery chain, from internal networks to end users. Stay tuned as we begin to make this vision a reality.

Learn more about IBM NS1 Connect® Managed DNS