<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none;" alt="" src="https://px.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=2975524&amp;fmt=gif">
BLOG

3 Cloud Computing Trends to Watch For

March 19, 2019

cloud ocmputing garland technology network security visibility
Three cloud computing trends we'll see next year are new public hybrid cloud options like AWS outposts, acceleration of a cloud-first posture, and the rise of serverless architectures as containerization continues to grow.  Concurrent with these trends for 2019, is the growing awareness of the need to instrument the cloud with packet-level access, visibility, and control in order to keep security, monitoring, and compliance goals growing apace. This year is proving to be an incredible year for cloud computing, and Garland Prisms is the critical infrastructure that will help keep you secure in the cloud. 

What's in the cloud? More and more, enterprises, that's what. As the people in charge of data networks and security continue to migrate applications to the cloud, this year is sure to be a hive of activity including many new technologies and services. 

With this in mind, here are three trends happening now that everyone should watch out for in the coming months.

AWS Outposts - A Step into the Cloud

The concern of every Fortune 500 CIO has always been how to migrate to the cloud with confidence. At Amazon's Re:Invent conference, a solution solution for cloud transformation surfaced. AWS Outposts (fully configured computer and storage racks built with AWS designed hardware) is Amazon's full-on venture into on-premise data centers. IT experts should understand: 

With Outposts, cloud becomes more about services and a sound operating model, and less about where the infrastructure resides. In the past, public cloud providers shared their vision of "cloud as final destination." With the introduction of AWS Outposts, cloud becomes more about how data and computing services are provisioned and operated at scale to accelerate innovation - and less about where infrastructure lives. 

Outposts also gives the enterprise a new path to full cloud migration by running an AWS environment with more control and visibility. If Outposts doesn't provide access to Layer 2, Prisms can assist, providing the access, visibility and control needed for packet traffic streaming on this new hybrid cloud. 

>> Download Now: How to Overcome Packet Capture Challenges in The Cloud [Free whitepaper]



Adopt a Cloud-First Strategy

For organizations with strong confidence and proven applications already riding on public clouds, adopting a cloud-first strategy for all IT decision making will become the new norm. 

Cloud first is simply a tech philosophy designed to maximize AWS and Microsoft Azure as a core business strategy. Cloud offers organizations the ability to keep servers up no matter what, so critical business operations aren't using up valuable resources for maintenance, updates, upgrades, and infrastructure expansion demands. 

As cloud migration becomes the norm, organizations will demand simplicity and high-performance that matches their experience in traditional data centers. That means moving security to the cloud, which means tapping a solution that provides the right level of access, visibility, and control of critical packet streams.

Micro Services Leads to Serverless Environments

While no longer a surprising trend - 83% of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2020 - how to best manage this digital transformation is sure to remain a hot topic. 

The next trends to watch is the all-out adoption of containerization - using Docker, kubernetes, containers, and a micro services architecture. The smaller and more containerized applications become, the easier it will be to deliver updates without impacting the entire system. 

What's does it all mean? Companies will either begin to or accelerate blowing up their monolithic application designs and code stacks. They are accelerating the creation of new micro services architectures designed to run in containerized environments. This re-tooling will be followed by serverless computer capabilities. Serverless means the enterprise IT team can simply run a slice of code without spinning up a database, app server, or web server to execute it. 

Just like line manufacturing developed a better way to mass produce products, serverless capabilities will create efficiencies for the enterprise - enabling IT to get more done with less time at a lower cost. It's already happening with AWS Lambdas and Azure functions. 

These rapid and exciting evolutions in networking and DevOps must also bring evolutions in security, monitoring, and access. Applying security and visibility solutions to these ephemeral environments is still a tall task that many cloud architects are just realizing. Garland can answer the question of, "how do I monitor, acquire, process, and distribute packets needed for these serverless functions."

Looking to add visibility to your cloud deployment, but not sure where to start? Join us for a brief network Design-IT consultation or demo. No obligation - it’s what we love to do!

Cloud visibility solutions packet capture garland technology

See Everything. Secure Everything.

Contact us now to secure and optimized your network operations
Contact Us

Heartbeats Packets Inside the Bypass TAP

If the inline security tool goes off-line, the TAP will bypass the tool and automatically keep the link flowing. The Bypass TAP does this by sending heartbeat packets to the inline security tool. As long as the inline security tool is on-line, the heartbeat packets will be returned to the TAP, and the link traffic will continue to flow through the inline security tool.

If the heartbeat packets are not returned to the TAP (indicating that the inline security tool has gone off-line), the TAP will automatically 'bypass' the inline security tool and keep the link traffic flowing. The TAP also removes the heartbeat packets before sending the network traffic back onto the critical link.

While the TAP is in bypass mode, it continues to send heartbeat packets out to the inline security tool so that once the tool is back on-line, it will begin returning the heartbeat packets back to the TAP indicating that the tool is ready to go back to work. The TAP will then direct the network traffic back through the inline security tool along with the heartbeat packets placing the tool back inline.

Some of you may have noticed a flaw in the logic behind this solution!  You say, “What if the TAP should fail because it is also in-line? Then the link will also fail!” The TAP would now be considered a point of failure. That is a good catch – but in our blog on Bypass vs. Failsafe, I explained that if a TAP were to fail or lose power, it must provide failsafe protection to the link it is attached to. So our network TAP will go into Failsafe mode keeping the link flowing.

Glossary

  1. Single point of failure: a risk to an IT network if one part of the system brings down a larger part of the entire system.

  2. Heartbeat packet: a soft detection technology that monitors the health of inline appliances. Read the heartbeat packet blog here.

  3. Critical link: the connection between two or more network devices or appliances that if the connection fails then the network is disrupted.

NETWORK MANAGEMENT | THE 101 SERIES