Contrary to the prophecies of many cloud absolutists, hybrid environments continue to power SaaS operations worldwide. Hybrid environments are a blend of cloud and on-premise services that are operated and supported as a single environment. Today, much enterprise data resides and is generated on-premises, in customer environments, and even in remote IoT systems. Edge computing
What Is Edge Networking and How Does It Relate to Edge Computing?
SaaS has introduced flexibility and innovation to countless industries and organizations around the globe. Its benefits for end-users are plentiful and clear, but SaaS also addresses the issue of software support for providers, who no longer have to manage software in thousands of different customer environments. However, some SaaS providers in industries that rely on
Remotely Manage On-Premises Applications From the Cloud
How SaaS providers are managing edge applications and appliances. On-Prem environments are messy! However, they are necessary for many applications that simply cannot run in the cloud. This means that industries wanting to remotely manage on-premises appliances and applications have been the last to benefit from cloud adoption. Legacy Connectivity Approaches Fall Short As the
Connect SaaS to Customer Data
Network-as-a-Service is the easiest way to connect SaaS to customer data sources Delivering a SaaS application from the cloud requires a rethinking of tech, team, and processes. When committing to a public cloud, staffing for new DevOps commitments, and handling new support responsibilities, it’s important to make informed decisions. But there are also less obvious
Build Cloud-to-Edge Architectures with Docker Containers
Application developers are building more cloud-to-edge architectures than ever…. and they are doing it through the use of Docker containers and edge networking platforms. It seems like everything is moving to SaaS. SaaS banking software, SaaS cyber security software, and I recently stumbled on a SaaS application that allows me to control the feeding of
SaaS Networking Surprises
How many of us have started a home improvement project and ended up making a handful of trips to the store to complete it? Even a simple painting project can surface unforeseen problems that turn into 3 trips to the store for more tape, brushes, or plastic coverings. While this might be annoying, it isn’t
Cloud and the Complexity of Distributed Applications
We are in the business of helping software providers with tools that make them more secure and efficient. In those conversations, we get exposed to the infinite number of ways that companies architect, develop, and support their application’s infrastructure. We’ve also discovered that the complexity of distributed applications is a significant challenge. While the architecture
The VPN Security Gap
This time, it’s our friends at Fortinet who have been compromised. Half a million credentials were swiped from VPN routers. Once again, the vendor had issued a patch, but many customers had not updated their systems, highlighting the importance of VPN security measures to protect against such attacks. By now we all understand that there
SD-WAN Doesn’t Work for SaaS Providers
For SaaS applications that must connect to customer or partner data, SD-WAN doesn’t work. SD-WAN adoption is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, with most companies implementing some form of SD-WAN within the next 5 years. Enterprises commonly consider SD-WAN as the modern approach to establish WAN connectivity to clouds, branch offices,
Application Providers Need to Re-Examine to use of MPLS
Every day we speak with IT and product leaders looking for ways to improve the networking component of their application delivery. When the topic of MPLS comes up, there is a predictable groan of resigned disappointment. No one is coming to its defence. How can a technology that is so widely used, be so uniformly
Cloud Networking and SD-WAN
For cloud-delivered SaaS application providers, SD-WAN adoption has been a bit slower as their cloud challenges require different networking approaches. With the rise of hybrid cloud environments (mixing cloud and on-prem resources), networking has replaced the data center as the central component of enterprise infrastructure. As hybrid cloud has become more common, so too has
Cloud Fintech Needs a Better Network
After years of taking a ‘wait and see’ approach, fintech applications are moving to the public cloud. As a vendor with the privilege of talking to both application providers and financial institutions (FIs) daily, we find very few who are happy with the WAN solutions available to them as they move to the cloud. Initially,