Alkira and AWS collaborate on co-selling and service integration
Alkira Inc., has announced a tighter business relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide increased agility and advanced networking and security to AWS customers. Alkira is now listed on the AWS Marketplace to provide customers with a simplified procurement experience.
Instead of managing multiple vendor purchase orders, AWS customers can consolidate their software and services purchases on one AWS bill, which enables AWS and Alkira to collaborate on co-sell opportunities and support faster customer adoption of Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX), Alkira’s Cloud Networking software as a service.
Alkira also announced general availability of integration with AWS Transit Gateway (TGW) Connect, a new AWS Transit Gateway attachment type that enables customers to connect third-party SD-WAN hubs and network virtual appliances with AWS Transit Gateway. This delivers seamless AWS cloud capabilities to Alkira customers and provides a dramatically simplified Cloud Network as-a-Service (CNaaS) for on-premises, cloud, and multi-cloud networking environments.
Alkira CSX provides an enhanced cloud experience for AWS customers, including simplified provision of critical security features, improved network management, and scalable, guaranteed performance.
Cloud firewall security for AWS workloads: Easily enforce uniform firewall zone-based security policy for AWS single or multi-region cloud application traffic. Alkira’s solution takes care of automated firewall provisioning, health monitoring, scale and symmetric traffic steering.
End-to-end network segmentation: Segmentation and micro-segmentation allow isolation of AWS VPCs and reduce attack surface for greater security. Communication between segments for shared application services can be selectively allowed with or without firewall security policy enforcement.
Deep cloud network visibility: Alkira portal offers deep operational visibility into cloud network health, availability, utilisation and application traffic flows for the AWS cloud environment. Enterprises can achieve operational excellence without the need to procure and deploy additional management software tools.
Elastic scale and high availability: Alkira unified backbone connects single region and multi-region AWS cloud environments with multi-ten gigabit speeds leveraging AWS high speed low latency backbone. Alkira’s highly available global virtual infrastructure is backed by SLA guarantees.
Amir Khan, CEO and founder of Alkira says, “Alkira is thrilled with this closer business engagement with Amazon Web Services to offer hundreds of thousands of AWS customers a more sophisticated, yet simplified network infrastructure, consumed completely as-a-service. Enterprises no longer need to assume the risk and time delays to build, maintain and secure on-premises network infrastructure or DIY solutions on their own. CTOs can now consume their complete infrastructure directly from the AWS Marketplace with Alkira’s Network Cloud the only Network as a Service (NaaS) on the AWS Marketplace.”
Chris Grusz, director of business development, AWS marketplace, service catalog & AWS control tower, Amazon Web Services comments, “Enterprise customers are looking for new ways to complement the AWS Shared Security Model to build, secure, and operate their networks. Alkira’s Cloud Services Exchange on the AWS Marketplace will help customers build a global, elastic, and highly available cloud network, integrating next-generation security to protect their AWS environment, and gaining deep infrastructure and applications insights for operational excellence.”
Alkira is now part of the AWS ISV Accelerate Program, a co-sell program for AWS partners who provide software solutions that run on or integrate with AWS. The program helps drive new business and accelerate sales cycles by connecting participating ISVs with the AWS sales organisation.
Alkira is also participating in Amazon’s APN Global Start-up Program, an invite-only, go-to-market program built to support mid-to-late stage startups that have raised institutional funding, achieved product-market fit, and are ready to scale. The APN Global Startup Program offers support to startups by assigning Partner Development Managers (PDMs) with deep AWS knowledge and startup or co-sell business experience. PDMs leverage a robust set of AWS resources and drive visibility across multiple AWS teams to power startups’ growth at the speed they need. The APN Global Startup Program supports startups and the investors that back them, in three key areas: product development, go-to- market, and co-sell.
Gartner Market Guide for Cloud Networking Software by Andrew Lerner, Arun Chandrasekaran, Joe Skorupa, and Jonathan Forest, 17 May 2021 says, “It is relatively simple to implement basic network functionality in cloud provider networks, but is difficult to add feature depth and scalability that many network teams are accustomed to.
“This creates increasing demand for cloud networking software,” according to Gartner. “By 2025, 35% of companies that use multiple public cloud providers will use a single network stack, an increase of over 10 times from May 2021.”
The report goes on to say, “The native networking capabilities of public cloud providers are insufficient for some production enterprise workloads. Virtual routers and virtual appliances offered by established vendors often don’t meet the requirements of cloud and DevOps teams, particularly around programmability, integration or licensing.”
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