The latest addition to Amazon Web Services Inc.’s lineup of networking solutions is AWS Cloud WAN, announced today at re:Invent, which allows enterprises to link together their cloud environments, on-premises data centers and branch offices.

WAN is short for wide-area network. A company’s WAN is the data transportation infrastructure through which its disparate technology assets exchange information.

A large company’s corporate network has many moving parts, both at the hardware and the software layers. Information technology teams usually keep everything coordinated by deploying an array of different software products to help with maintenance operations.

An IT team might use one product to link its on-premises data centers with branch offices, another to facilitate access to the cloud and a third to ensure cybersecurity best practices are followed. Administrators’ networking toolbox often includes additional technologies as well.

With Cloud WAN, AWS is offering IT departments the option to consolidate their network operations in a centralized platform. A company may use Cloud WAN to link on-premises infrastructure assets with the AWS cloud, plus add connections to branch offices. Administrators can manage everything through a single pane of glass.

“We hear from customers that they are tired of the complexity of managing multiple networks with different connectivity, security, and monitoring requirements using multiple third-party products and services,” said David Brown, vice president of Amazon EC2. “With AWS Cloud WAN, customers can simplify how they manage a WAN by using a central dashboard to unify the multiple networks they manage today, implement network policies for performance and security, easily add locations, and automate advanced network settings.”

Administrators can define network configuration rules via a cloud-based console and have the platform manage the implementation details. An IT department could, for example, set up a policy requiring that data traffic to the corporate cloud environment pass through a firewall for cybersecurity purposes. 

Similarly, administrators can use Cloud WAN to isolate different IT systems from one another. Network isolation reduces the scope of data breaches in the event hackers compromise part of a company’s infrastructure. When IT assets are not directly linked with one another, it’s more difficult for malware to use a compromised system to breach additional devices and workloads. 

Certain operational tasks can be done by Cloud WAN automatically. Corporate networks change fairly often, partly because workers add new resources such as cloud deployments on a regular basis. Cloud WAN has features that automate some of the manual work involved in connecting new IT assets to the corporate network.

Cloud WAN offers integrations with network products from several data center suppliers. The list of suppliers includes Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s Aruba business unit and several others. 

With Cloud WAN, Cisco customers can “deliver secure site-to-site connectivity through Cisco SD-WAN with AWS global backbone as underlay that is highly reliable and cost effective,” Chris Stori, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Networking Experiences group, wrote in a blog post today. Enterprises additionally gain the ability to “automate a global cloud network and reduce deployment from weeks to hours,” the executive stated. 

Connecting branch offices and on-premises data centers to the cloud is not the only use case that AWS targets with Cloud WAN. 

The Amazon.com Inc. unit says the service can simplify operations for customers that run workloads across multiple regions in its cloud platform. An AWS region is a cluster of data centers located in the same geographic area. Some customers spread applications across multiple data center clusters to ensure that an outage at one location won’t disrupt their IT operations. According to AWS, Cloud WAN can ease management tasks for organizations taking this route.

“It’s clear that AWS and the other cloud providers have recognized the difficulty of scaling cloud environments to accommodate more distributed assets,” Gordon McKenna, chief technology officer of public cloud at Ensono LP, told SiliconANGLE. “By rolling out the Cloud WAN offering at re:Invent, AWS is allowing customers to build, manage and monitor global traffic across a wide area network using AWS. This is a preview of what’s to come in 2022 from AWS and its partners.”

Image: AWS