Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) has teamed up with AT&T Inc. on a new solution that promises to revolutionize workload management across hybrid cloud networks.

The two companies have just unveiled the AT&T NetBond® with CSC Agility Platform™ to help businesses increase their agility and drive down costs by shifting critical applications to the cloud. Using the solution, companies can quickly and easily provision their apps on cloud and network services, ensuring a highly secure transtion to hybrid cloud environments.

One of the biggest challenges most organizations face when moving apps to the hybrid cloud is the security aspect – by shifting to the cloud, it means there’s a lot more data flowing to-and-fro from the organization, and that means they’re not only leaving themselves more exposed to attackers, but also less likely to spot an attacker once they get inside the network.

Traditional enterprise security can be thought of as a kind of fortress that’s surrounded by a great big wall, explained Dan Hushon, CSC’s chief technology officer, in an interview. He said that once you get inside those walls, the network is usually wide open with nothing to stop you from going wherever you want. Add this to the fact there’s usually little concern for latency or bandwidth, and you can see where this is going.

“Applications have become tightly coupled without really worrying about APIs to enable abstraction of contract and implementation,” Hushon said. “I like to think about this as a house with locks only on the outside doors and the ability to walk in and out of rooms at will.”

The CSC Agility Platform with AT&T NetBond seeks to address this lack of internal security by quickly applying security policies to cloud resources. AT&T NetBond bonds networking and computing resources together and automates functions that are often performed manually. It also offers a private, off-the-Internet network which enables QoS and route path redundancy, so dynamic networks can be managed on-demand. Meanwhile, management is also a key component. The CSC Agility platform provides a single dashboard from which users can manage various clouds. This all adds up to significant security improvements, improved resource management and reduced audit burdens, CSC said.

Hushon said its quite ironic that most new systems of engagement are already being developed in the cloud. But due to a lack of APIs on traditional back-office capabilities, all too often we’re seeing that these same systems are moved back in-house when they’re put into production, he said. And that’s where the CSC Agility Platform with AT&T NetBond comes in, by allowing organisations to control the cost, reliability of transaction and security of information so they can deploy new systems in the cloud.

“As firms move to as-a-Service on cloud first, CSC’s agility platform can control the cloud on either end and the network in-between to enable pace for development,” Hushon said.

AT&T and CSC have worked together before, having previously established a strategic alliance to deliver a joint cloud service solution for their global enterprise customers in 2013.

The CSC Agility Platform with AT&T NetBond is available now. Check out CSC’s blog post here to learn more about the solution.

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