Why Cloud Networking Solutions from Traditional CDN Vendors Won’t Work

EVP, StreamingMedia.com and Principal Analyst, Frost & Sullivan, Dan Rayburn, in his recent blog, talked about how traditional CDN vendors are looking at the larger WAN market, and are introducing cloud networking solutions for global businesses. Dan also observes that it is likely most CDN providers will find it difficult to set foot in an industry comprising of established cloud networking providers who have built their solutions from the ground up.

Well, here’s why.

Substandard network performance kills user experience
Even though the demand for enterprise SaaS applications is growing exponentially, businesses are unable to take full advantage of cloud adoption because of one simple reason: most enterprises rely on the public internet to access mission-critical cloud-based applications. Due to the dependence on the Internet, enterprises are unable to avoid congestion, packet loss, jitter, and inconsistent latencies. This kills user experience and remote users, especially in China, India, and Middle East suffer from application performance issues.

Traditional CDN players struggle with optimizing dynamic, cloud-hosted content
Traditional CDN players have a caching based infrastructure – one which was built to deliver static content. However, as they enter the cloud networking space, they will be tasked with delivering mostly personalized, bi-directional and dynamic content.

Dynamic content cannot be stored on the web server as it is real-time and needs to be constantly updated. User generated content such as data from forms on a SaaS application, customized reports, or any type of upload is both dynamic and bi-directional, and legacy players struggle with optimizing its performance.

The biggest issue with these solutions, again, is that they rely on a public Internet backbone, which, as explained earlier, is anything but enterprise-grade.

Plus, Cost and Management Headaches
These new CDN-based Cloud Networking solutions require enterprises to invest in, integrate, and maintain a number of additional components, such as the network, optimization appliances, and visibility software – something that demands the enterprise’s time and resources. Enterprises would rather opt for fully-managed cloud networking solution that provides enterprise-grade connectivity and acceleration, and helps them avoid the costs of a network as well as the hassles of an appliance-based solution.

The Cloud Networking Market is Already Fragmented

• Some MPLS vendors have partnered with cloud service providers to offer private connectivity to limited cloud services, using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology.
  • MPLS however has its own shortcomings, such as prohibitively expensive bandwidth and lengthy deployment timelines, especially in remote geographies.
• A few software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) vendors claim to provide low-cost, appliance-based solutions which dynamically route traffic over multiple links based on traffic profiles and quality of links.
  • Most SD WAN vendors, however, require enterprises to rely on MPLS to a great extent, and themselves offer only an edge-based solution which completely ignores the core of the problem – the long haul, international middle mile.
• Other WAN providers that own private global networks and adopt a cloud delivery model to provide easy-to-use, high-performance connectivity solutions.

In A Nutshell
Dan Rayburn feels traditional CDN providers will find it difficult because the next generation cloud networking providers are years ahead in the race, as they focus on specific problems (unlike traditional CDN players).

The Network for the Cloud

I like how Aryaka Networks, for example, has generated market traction with their cloud networking platform, one which combines private connectivity, optimization, cloud acceleration proxies, and visibility.

– Dan Rayburn, EVP StreamingMedia.com and Principal Analyst, Frost and Sullivan.

Aryaka’s Network for the Cloud combines Layer 3-7 optimization, cloud acceleration proxies, and real-time visibility, and is built on a private intelligent backbone to provide enterprises with stable, consistent and fast performance, protecting SaaS applications and cloud workloads from the unpredictability of the public Internet.

Read more about why Dan Rayburn thinks enterprise cloud networking vendors need to adapt to changing market conditions.