AWS Announces General Availability of AWS Cloud WAN

New managed service makes it faster and easier for enterprises to build, manage, and monitor a global network that seamlessly connects cloud and on-premises environments

Avalara, Foundation Medicine, and Slalom among customers and partners using AWS Cloud WAN

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced the general availability of AWS Cloud WAN, a new managed wide area network (WAN) service that connects on-premises data centers, colocation facilities, branch offices, and cloud resources to simplify operating a global network. Using a central management dashboard built into AWS Cloud WAN, customers can define their network configuration, view the health of their global network, and automate routine configuration and security tasks. With AWS Cloud WAN, enterprises can access the AWS global network to build a single, unified network for their organization to improve network health, performance, and security. To get started with AWS Cloud WAN, visit aws.amazon.com/cloud-wan.

Many enterprises today run their networks across multiple environments, including on-premises data centers, colocation facilities, branch offices, and the cloud. To connect these disparate environments together, customers build and manage their own global networks, while also leveraging networking, security, and internet services from multiple third-party providers. AWS makes it easy for customers to connect cloud and on-premises environments using AWS networking services (e.g., Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, AWS Transit Gateway, and AWS Direct Connect). However, for connectivity between on-premises data centers and branch offices, customers must invest considerable time and money to build their own physical network or build a software-defined overlay network from third-party providers. This leads to a complex web of networks, each having different connectivity, security, monitoring, and performance management tools and requirements. As a result, networking teams face challenges configuring, securing, and managing an expanding mix of technologies required to build, scale, and operate a secure global network for their organizations.

AWS Cloud WAN makes it faster and easier for customers to build, manage, and monitor a unified global network that seamlessly connects their cloud and on-premises environments. AWS Cloud WAN allows customers to connect on-premises data centers, colocation facilities, branch offices, and AWS Regions into a single, unified global network with just a few clicks in a central management dashboard—removing the need to configure and manage individual networks that use different technologies. Using the central management dashboard, networking teams can have a single view of their global network, apply policies, and automate configuration and security tasks across their entire network. For example, with just a few clicks, teams can quickly and easily apply a policy that requires network traffic from branch offices to be routed through a specific network firewall before reaching cloud resources running in an AWS Region. AWS Cloud WAN integrates with leading SD-WAN, network appliance, and independent software vendors—including Aruba, Aviatrix, Checkpoint, Cisco Meraki, Cisco Systems, Prosimo, and VMware—making it easier for customers to connect their on-premises SD-WAN devices to AWS. Enterprises can now use AWS Cloud WAN to simplify the way they build, manage, and monitor their networks using a single dashboard with minimal complexity.

“Many wide area networks used by enterprises today consist of a patchwork of connections between branch offices and data centers that were optimized for applications that run on premises,” said David Brown, vice president of Amazon EC2 at AWS. “As the edge of the cloud continues to be pushed outward, and more customers move their applications to AWS to become more agile, reduce complexity, and save money, they need an easier way to evolve their networks to support a modern, distributed model that allows them to reach their customers and end users globally with high performance. With AWS Cloud WAN, enterprises can simplify their operations and leave the time-consuming task of managing complex webs of networks behind.”

To get started, customers can build their global networks in the AWS Cloud WAN central management dashboard by first selecting the AWS Regions closest to their on-premises locations and adding their Amazon Virtual Private Clouds. After extending their existing WAN to AWS, customers can add and remove remote locations and data centers with just a few clicks in the dashboard or by using the AWS Cloud WAN application programming interface (API). AWS Cloud WAN is available in US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Milan), Europe (Paris), Europe (Stockholm), and Middle East (Bahrain). For more details on AWS Cloud WAN, visit aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-cloud-wan-a-managed-wan-service.

Avalara builds cloud-based tax compliance solutions for businesses of all sizes, across industries globally, addressing needs from indirect tax calculation, returns, remittance, and document management, to business licensing, tax answers, insurance premium tax, property tax compliance, and more. “We expect AWS Cloud WAN to provide us the opportunity to transform our network by interconnecting our global AWS presence, while ensuring segmentation of business functions,” said Brian Capps, senior director of network engineering at Avalara. “We expect it to simplify management, routing, and security—consolidating complex configurations to be deployed as infrastructure as code.”

Cisco is the worldwide leader in technology that powers the Internet. “In today’s world, organizations need fast, secure, and scalable connectivity across global cloud and on-premises environments. To meet these demands, it’s imperative to provide innovative networking and security solutions that are flexible and easy to use,” said Chris Stori, senior vice president and general manager at Cisco Networking Experiences. “Cisco continues to invest in cloud networking by integrating the Cisco SD-WAN product portfolios with AWS Cloud WAN to securely connect multi-AWS Region workloads, increase application performance, and reduce deployment times.”

Foundation Medicine is a pioneer in molecular profiling for cancer, working to shape the future of clinical care and research by helping physicians make informed treatment decisions for their patients and empowering researchers to develop new medicines. “AWS Cloud WAN simplifies how Foundation Medicine connects our globally distributed labs and cloud resources,” said Karl Langdon, head of cloud infrastructure at Foundation Medicine. “This streamlined system supports efficient collaboration between departments and sites, which enables us to provide doctors and researchers with the insights they need to improve patient access to precision cancer care.”

Slalom is a global consulting firm focused on technology and business transformation that helps organizations innovate and scale for business agility. “With AWS Cloud WAN, we immediately recognized its network segmentation capability as an accelerator that could greatly reduce the effort and complexity of network provisioning and routing automation. It did not disappoint,” said Charlie Christina, platform engineering principal at Slalom. “The ease of defining the core network, segmentation, and attachment policies via a single policy document greatly simplified global network creation. With AWS Cloud WAN our estimate for a recent network transformation project for a leading genomics company that wanted a fully automated, self-servicing high performance computing (HPC) solution was accurately reduced from months to weeks, and it allowed us to focus time and energy on the network-attached HPC design.”

VMware is a leading innovator in enterprise software and cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control. “Delivering critical networking, security, and edge compute services to employee devices located anywhere is a top priority for enterprise IT teams,” said Craig Connors, vice president and general manager of VMware's SASE business. “The integration of VMware SD-WAN, a VMware SASE service, and AWS Cloud WAN, provides a networking architecture to deliver compute across the distributed edge, while providing more secure and high-quality application performance of workloads in AWS environments, regardless of user location. Through this partnership, customers can achieve seamless connectivity from users to clouds.”

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