If you are a medium-sized business planning to keep your workloads fairly static, and
you are not looking to go multi-cloud, you too can get away with using the old configu-
ration. Building with third-party solutions requires a lot of upfront investment, and if you
are not planning on this kind of expansion, the hub-and-spoke model still works.
But if you are planning to scale up in the next three to four years, add lots of new net-
works and create lots of new virtual networks across multiple cloud providers, the new
way is a much more efficient and cost-effective solution.
If you decide to embrace transit gateways, here are two tips to keep in mind.
• AWS and multi-cloud do not mix. AWS’ native transit gateway is efficient and
cost-effective for facilitating communications within the AWS environment. But it
does not support multi-cloud setups yet, so if your multi-cloud environment
includes AWS, you will need a third-party solution, such as Cisco or Aviatrix.
• Plan up front. If you are committed to building containers across business units,
or across multiple networks, plan ahead. A lot of companies are looking at a con-
tainer-first or cloud-native approach in architecting greenfield services. Google,
for instance, recently released its Anthos platform, to enable multi-cloud
applications.
Conclusion
As cloud strategies evolve, networking strategies need to do so as well. The hub-and-
spoke model of communication worked fine when organizations managed straightfor-
ward deployments within regions, within single-cloud environments. Containers and
multi-cloud strategies have changed the game, creating opportunities for flexibility and
efficiency. Unless you are content with your old cloud, it is time to embrace a new con-
nectivity model.
SUMMER 2019 | THE DOPPLER | 23