Let’s Talk Cloud Networking - Unscripted: Recent Episodes

netJoints

Tea podcast with Nauman Mustafa and John Gonsalves

How to achieve network simplicity in Google Cloud (GCP) and the importance of customer-centric relationship.”

Unscripted chat with Sr Manager of Application Development Asif Masood

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Disaster recovery , Disaster avoidance or in general Business Continuity are a critical design consideration for any business critical application.

In this short podcast, Dennis Hagens and John Smoker demonstrate how Aviatrix multi-cloud network backbone simplify your application disaster recovery b/w regions of single cloud or even to a second cloud with a flip of a button.

They also demonstrate how this standardize design allows for application reachability in cloud using the infrastructure of second cloud in case of a failure.

A powerful capability for all type of flows :

Ingress from internet
Cloud to cloud
Region to region and
Hybrid b/w cloud and on-prem.

All done through code in matter of seconds.

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Experience your firewall working for you, not the other way around. Aviatrix integrate and works with Security vendor such as Palo Alto Networks, Check Point, Fortinet, Cisco, F5 etc. Aviatrix business value is to simplify the way organizations enhance their public cloud security posture (Azure, GCP, AWS, OCI, etc.) while reducing the overall cost. In this candid podcata you'll find out how Aviatrix FireNet helps you to simply consume virtual firewall, with a proven recipe adopted by hundreds of customers in the cloud.

Now, you can simplify security by leaving the heavy lifting to Aviatrix.

The YouTube version is available here

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Podcast 33 - “ Evgeny Vaganov and Abdul Rahim has ~12 years of combined experience at #awscloud and have worked with thousands of customers moving to cloud.

In episode 33, we asked them to share their cloud journey, lessons learned and advice for customers.

Some key points:

Many cloud deployment start as non mission critical, in a single cloud and organically grew into a giant mess that is hard to untangle, with several design flaws, lack of visibility, security holes and operational/governance nightmares.
CSP by design focus less on networking features as they have to prioritize durability, performance availability and ensure environment is secure. Pace of innovation is slow as they try to recreate 30 years worth of capabilities in a cloud way, which will take time.

-Every single customer they met were either multi-cloud already or looking to extend in other clouds. Single CSP alone CANNOT meet requirements of enterprises.

-Key points they love about Aviatrix is "end to end focus b.w apps and users"

-Aviatrix has put the focus and control back on networking and security and Aviatrix ACE (#aviatrixace ) is the most beautiful opportunity. Think CCIE in 1995 but much bigger in terms of impact as cloud transformation will be 10x bigger and 100x faster. [Note: Rahim has 3 X CCIE's)

-Industry clouds becoming more prominent with many vendors offering "Specialty as a service -SaaS" on top of multiple CSPs infra which is like a "utility" model. Think Splunk, snowflake, SAP HANA, Netflix all becoming Over the Top [OTT} providers over multiple CSPs. It will become more common trend and many CSPs may look to acquire certain businesses just for their vertical expertise as well. [like Oracle/Cerner and Goldman announcing their own financial cloud].

-Aviatrix is a perfect fit for industry clouds.... a cookie cutter approach to offer their software in a secure, consistent manner on top of any cloud and intelligently connecting to end consumers. Revenue is directly proportional to how fast they onboard customers and expand in a consistent manner.

Both Evgeny and Rahim offered 1:1 consulting session for any customers looking for advice. Reach out directly or contact Aviatrix info@aviatrix.com.

Podcast link here. Hope you will enjoy.

https://lnkd.in/geQG2zX6

Another exciting episode with DevOps/ IaC/ Terraform Gurus John Smoker Dennis Hagens where we talked about importance of Ops specifically visibility, troubleshooting and security when building your application delivery infrastructure.

EP29 – Don’t forget the “Ops” in building your “DevOps” world

Some key learnings:

Key goal of DevOps and IaC is to “push code to production faster and do it in a scalable, stable way", however the last thing that always gets automated is the network, so even though a lot of organizations might feel that they've got things under control with automation, It may not necessarily be true from network, security and Ops/visibility perspective.
Aviatrix platform automates several key functions without even writing a single line of code, so its not just about infrastructure as a code, but to write less code to begin with. Things such as "setting up peering, making your network behave dynamic in regards to route updates, failover etc are hard problems to solve that are not a given in cloud world.
Aviatrix allows you to write our terraform codes on a much more abstract level making it more simpler, repeatable across clouds and intent based. BENEFIT: Reduces the amount of code and thus increases the maintainability tremendously.

-There is a split between dev and ops - Building and automating build time is relatively easy, but the ops part 100 X more difficult to to automate and that's where Aviatrix platform really shines.

BENEFIT: Remove distractions around ops, troubleshooting, visibility away from DevOps allowing them to focus on agility and application modernization that is directly tied to revenue.

-Aviatrix gets seamlessly inserted into your existing build process without upsetting the automation by inserting the Aviatrix TF provider code and gives instant benefit of security and visibility with self-service option for application teams to know how their apps are behaving and to fix performance issues.

-The cost of time you are spending on troubleshooting issues or addressing security concerns is equal to the time You're NOT spending improving your build or application side of things impacting your revenue/competitive advantage.

Its never too early or too late to start with Aviatrix. The sooner the better though as it allows you to set the foundations correct and ensure you have simple, consistent Architecture with no compromise to security and visibility allowing you to operate at the speed of business opportunities [think tapping new services in a different CSP, merger and acquisitions scenarious, cost etc.]
Don't be dependent on that one guy that wins the lottery. Build our environment that is simple, secure, repeatable and but can easily be managed by larger operations team.

Hope you will enjoy.

Do you know " More than half of dialysis machines used worldwide are made by Fresenius Medical Care" ?

#fresenius is a global healthcare that provides products and services for dialysis, hospital management and do R&D to pioneer therapy and care of critically and chronically ill patients.

I admire and have huge respect for their mission as well: "To deliver superior care that improves the quality of life of every patient, every day, setting the standard by which others in the healthcare industry are judged"

In episode 32 of Lets talk cloud networking podcast, we got together with Maximilian Schmidt who played a pivotal role in Fresenius cloud architecture and how Aviatrix provided the eureka moment to massively help them take control of their cloud deployment and secure critical data!!

Some key points:

Move to cloud is a business decision and infrastructure teams must quickly ramp up to support the business. Check out Aviatrix ACE trainings. https://aviatrix.com/ace/

-Securing clinical trials and patient data is absolutely vital for healthcare business and to satisfy audit/compliance requirements. Need evidential proof. Checkout #aviatrix CoPilot.

-Its time for Network teams to be friends with DevOps to make an unbeatable combination. Learn from each other.

Cost, Agility, time to market and global customer reach are some of the key reasons to move to cloud.

Enjoy.

Thoroughly enjoyed this podcast conversation with Steven Ward, Corporate Infra leader at Siemens MAS.

Steven shared lessons learned from his personal cloud journey and how Siemens have transformed over the years to start realizing full benefit of cloud.

Some of the key points from the conversation:

Utility industry is critical national infrastructure, where security, compliance and visibility is absolutely critical and is a large part of why Siemens is working with Aviatrix
2 key factors businesses look for are: Predictability in Cost and predictability in outcome and cloud do provides this very well.
Enterprises are NOT a “software house” and DIY scripting at scale across different environments is like a “square peg in a round hole”
Aviatrix is redefining the security posture in the cloud by making it a first class citizen, embedded as part of the fabric with intelligence built on top. NOT a “bolted On” after thought which is a lift and shift on-prem to cloud approach.
Simplified Operations, Secure by Design and Repeatable experience across clouds are key foundational principles of modern cloud architecture. If Operations team is not confident, you will not go far with your cloud journey.
Early on, many businesses moved to the cloud as an experiment, a “cool thing to do” and to be seen as a forward-looking company in front of customers and investors. But cloud has now clearly proven that it is much more than a replacement for VMware, Cisco etc.. Cloud is truly fueling rapid innovation in almost every vertical.
Lastly, when moving to the cloud, don’t fall into the trap of “sorting it later”. Ensure to look at the cost implications of right sizing the environment up front and ensure right cloud network architecture in place.

Fun episode and something different, where we asked Prateek Goyal and Faizan Mustafa on how the new cloud world demands cloud architects and IT directors to align their projects and mindset to CEO/CIO and board initiatives.

e.g. CEO's may be worried about smaller players in the market who are born in the cloud and have been able to rapidly capture portion of your business by being more agile and providing more flexible offerings. Existential thread is very real. They may also be looking to make their offering more richer by leveraging off-the-shelve CSP services such as around AI/ML to create new revenue streams for their business. Security, global reach and addressing to customers asks would be top of mind as well

Old mindset of "No one gets fired from buying Cisco" may actually can harm business significantly in cloud world.

Good Champion is a good story teller, aligning technical benefits to to business objectives. Make sure you have that clarity on business goals and go out of the way to be aligned.

C-level puts trust in their Sr. infrastructure leaders and architects to understand their objectives and recommend correct engineering decisions.

We also talked about advise for Cloud architects on tangible actions they can take to ensure cloud approach and deployment is future proof.

Cloud architects have a a tendency to get lost in technical weeds or pivot to their comfort zone. It's a good practice to take a step back from time to time and ensure alignment to business objective is being met.

Business may have an over arching strategy but all answers may not be know as cloud is a rapid evolving landscape

Modern CFO's are data driven but most of them fully understand the importance of investing in new platforms as its key to digital disruption

CIO/CTO needs to work cloud architects to highlight quantifiable benefits to board and CEO. e.g. Toyota uses the A3 model which has been their secret to success in making sound engineering decisions

For Aviatrix championing and business value guidance, reach out to us info@aviatrix.com

Hope you enjoy.

In Episode 30 , we got together with 2 of the finest Microsoft Azure Cloud specialists Bryan Woodworth and Toni Beck to talk about:

How customers journey to cloud is evolving post pandemic ?
Key reasons why movement to cloud is top of mind for CEO's/CIO's to achieve accelerated business growth ?
Importance of "Built-in Security" and why Aviatrix "Secure cloud networking" approach is the resonating well with top enterpises.
Critical role "Born in the cloud integrators and Top GSIs (SVA, DXC, Accenture, TCS, HCL, Wipro etc) are playing in helping cloud customers and associated urgency in getting their staff Aviatrix certified with fully integrated service offerings.

Hope you enjoy.

What does it mean to be a technology “CHAMPION” in a business transformation ? Whats in it for you challenging status quo ?
Learn from Jeff Duke on his thought process and lessons learned while in pursuing most optimal cloud networking and security solution for Republic Airways ?
Gartner learnings on multi-cloud that helped him and how it has evolved over the last 2 years ?
Repetition gives you “confidence” and passion makes you the champion.
What does CCIE’s bring to the table in cloud world if they can fast track their knowledge with certs like ACE
Why cloud council at Republic airways fell in love with Aviatrix ? easy button
Why Aviatrix ThreatIQ/ThreatGuard is a wow factor for network security teams and great example of why cloud security needs to be built into the network fabric
Message to CIO/CTO: Even if you have the staff, skip the “DIY”, b/c its going to hold you back and can be a business risk b/c of skill gap and overhead in in keeping up to date with CSP innovation. Don't turn into a software house
Lastly, don’t be afraid to take risks on new technology. Don’t hold on to old dinosaurs and its all about leaving legacy behind. [Check Steve Cube interview ]

Gartner analyst friend once told me amount of due diligence and deep research hey have to put in to publish their reports based on understanding the market, researching vendor products and interviewing wide variety of customers. The work is even more difficult with new market as old data is no longer valid. This is a heavy impact, responsibility work as thousands of business decision makers make important technology decisions based on those reports and data points.

In episode 26 of our cloud network podcast, we are lucky to have Ryan Wiley and Sebastian Kister from AUDI AG talk about their cloud journey and how Gartner recommendation on Aviatrix immensely helped them simplify their cloud networking and security experience and overcome severe challenges caused by older Cloud 1.0/20 approaches.

I am sure Gartner (cloud networking) would feel good listening to this, as much as new customers looking for recommendations to optimize their cloud networking and security experience.

We also talked about people/process transformation and how Audi/VW group put passionate people in charge to break the silos and build a cross-collaboration team culture to create positive impact for their business.

Fortunate to host Shaun on our cloud networking podcast to discuss lessons learned from his various cloud projects in last 10 years.

Some key learnings :

When moving to cloud, security should be top of mind day1. You can continue improving in phases but figure out your policy structure understanding how the cloud works and applications ingress/egress flows
Why security postures in cloud are different and advise to customers to think of implementing security at different layers leveraging both native capabilities from CSPs and cloud-smart vendor solutions
Importance of network level visibility to detect anomaly, and threats.
Advise for Network and security engineers to understand overall network architecture and native constructs of CSPs as key part of their cloud ramp up.
Lastly how compliance/audit requirements are going to become more stringent in cloud requiring evidential proof and how security architects and practitioners can build a more secure infrastructure for their business and customers.

Enjoy !!

VMware is an on-prem company, actually they do data center compute/network virtualization better than anybody else. However, their Multi-cloud portfolio and strategy is confusing. This should not come as a surprise as like many other legacy on-prem vendors, they face the “incumbent dilemma”. This post does a good job explaining https://rishidean.com/2014/12/08/incumbents-dilemma-why-disrupting-yourself-is-hard/

VMware do accept the fact that applications their infrastructure was servicing is now rapidly moving to cloud and Michael Dell recently confirmed "even days of hybrid-cloud are long gone, next phase is Multi-cloud". https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/dell-hybrid-cloud-long-gone-multi-cloud-next-phase/2021/10/

This BTW is not new as Gartner and modern born in the cloud networking vendors such as #Aviatrix have been talking about this for more than 2 years now] https://aviatrix.com/gartner-cloud-networking-market-guide/
Enterprise must think of “end state architecture “ in cloud and strive to get to that destination as quick as possible. Intermediate temporary parking lot approaches, even though could be necessary to meet DC shutdown deadlines, they are costly as it slows down realization of true cloud agility and operations teams delay their ramp up to support future state architecture. Cloud partners like #accenture are maturing their app migrations skills tremendously moving businesses with minimum disruption. This will continue to get better.
Lastly John Gonsalves, Nauman Mustafa advise to CIO/CTO/CEO’s: Enterprises must review the construct of their advisory/strategy team and ensure to hire new leaders with real experience in cloud to augment experience of on-prem world. Wrong approaches can massively slow down your competitive advantage.
Lastly when it comes to Multi-cloud networking, Brad Hedlund puts this very nicely “ No definition of Multi-cloud networking is complete if you do nothing to connect native VPC/VNETs/workloads and expect one side of the connection to always be VMWare
Checkout out this podcast (on request from our community) with candid views from Industry top cloud networking professionals who have experienced both on-prem and cloud native world first hand. At the end of the day remember to “align your center of gravity to your end state which is now multi-cloud’ and don’t forget “architecture is the most important thing”

Enjoy !!

https://anchor.fm/netjoints/episodes/EP24---VMware-Multi-cloud-strategy-Are-you-also-confused-e18sv6m

Takeda is a R&D driven, biopharmaceutical leader with a global presence. In this podcast, we got together with experienced cloud transformation leader Atta Meer to learn about his personal cloud journey and lessons learned from various cloud projects. Atta also provided great insights on how enterprises and Manage service providers (MSP’s) should be ramping up cloud networking skills of their staff.

Some key points:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) created something amazing years ago that allowed research-oriented pharma companies like Takeda to leverage on-demand infrastructure elasticity at the pace of opportunity. There are always new research happening that requires time bound compute/storage and there is no way traditional DC’s can match the business efficiency of CSP.
Cloud consumption overall is growing at a tremendous pace with new use cases evolving every day
Aviatrix is an off-the-shelve platform that has made life tremendously simple for cloud networking and operations team whether business is using single cloud or multiple. Explore it to appreciate how connectivity b/w regions and clouds and to on-prem has evolved dramatically from early days.

Result is: rapid expansion and better healthcare. Operational pains are biggest inhibitor to business agility in cloud.

How #Aviatrix service insertion policy framework has helped build an operationally supportable and manageable secure environment with redundancy and high availability.

Result is: Always ON, secure, compliant, auditable infrastructure

Instead of managing hundreds of complex scripts that are prone to human errors, how Aviatrix helps make the most of Terraform by improving codebase, do it better, cheaper and in less time with added day2 ops and visibility

Result is: Do more with less with

Modern business needs demand a multi-cloud network architecture [MCNA] even if business is currently dominant in a single cloud.
In terms of employees skills, 3 prong approach that has worked for him to : 1)Hire new talent, 2) upgrade existing employee skills as they have the tribal knowledge and 3) leverage partner/MSPs where it makes sense.
Atta advise all customers, partners, MSPs to at least have minimum of 2 certifications in cloud networking. 1. Aviatrix Certified Engineer (to know constructs of each cloud and where the gap exists) & 2. CSP practitioner level certification from any CSP such as AWS and Azure. He even recommends High school students to do ACE-associate to understand the lay of the cloud networking land.

EP22 - "Black swan event lurking in your cloud network - Are you prepared?"

Karthik Balachandran is a cloud guru with 12+ years of priceless experience helping customers with their cloud journey. Over the years, Karthik has witnessed various customer approaches and strategy shifts to maximize ROI in cloud.

In episode 22 of "Lets talk cloud networking" podcast, Karthik shared his learnings and how best to approach todays cloud deployments from cloud networking and security perspective. Some key points:

Why cloud DIY approach is literally a black swan event waiting to happen due to risks managing complex scripts that becomes impossible to manage as deployment scales or due to key people deciding to move on.
Moreover, working with established "born in the cloud" networking vendors who have deep knowledge of CSP cloud capabilities and a "supportable platform" is absolutely critical

-How customers mindset have shifted across various phases of cloud maturity (1.0/2.0/3.0) and "multi-cloud becoming the new-normal"

Day0 cloud architecture/design is important but make sure to not overlook Operational readiness of your staff and visibility/advance analytics that is critical to the the success of you digitally transformed business in cloud.

In EP21 we got together with Ides and Dennis to talk about EMEA cloud trends and some lessons learned from customers cloud journey in the region. Key points include:

Why Azure is first choice CSP for majority large enterprises in the region
How EMEA landscape has rapidly evolved from single cloud mindset to embracing multi-cloud
Connectivity to mainland China is a key trend with some large EMEA customers
Advise for cloud architects to "zoom out", take a step back and look at big picture on how cloud needs to be architected for current and future business needs
How Partner landscape is evolving with a new breed evolving b/w two extremes of legacy on-prem partners and csp-native, DIY only type partners.
"Go-build ourselves" mindset works early on when application footprint is small but as complexity increases as environment grows, customers focus has shifted to "consuming" partner product , such as Aviatrix, that makes life easier allowing business to focus on cloud agility.

Hope you enjoy.

Myself and John Gonsalves just recorded our 20th episode of "Lets talk cloud networking - unscripted" and who better person than Steffen Wagner from Lufthansa systems to join us and share his personal cloud journey and lessons learned from leveraging #azurecloud #gcpcloud #awscloud as DC's are getting rapidly evacuated.

Key points:

Cloud needs are evolving rapidly and CEO/CIO/business leaders want you to "architect a future proof cloud" as all requirements are NOT known today".
Cloud customers maturity has evolved from using CSP as just IaaS provider to helping business with faster application delivery and enable speed of innovation against competition.
How moving to cloud has significantly help IT take control back and better respond to business needs.
Abstract as much as possible in cloud and be careful of getting locked into CSP specific solutions such as Azure vWAN, AWS TGW, GCP NCC etc.. This will complex-ify operations and hinder your flexibility to move your apps in the cloud your business/customer wants.
#aviatrix active/active resiliency and centralized management/visibility plane with intelligent routing across regions, clouds and on-prem allows for bulletproof stability critical to aviation business.

Negative Consequence: Without Aviatrix, even small outages could result in flight cancellations and millions of revenue loss.

Your app developers wants networking/security to get out of their way and Aviatrix provides self-service way to "consume" as part of their app delivery lifecycle.
Follow a "multi-cloud" and "Cloud-First but not ONLY" strategy as small portion of apps may not be ready to be move to cloud. Take time to refactor and optimize to realize true benefits.

Hope you enjoy.

Some key points:

Doing Cloud with on-prem approach and relying on legacy on-prem vendors is a proven recipe for failure. Listen to what Johbn witnessed does NOT work in cloud.
What every customer specifically FSI customers expects their cloud vendors to articulate very crisply:

*** What business problem your technology is solving ?

*** Describe the business value that can be derived as an outcome

*** How much does it cost.

Business agility and security are 2 top goals for FSI customers in the cloud. i.e. How can I get "Accelerated business growth" and "how do you reduce my risk" by aligning my security posture to global regulatory requirements.

Listen to how Aviatrix helps customers achieve this.

Do it right, Do it the first time to gain competitive advantage.

#EasyMile is a pioneer in connected vehicles space with award winning driverless technology and with operations in 40+ countries. Cloud is critical for these technologies to work and having a reliable, low latency network is essential. For early adopters, cloud expect customers to fail fast as picking the right tool and platform is directly tied to agility and exponential business benefits.

In this episode, we get together with Razvan Matei , an early adopters in cloud and currently working as DevSecOps lead @ EasyMile Cloud R&D group. Razvan shared his cloud journey, lessons learned and insights that connected technology customers must consider.

Some key points:

Data is the new oil and for connected objects technology, a reliable, low latency network is essential.

-Networking in cloud is like water pipes in a house, that when it breaks all hell break lose directly impacting safety, security, obstacle detection etc.

How having a unified, coherent, consistent and secure global transit with Aviatrix helped open up new business opportunities and relieved the burden on cloud teams letting them focus on core business.

-Point of presence closest to vehicles is extremely important and no matter how ubiquitous or better one cloud is, customer expects vendors to make their offering available everywhere for performance and data sovereignty reasons and hence multi-cloud is a must have architecture for businesses.

-Lastly, every cloud is built different in functionality and semantics are different which no cloud team can handle so abstraction and uniformity that Aviatrix provides is absolutely essential.

Cost was never top of mind for on-prem networking/security/cloud architects but its an important design pillar in cloud. In this episode, we discussed with James Devine and Saad Mirza from #aviatrix on how infrastructure teams and architects needs to change their mental model when looking at network/security cost and where compromises does not make sense.

Some key points:

Be comfortable with not having a clear picture of your OPEX as you start you journey. In fact, your cost could very well be higher but additional benefits are well worth it. Cost is not the only reason why businesses are moving to the cloud.
Understand the data transfer cost e.g. when accessing a recording from S3 bucket to prove out a financial transaction
Understand CSPs savings plans and use them as much as possible.
Don't take shortcuts and settle for sub-optimal architecture just b/c of cost factor. In the end, you will end up paying lot more. How platforms like Aviatrix helps business realize rapid ROI and allow them to unlock new revenue streams.
Convincing CIO/CFO on funding and why sometimes "risk of not having something" is more impactful explanation than "benefit of having something"

Hope you enjoy.

#awscloud #aviatrixace #azurecloud

Exciting episode this... Jennifer Reed is a highly trusted and well respected cloud professional. She is also founding member of D3clarity [formerly ViqtorDavis] who have been helping enterprise customers with their cloud journey for # of years now.

In this episode, Jennifer shares her fascinating career journey starting from being in US Marin Corp to then working in very diverse technology roles and eventually becoming a trusted cloud networking and security professional assisting many large enterprise customers.

Some key points:

Why taking an architectural approach is so critical in a rapidly evolving cloud world.
Why CSR's doesn't work in cloud.
Jennifer also talked about D3clarity specialization in working with heavily regulated industries helping customers all the way from cloud migration to a fully secure, compliant and high available cloud infrastructure.
Advise to Netsec professionals : Learn at least one cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle] and do ACE trainings to get ramped on cloud networking quickly https://aviatrix.com/ace/
Key message : Never let a CSP lock you in. Ask deeper questions on various traffic flows and how to secure connections b/w various regions , cloud and on-prem.
Jennifer view of how Aviatrix brings flexibility, security, repeatability and visibility as key value adds to enterprise cloud environments..

Enjoy !!

Barry Li is Principal Solutions architect with vast experience in helping diff type of SaaS vendors especially in designing and operationalizing their cloud networks. In this podcast, Barry shares his experience and lessons learned working with some of the prominent SaaS vendors who are leveraging Aviatrix as their foundational platform for variety of needs.

Some of the point covered include:

6 Key requirements from SaaS vendors hosting their offering in cloud.
How Aviatrix is making it easy fro SaaS vendors to operationalize their offering in cloud and making it future proof.
Why Security cannot be overlooked and importance of architecture ?
Meeting End Customers where they want SaaS providers to meet them is crucial to business expansion.
How Aviatrix is solving complex end-customer on-boarding and complex overlapping IP address scenarios.

If you are a SaaS provider or partner helping SaaS Vendor manage their offerings in cloud, you would find this very useful.

Enjoy !!

Brad Hedlund is a networking legend when it comes to data centers and AWS cloud expert having spend several years at Cisco, VMWare, and AWS In this podcast, Brad shared his fascinating career journey and why he thinks Aviatrix is the next big thing in cloud networking

Some key points we covered:

Why he left AWS and joined Aviatrix ? and his view of major inflection points in networking over the last 20 years.
Why he thinks the "center of gravity" in the cloud and need for consuming services in multiple cloud is making "networking cool again".
How role of network engineers is transforming in cloud and why Aviatrix is fast tracking their skills with a platform that allows for a common repeatable architecture (MCNA) across any CSP and connectivity back to on-prem ?
Economies of scale and pace of innovation are 2 key reasons why discussions are no longer "private vs public", but more of how to do public cloud better ?
Why cloud networking has become so critical for enterprises?
Why networking will never be advance focus of any CSP as they are not really in the business of providing a DC like traditional vendors. Their focus is higher lever business application services as that's where they compete with each other and critical role Aviatrix is playing for CSPs and customers

Hope you will enjoy !!

Leon N’Guetta leads the VDC.cloud’s growing UK and globally dispersed team as the Owner, Managing Director & Certified Aviatrix Multi-Cloud Expert. In this episode, we get together with Leon to learn about his interesting journey in transforming his business to cloud. We also discussed how cloud has made them realize "The Art of possible" with elastic, on-demand infrastructure and cloud services at finger tips.

Below are some key points he shared:

Importance of Cloud Network architecture and why leveraging multiple clouds to use best of breed services is key
Power of Cloud marketplace in value creation and ability to quickly bring ideas to life by spinning up solutions almost instantly in cloud.
Why he thinks "Aviatrix Certified Engineer" (ACE) program is key for cloud network/security architects to build enterprise grade networks.
Customers are desperately looking for skilled partners who knows cloud really well and can act as prescriptive, trusted advisors.

As Aviatrix trusted partner, VDC.cloud is rapidly expanding their customer footprint and becoming trusted advisors for customers especially in Legal, Finance and Insurance sectors along with helping SaaS vendors manage their offerings in the cloud - https://vdc.cloud/

Enjoy the podcast !!!

Justin Donohoo the Founder and CTO of Observian and is probably one of the most knowledgeable and experienced cloud advisor we know in the space of app modernization, cloud migration, cloud security and big data. A trusted advisor with real world cloud experience that can be of tremendous help with customers cloud journey. In this episode, we get together with Justin to get his thoughts on customer lessons learned, partner landscape and how Observian is helping enterprises in this rapidly evolving cloud space. Some key points:

Importance of "safe and repeatable architectures" as operational overhead due to lack of automation is detrimental.
If your leadership doesn't empower you to fail and experiment, your cloud journey is going to suck.
How does VMWare Tanzu compares with CSP Kubernetes offerings, GKE, Anthos, EKS etc..
Don't be afraid of learning something new as change is inevitable and status quo is existential threat to businesses.
Aviatrix give Networking and security a seat at the table and along with Terraform makes them contribute to speed of innovation
How Cloud is making lines blurrier b/w traditional "paper-pusher" partner model , MSP model and Pro services. Today modern partner with right skills and trust can take it all as there is no dependency on hardware/infra anymore.
Without Cloud skills and experience, traditional partners are being excluded from future strategic conversations b/c customers no longer seem them relevant.
How to get over the stigma that somehow "all cloud native" is always better

John Smoker is an experience DevOps engineer and infrastructure architect with solid command on cloud technologies, infrastructure as code, cloud patterns, and automation. Prior to joining Aviatrix, John was leveraging Aviatrix as part of his CI/CD application delivery in the cloud. He loved it so much, that he ended up joining Aviatrix now helping customers who are looking for guidance in their cloud journey:

In episode 11, we touch some key topics around:

Role of DevOps engineer and why it was formed in the first place.
How Aviatrix helps DevOps engineers bring necessary design attributes around security, availability, visibility and operational simplicity while not compromising on Agility.
Evolving Role of on-prem Networking and Security engineers in cloud and how they must tag team with DevOps to together build Modern Cloud IT for their businesses.

Great learning and I hope you will find it useful too.

James Devine is AWS Networking expert who recently joined Aviatrix as Principal Solutions Architect. In EP10, we got together with James to get his views on reasons behind AWS wild success. We also talked about how Aviatrix cloud networking platform makes Customer's AWS experience more impactful, secure and enterprise grade. There is also some thought provoking discussions on why world needs "modern CIO/CTO's " to drive innovation strategy of the future and how VMware VMCoAWS type strategy may help provide a "DRaaS to cloud" as a starting point for many enterprises who are not ready to jump to cloud or want a intermediate solution for workloads not yet in cloud.

This week we got together with Head of Corp Networks at Inmarsat to talk about their cloud journey. Sone key points we covered include:

Why it's important for business leaders to fail fast to succeed faster.
We talked about speed of innovation and simplicity as the key tenets to strive for in the cloud.
Dan also touched on how critical Aviatrix has been for their cloud strategy allowing them to consume services in each cloud [AWS/Azure,GCP/OCI]
Lastly how Dan navigated through up-skilling his teams to be effective in cloud world and role of Aviatrix ACE in doing this.

In this episode we got together with Aviatrix Principal Architects and former Microsoft global networking black belts Bryan Ashley and Manny Calero to discuss:

What is Azure x-factor behind their rapid growth?
How do customers ensure their Azure deployment is multi-cloud ready ?
Customer trends, common pain points and lessons learned
Key takeaways to get the best out of cloud deployments

Hope you find it useful.

You would surprised with pace of innovation that public clouds have enabled when it comes to Govt and public sector.

Listen to industry expert Jason Langone as he shares his observations and key trends in Govt. and public sector space.

Healthcare vertical is seeing massive digital transformation and cloud has indeed enabled customers to innovate faster.

Phil Davis is top cloud architect that has been closely working with several healthcare customers. In this episode Phil shares his experience and lessons learned.

Organizations questioning have changed from "Is Cloud secure" to "Are we using cloud securely". As enterprises mature with better understanding of how their data flows in and out of CSP infra, realization is kicking in that at the end of the day, cloud security is customers responsibility. It must be protected with a sound security posture and at multiple levels.

In this episode, John Gonsalves and Nauman Mustafa chat with lead architect Shahzad Ali on what he is learning from various customers who are experiencing this first hand and continuously optimization their cloud security strategy.

1.Enterprises moving to cloud face this build vs buy dilemma and how smart customers addressing it. 2. What is CloudNative+ and why it’s the most optimal approach

Very interesting discussion talking about the harsh reality of SD-WAN being a diminishing technology. There were some thought provoking questions from Nauman and John and insights were provided by Dana Yanch, former pioneer architect in the SDWAN world and now a Principal engineer at Aviatrix.

Talk with industry experts and principal cloud architects Shahzad Ali, Dana Yanch and Hammad Alam about their journey to the Cloud and what tips and recommendations they have to fast track their skills in cloud to support their businesses.

Nauman and John talks about state of cloud and the importance of cloud networking and security in the digital modernization world.