Arrcus Eyes Enterprise Multicloud Networking With FlexMCN

Highlights:

• Arrcus FlexMCN aims to provide multi-tenancy support, allowing tenant isolation and network segmentation, which is much-needed by large enterprises.
• According to Shekar Ayyar, CEO and chairman of Arrcus, the new Arrcus FlexMCN is the next step in realizing Arrcus’ mission of enhancing business efficiency through “superior network connectivity.”

Digital transformation is redefining enterprise communication, storage, and workflow, especially on the back of cloud networking technologies. According to Gartner, while several customers have deployed Multicloud Networking Software (MCNS) — formerly known as cloud networking software — more companies will use MCNS in a market that is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 30% through 2026.

Arrcus, a networking software company based in California, wants to strengthen its position in this expanding market with a new product aimed at assisting Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs), colocation providers, and telcos in providing multi-cloud connectivity as a managed service to enterprises. The firm announced the release of a new product Arrcus FlexMCN that will assist businesses in maintaining the rapid growth of applications and data in distributed locations worldwide by leveraging its hyper-scale multi-cloud networking solution with reliable, predictable scale performance and seamless orchestration.

Early this year, Arrcus announced a version 2.0 upgrade to its flagship Arrcus Connected Edge (ACE) platform, a computing platform designed to support more flexible network configurations and intelligent embedded applications in the ACE network. According to Shekar Ayyar, CEO and chairman of Arrcus, the new Arrcus FlexMCN is the next step in realizing Arrcus’ mission of enhancing business efficiency through “superior network connectivity.” The Arrcus FlexMCN, built on Arrcus’ ACE platform, is available in various configurations, including containers, Virtual Machines (VM), software on white-box hardware, and the cloud.

Providing multi-tenancy support

Arrcus FlexMCN aims to provide multi-tenancy support, allowing tenant isolation and network segmentation, which is much-needed by large enterprises. It also provides role-Based Access Control (RBAC), which allows for granular access to network infrastructure while preventing accidental, malicious access. Multi-tenancy also allows managed service providers to share the FlexMCN ArcOrchestrator with multiple tenants, and each tenant can view its network infrastructure in the orchestrator.

With this announcement, Arrcus FlexMCN promises to reduce multi-cloud networking setup time from days to hours. FlexMCN, according to Arrcus, enables it to operationally simplify ongoing management by automating and orchestrating with popular frameworks such as HashiCorp Terraform, Ansible Playbooks, and REST APIs. The company also claims to be able to enable distributed network connections between clouds such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

Arrcus FlexMCN – on-prem and in the cloud

Furthermore, Arrcus FlexMCN will speed up the set up of cloud operations, allowing flexibility to deploy multi-cloud networking controllers in their customers’ private clouds (on-premises or in a data center) or public clouds to connect private and public cloud workloads, according to the company.

According to Ayyar, “CSPs, colocation providers, and telcos have an opportunity to create new monetization streams with the delivery of secure multi-cloud connectivity-as-a-service to enterprises.”

Arrcus asserts that its technology enables the delivery of multi-cloud connectivity-as-a-service and addresses data protection and sharing concerns. Roy Chua, founder and principal of research firm AvidThink, stated in a press release that “as a result of its high-end programmability, Arrcus FlexMCN provides the flexibility to deploy on-premises or in the cloud, allowing select industry verticals to stay in compliance with GDPR and HIPAA requirements.”

In the FlexMCN implementation, Arrcus will prioritize service providers, partners, and customers. Some companies the competitors of Arrcus include Alkira, Cisco, Arista, Avitrix, Cohesive Networks, F5, Prosimo, and VMware.