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4 SD-WAN vendors integrate with AWS Transit Gateway
Aruba, Cisco, Citrix and Silver Peak are among the first SD-WAN vendors to integrate their products with the AWS Transit Gateway.
Several software-defined WAN vendors have announced integration with Amazon Web Services' Transit Gateway. For SD-WAN users, the integrations promise simplified management of policies governing connectivity among private data centers, branch offices and AWS virtual networks.
Stitching together workloads across cloud and corporate networks is complex and challenging. AWS tackles the problem by making AWS Transit Gateway the central router of all traffic emanating from connected networks.
Cisco, Citrix Systems, Silver Peak and Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, launched integrations with the gateway this week. The announcements came after AWS unveiled the AWS Transit Gateway at its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.
SD-WAN vendors lining up quickly to support the latest AWS integration tool didn't surprise analysts. "The ease and speed of integration with leading IaaS platforms are key competitive issues for SD-WAN for 2020," said Lee Doyle, the principal analyst for Doyle Research.
By acting as the network hub, Transit Gateway reduces operational costs by simplifying network management, according to AWS. Before the new service, companies had to make individual connections between networks outside of AWS and those serving applications inside the cloud provider.
The potential benefits of Transit Gateway made connecting to it a must-have for SD-WAN suppliers. However, tech buyers should pay close attention to how each vendor configures its integration.
"SD-WAN vendors have different ways of doing things, and that leads to some solutions being better than others," Doyle said.
What the 4 vendors are offering
Cisco said its integration would let IT teams use the company's vManage SD-WAN controller to administer connectivity from branch offices to AWS. As a result, engineers will be able to apply network segmentation and data security policies universally through the Transit Gateway.
Aruba will let customers monitor and manage connectivity either through the Transit Gateway or Aruba Central. The latter is a cloud-based console used to control an Aruba-powered wireless LAN.
Silver Peak is providing integration between the Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN platform and Transit Gateway. The link will make the latter the central control point for connectivity.
Finally, Citrix's Transit Gateway integration would let its SD-WAN orchestration service connect branch offices and data centers to AWS. The connections will be particularly helpful to organizations running Citrix's virtual desktops and associated apps on AWS.
