Modernize Enterprise Networking with Cisco SD-WAN and Google Cloud

Enterprises are increasingly adopting hybrid and multi-cloud to deliver the best experiences for their customers. The network is at the foundation of this transformation, but is getting exponentially more complex to manage, secure, and scale throughout an enterprise footprint that can include multiple clouds, SaaS applications, on-prem locations, and geographies.

To help enterprise customers with these modern network challenges, we are expanding our partnership with Cisco to bring the best of both Cisco and Google Cloud technologies together, with a new turnkey networking solution: Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud.

With tighter integrations between Cisco and Google Cloud, this solution will bring an end-to-end network that adapts to application needs, and that enables secure and on-demand connectivity from a customer's branch, to the edge of the cloud, through Google Cloud’s backbone, and to applications running in Google Cloud, a private data center, another cloud or a SaaS application.

Google Cloud provides industry-leading hybrid and multi-cloud services, robust connectivity, and security solutions. We have developed technologies that give our customers the freedom to develop, deploy, and secure applications anywhere—including Anthos, which simplifies hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. The network that supports services like YouTube, Search, Maps and Gmail is the same infrastructure that provides connectivity to our Google Cloud customers and their users. It consists of a system of high-capacity fiber optic cables across the globe and peers with 3,000 internet service providers (ISPs) in 200+ countries and territories for “last mile” delivery. Our network is also completely software defined, which allows us to consistently select the best egress point to optimize performance and availability.

Many customers rely on Cisco technologies to build and manage their enterprise networks. Cisco SD-WAN is an industry leading solution that provides enterprises with a single pane of glass to manage their entire WAN network, optimizes and secures connectivity between enterprise footprints, and simplifies IT operations by automating routine tasks. We believe by combining the core technology strengths of both Cisco and Google Cloud, we can provide best-in-class, cloud-delivered enterprise networking solutions that make network management easy for our customers and allow them to meet their business needs with agility.

As Sachin Gupta, SVP, Product, Intent-Based Networking Group at Cisco said, “Cisco's SD-WAN solution provides end-to-end automation, security, observability and application experience between users anywhere and a hybrid, multi-cloud environment. Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub will enable customers to seamlessly extend intent and policy to enterprise applications running natively in Google Cloud."

Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud will bring a new set of capabilities to our customers to simplify enterprise networking and advance security capabilities, while helping IT teams minimize operational costs and meet application service-level objectives (SLOs):

• A flexible, on-demand network that allows customers to automatically provision a reliable, global network that grows with enterprises’ business needs. In most cases, customer traffic enters Google’s network directly from their last mile provider and stays on Google’s network while it traverses the globe. Combining Cisco’s advanced SD-WAN capabilities with Google's software-defined backbone, customers get an end-to-end network that not only optimizes connectivity between branches, stores and to the cloud, but also provides telemetry for troubleshooting and diagnostic purposes. 

• Automated application and path-aware routing takes the complexity out of mapping business services to the appropriate network. The Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud solution allows customers to publish all of their services in a single place with the ability to define the intent of how the network should treat those services in an automated fashion, reducing time to onboard new services on to the network. With a combined view of network telemetry, this solution also provides the most optimized path to interconnect Anthos-based services hosted in hybrid/multi cloud environments. 

• Stronger, smarter security thanks to Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud’s end-to-end security, which seamlessly integrates network control and available application-layer security controls based on workload and user identities. With this rich set of controls, customers get security at multiple layers, resulting in stronger protection for their applications.

WWT, the global technology and solutions provider, and a global strategic partner of both Google Cloud and Cisco, sees strong opportunities for businesses to accelerate their customers' digital transformations with the Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud.

“Customers are looking at modernizing their network along with moving and containerizing applications with technologies like Google Cloud’s Anthos and placing those workloads in Multicloud Architectures,” said Derrick Monahan, WWT Cloud Networking Architect. “Due to the fluid nature of the where data, applications, and services reside, along with a need for a more integrated security strategy, Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud Platform will be a key architectural step to accelerating our customers Digital Strategy.”

Cisco and Google Cloud intend to invite select customers to participate in previews of this solution by the end of 2020. General availability is planned for the first half of 2021. To learn more, read Cisco’s blog and visit our partnership website.