Over the past few years, the cloud has gone from trending innovation to mainstream technology solution. There are dozens of cloud-based technology products on the market, but three go one step further, changing the economics of technology and the ingestion of cloud value.
Whether your company has already completed a digital transformation or you’re just getting started, these are three technologies worth exploring to simplify your system, increase security, and optimize performance.
CloudPost
When a new device is added to a network, a hacker could connect to that device and in turn, use it for nefarious activities. Many IoT devices, particularly in the healthcare industry, were not originally designed to be connected, and therefore, to withstand outside attacks, which makes them especially vulnerable. So how do you protect those?
Traditional security solutions utilize end-point protection, but you can’t protect a device unless you know what it is and where it is on the network.
CloudPost is on the leading edge of IoT security and risk reduction. The company creates an inventory of IoT devices and details including the manufacturer, version history, updates, and location connected to a particular network, and passively monitors communications. All IoT devices have a normal flow of communication. CloudPost can differentiate between individual devices and establish baseline communication behaviors. For example, is a blood pump in a hospital ICU operating within the normal communication structure—or communicating with a remote machine in China?
When unusual behavior is discovered, CloudPost will isolate the issue, alert IT managers, and quarantine the device to project the network, without taking the device offline.
“CloudPost is the only solution that was built from the ground up with the intention of securing inherently insecure and often ignored devices,” said Mauricio Rojas, director of services at Edge Solutions.
“Its competitors have all focused on trying to adapt existing technologies and shoehorn them into IoT. This means CloudPost is the only solution in the industry that can provide full visibility and security for IoT devices.”
Healthcare, finance, and manufacturing are all good candidates for CloudPost because of how easy it is to provide security and compliance. However, any industry with an increasing reliance on IoT devices will benefit from using CloudPost.
“CloudPost takes the guesswork out of securing the most difficult items to secure on an enterprise network. It’s one of the rare tools that’s loved by network, security, and GRC teams,” said Rojas.
VeloCloud
Traditional wide area networking (WAN) is expensive, complex, unpredictable, and datacenter dependent. VeloCloud’s cloud-delivered software-defined WAN offers simple two-click deployment and removes the complexity of building a private network mesh between remote sites, cloud resources, and on-premises data centers while radically decreasing the technical know-how to operate.
In a traditional WAN, for Office 1 to talk to Office 2, it would require a static VPN, constantly open and sharing on the network. And, if one office is infected, so is the other. NSX SD-Wan by VeloCloud sets up a dynamic VPN to allow a conversation to occur, and when it’s over, the channel is closed—a more secure solution. With dynamic multitask optimization, VeloCloud can optimize network traffic on a per packet basis.
“VeloCloud stands out from the crowd with advanced network-linked optimization and simplified deployment,” said Technical Sales Director Brent Holt.
Remote offices often don’t have IT departments, but with VeloCloud it’s easy to establish SD-WAN. The device is shipped to the location and powered up. After entering the license key, the device will download the policy and begin SD-WAN.
“Velocloud is secure, simple, and dynamic. It has a robust feature set, costs considerably less than hardware-based solutions, and is set up for the future because of how it works with cloud gateways,” said Holt.
The NSX SD-WAN solution supports a platform to host multiple virtualized network functions to eliminate single-function appliances and reduce branch IT complexity, automates branch deployment, and provides granular visibility for real-time network and application monitoring.
AVI Networks
If your company has computer assets running applications in-house, in a data center, or in the cloud, you’re (most likely) already on board with the need for load balancing. You could head down to the data center and physically install a pizza box-size of hardware, or you could deploy a software-based solution. Or, you could install Avi Networks’ Software Load Balancer, a scalable solution born in software with an intuitive web-based desktop, firewall, and powerful built-in analytics.
“Avi Networks’ Software Load Balancer provides a lot more value than traditional solutions because they offer some interesting features, most notably, the analytics. You’ll get a visual representation of what’s happening on your network and what program is talking to what machine. That kind of feature isn’t normally found in a product like this,” explained Alex Theodore, Rocket Surgeon at Edge Solutions.
With a software-based load balancer, when a computer fails or in the event of a significant user increase, scaling up the network is as simple as a few clicks in a web browser—no trips to the data center and far fewer billable IT hours.
Avi’s Software Load Balancer is part of the Avi Vantage program, along with Intelligent WAF and Elastic Service Mesh. Avi Vantage was born in software, purpose-built for the cloud and mobile-ready. It’s easy to deploy, flexible, and scalable. Applications can be delivered publicly or privately, and it can run on bare metal, virtualized, or in the cloud. While there are other software-based load balancing solutions, Avi provides more features with out-of-the-box automation for containers, cloud, and automation platforms.
“The analytics alone present a tremendous value, and Avi Networks is the only company providing this function as part of the package. Customers are often pleasantly surprised with what they can learn about how their network functions. To see this in a graphical drawing rather than a spreadsheet with rows of data is pretty powerful,” said Theodore.
“Avi is changing the game of technology and giving people a choice. And, it costs less than other solutions. It\’s a no-brainer.”
For more information about CloudPost, VeloCloud, or AVI Networks and how Edge Solutions can help you, contact us today.