CloudGenix
A Modern Approach and a Simplified WAN

Today’s large enterprises— most of which use MPLS to connect sites over a wide area service provider networks— have a continuous need for increased capacity, a higher availability, and better performance in the existing systems.

Same was the requirement for the staffing services company Global Employment Solutions (GES) that wanted to improve the WAN for its branches around the U.S. In addition to the need for higher availability, GES needed the ability to define application-level policies, a task nearly impossible on traditional packet-centric routers. This was when CloudGenix stepped in to support GES. CloudGenix’s AppFabric SD-WAN resulted in GES being able to utilize high-performance broadband and determine that the need for MPLS was materially reduced, all without compromising on the of productivity of users across their branches. Unlike MPLS that could take months to get a circuit provisioned, GES was able to reduce provisioning times using CloudGenix and broadband Internet. With complete visibility into the performance and health of their WANs and applications, GES was able to access the data required to remediate any issues that arose. In addition to reducing the turn up time of new branches, GES also enjoyed increased capacity and improved application performance at a lower cost.

“CloudGenix AppFabric helps distributed organizations take advantage of tomorrow’s WAN today. With AppFabric, businesses can leverage any transport including broadband Internet, reduce their dependency on expensive private circuits, confidently deploy the cloud, and embrace digital transformation,” says Joel Christner, VP of Marketing at CloudGenix.

With its SD-WAN product– AppFabric, the company allows businesses to take advantage of several types of WAN connections between an organization’s branch offices, data centers, and the cloud. The links are virtualized into a shared pool of connectivity over which secure connections are established, effectively creating an automatic VPN layer between all their sites. Businesses can then define top-down application-centric policies that dictate the levels of performance, compliance, and security required for each critical application.

Christner speaks of AppFabric’s importance for businesses in enabling digital transformation, which is enabled by the use of top-down policies and the ability to leverage any transport, including direct Internet to the cloud. While CloudGenix allows organizations to integrate direct Internet into their remote offices at a roughly 70% cost savings, businesses find even more value in what that provides.

“Digital transformation involves enhancing the experience of the employee, partner, and customer, which often involves video.

We’ve seen retail businesses be able to deploy next-generation experiences such digital signage, kiosks, and virtual mirrors. Bank branches can confidently roll out video teller machines. These experiences were not possible before AppFabric because packet-centric WAN routers and legacy SD-WAN vendors simply don’t allow top-down application-centric policy definition and enforcement,” said Christner.

CloudGenix AppFabric gives businesses the ability to have tomorrow’s WAN today and embrace digital transformation

CloudGenix’s application-centric approach makes it unique within the SD-WAN market. As opposed to traditional packet-centric platforms, AppFabric is one of a kind in that it considers health and performance related metrics from both the network and the application itself. These metrics are not only used to enforce policy, but is also exposed in a series of powerful analytics, allowing administrators visibility into what’s happening on their network and the actual user experience with the applications themselves. Such metrics include bandwidth utilization, packet loss, latency, jitter, MOS score, transaction failure rates, and the various components that comprise application transaction response times.

CloudGenix also ensures powerful and consistent security across its clients’ sites. While ensuring that businesses have complete control over the WAN links that their applications use, CloudGenix’s strong encryption and policy controls keep the data completely private and secure. Businesses can also define transit networks to force traffic through specific sites – such as cloud access security brokers like Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks – to create a consistent security perimeter for each site.

CloudGenix has deployments on six continents around the world for some of the most demanding global brands, handling billions of application transactions per day, for companies that represent trillions of dollars in market cap.10 percent of the branch offices of Fortune 100 companies run on AppFabric and the company is rapidly expanding its clientele. Educating and enabling IT organizations to align with the benefits of multi-cloud is a core part of the organization’s strategy. Although traditional networking and first generation SD-WAN have numerous challenges achieving these lofty goals, CloudGenix prides itself on enabling businesses to accomplish this digital transformation with ease.