Ensuring your cloud connectivity is bulletproof

As Australian companies start seeing more applications for serverless computing, Superloop takes a look at the key considerations for your cloud connectivity.

Imagine a world where you could propose a new business process or application in a meeting, and have a functional prototype created within days, rather than going through months of complex IT and business process negotiations.

Serverless virtual computing has started making inroads as a concept. Billed to grow 23% by 2024 in Asia Pacific, it is being hailed as the next evolutionary step in leveraging the full potential of cloud technology and achieving greater organisational agility.

Despite some organisations such as National Australia Bank going serverless, Australia and the wider Asia Pacific region is still in its infancy of adoption.

However, as enterprises across Australia continue to migrate to the cloud and cloud-native architecture, serverless adoption will continue to rise because the way enterprises approach infrastructure has fundamentally changed. Organisations will realise the benefits of reducing the workloads within their infrastructure environment.

How does serverless computing work?
It’s a mistake to say no servers are required at all. Instead of having dedicated servers for databases, each application is reduced to specific queries or transactions that need to be returned within a certain amount of time. By reducing your applications to a series of tasks, queries and transactions, there is no need to maintain and manage traditional servers and hard drives. This is the next level of cloud computing – with no need to build, maintain and manage your own infrastructure.

There are a number of immediate use cases today including web and mobile applications, data stream processing, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions. However, many organisations uncover additional use cases as they make the transition into cloud infrastructure - particularly those undergoing digital transformation. Companies such as NAB have made early investments to achieve gains in productivity and speed of deploying applications, as well as reducing costs and resourcing.

What are the implications of going serverless for cloud connectivity?
With organisations further relying on cloud computing for mission critical business applications and infrastructure, it is vital to maintain uptime across the entire stack.

For organisations that are on the start of their cloud journey, or already have multi tenant cloud deployment, the ability to maintain consistently high performing connectivity across the entire portfolio can become complex. This is why Superloop has partnered with Megaport, a leading global Network as a Service provider, to offer Cloud Connect to organisations in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

As a Megaport Connected service, Cloud Connect offers a way to manage cloud service connectivity across multiple geographies as well as building in redundancy and disaster proof operating environments.

“The way I see it, serverless is coming rapidly to Asia Pacific, and will offer massive potential for organisations to realise the benefits of serverless deployments. Superloop is poised to become the provider of choice for clients wanting to go serverless and multi-cloud across Asia Pacific,” said Talha Baseer, Product Manager, Superloop.

Offering flexibility and scalability
Cloud Connect provides Layer 2 cloud connectivity to the Australian, Hong Kong and Singapore Availability Zones of AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud to any enabled location within our network in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia.

Additionally, customers will be able to connect at Layer 3 to these zones and cloud services across any enabled location within Australia. Megaport extends Superloop’s reach across their global network of service providers, to enable customers with extensive cloud connectivity. With locations close to cloud on-ramps, enterprise businesses that are located outside of these regions will now have access to the services that power their businesses – and service providers have greater reach to their customers.

“The service is also designed to be expandable – we will add more providers with customer demand,” added Baseer.

Advantages of using Superloop Cloud Connect to maintain cloud connectivity
When organisations procure Cloud Connect through Superloop, they are getting access to:

1.    Simplicity. Our consultants already know the prerequisites to provision a service and the kinds of services available. As long as your organisation can meet these prerequisites, provisioning becomes simple. Because Superloop partners with Megaport to leverage its integration with leading cloud providers and Software Defined Network, your cloud service can be provisioned rapidly.

2.    Flexibility. Organisations can have multiple services to the Australian zones of any of the cloud service providers supported by Cloud Connect, giving you the ability to trial a cloud provider before migrating to them completely.

3.    Scalability. As customers expand geographically, Superloop can provide connectivity to customer nominated ports in any DC.

Learn more about Superloop's connectivity services here.