Public-private hybrid cloud for large enterprises

Challenge: Independent operations lead to inefficiencies

Large enterprises typically have multiple data centers with semi-independent operations along with links to one or more public clouds. The resulting environment, even if optimized at the data center level, can still be unwieldy and costly to manage. That’s why IT organizations are often caught between matching public cloud capabilities in-house and being able to afford or secure operations on the public cloud.

Solution: Combine both private and public clouds into a coherent whole

The Nokia cloud architecture overlays even the most complex enterprise environment and transforms it into a best practices cloud without forklift upgrades. By federating this unified environment across data centers and across the WAN, even the most complex enterprise environment is transformed to a best practices private cloud. By enabling consistent communications with public cloud(s), the result is a hybrid cloud.

Nokia combines innovative software defined networking (SDN) and software defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) approaches with cutting-edge networking technology. The result is a true hybrid cloud infrastructure that provides mission-critical communications and operations while reducing costs. The Nokia cloud network provides a core infrastructure that flexes automatically - and in near real-time for mission-critical operations - in response to the demands of cloud management systems, such as OpenStack. For its part, the Nokia Data Center Interconnect (DCI) approach leverages any combination of IP and optical network gear to provide high-performance, scalable, and reliable connections among data centers.

This innovative approach enables a public-private hybrid cloud that can scale internally with the addition of more IT resources, as well as scale externally by leveraging public cloud resources for production activities, such as big data jobs or end-of-quarter accounting runs. This approach can also be used for irregular and infrequent peak activities, such as elections or sporting events. This core scaling capability allows enterprises to capitalize on the best of both types of cloud.

Figure 1. A federated private cloud with public cloud access increases flexibility and control

How our approach changes the game

This innovative approach enables a public-private hybrid cloud that can scale internally through the addition of more IT resources and externally by leveraging public cloud resources for production (e.g., big data jobs or end-of-quarter accounting runs) or for overflow jobs (e.g., infrequent peaks,such as elections or sporting events). This core scaling capability allows enterprises to capitalize on the best of both types of cloud.