Cisco is going to launch this coming month of December a new version of your SD-WAN software. As confirmed John Joyal, Product and Solutions Marketing Manager, Cisco Enterprise SD-WAN and Routing Groupthis new version will be the 17.10, and among other novelties it will expand the scope of the system and include new management functions. Among these will be the ability to use Cisco SD-WAN Multi region fabric (MRF) support with existing SDCI (Software defined cloud interconnect) systems in a way that significantly increases control of the SD-WAN environment and its reach.
MRF enables customers to divide their SD-WAN environments into multiple regional networks that operate independently of each other, along with a main and central regional network, which handles traffic between regions. As for SDCI technology, it is used to link company resources to various internet, network and cloud service providers.
Now, by combining both technologies, and using the Cloud OnRamp Multicloud gateway in Cisco SD-WAN software, customers can adjust network, configuration, and security policies across multiple locations, and do so from a central point. Cisco SD-WAN Cloud OnRamp links branches and offices, or remote individual users, with cloud applications, such as Cisco Webex, Microsoft 365 or Salesforce, among others.
In addition, customers can now assign regions and roles to SD-WAN edges deployed with SDCI infrastructure, and can segment MRF regions to divide them into multiple subregions, and share routers at their borders between subregions. In this way, you can count on improved redundancy and network designs focused on fault tolerance.
In addition to the MRF integration, Cloud OnRamp now includes enhanced telemetry, giving customers more information and management options about network resources and the associated Webex application. Cloud OnRamp will also be able to schedule Kubernetes application connectivity requirements as well. Thus, customers will be able to bring these resources to an SD-WAN environment more quickly.
When it comes to security, Cisco has expanded its SASE options (Secure Access Service Edge) adding integration with security platforms from Cloudflare and Netskope. This follows a similar integration between Cisco SD-WAN and Zscaler security offerings.
Cisco has also indicated that it will integrate its SD-WAN announcements with Splunk’s security information and event management system. And finally, with this new version, comes greater integration with the Azure cloud service. According to the company, its package SD-WAN will allow the Azure customers develop automated site-to-site connectivity over the Microsoft global network. For this, it will be necessary to use the Hub Cloud SD-WAN and Azure Virtual WAN with its multi-region structure.
With this, the company wants to allow customers to build single or multiple layers on top of Microsoft’s backbone, so they can interconnect company sites around the world. Also connecting sites to workloads running on Azure, similar to how it is achieved in Google Cloud thanks to its agreement with Cisco.
The Microsoft framework can identify a site by its geographic location, and associate sites with regions based on their geographic ties. With Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub, companies that have deployed a Cisco SD-WAN fabric for their long-haul network infrastructure can extend their fabric to the public cloud in a secure, simple, and automated way.