As enterprises increasingly migrate to the cloud, one essential aspect of IT has been largely overlooked: networking. More and more of the enterprise’s work is taking place in virtualised settings – places you have to connect to. As a result, enterprises are starting to realise that how you connect to the cloud matters.
Many enterprises make the mistake of connecting to the cloud through the public internet. But the unpredictability around the internet that we’ve come to accept in our everyday lives turns into a major detriment when you’re talking about mission-critical function.
One European train operator learned this lesson with their mobile app, which enables customers to look up train schedules and purchase tickets. The ticket store is hosted on AWS, but when a customer actually buys a ticket, the purchasing process moves into a data centre for added security. The connection between these two environments needs to be quick and seamless in order to support the process and ensure a good user experience.
The train operator initially chose to rely on the internet to connect its own data centre and the AWS cloud, but the internet connection simply wasn’t able to support the high volume of ticket requests, nor the speed at which those transactions needed to occur. These latency issues led the train operator to reconsider their architecture. They decided to partner with Interxion for a new networking approach: connecting directly to the cloud through colocation.
Colocation makes cloud connectivity simpler and more secure. Colocated data centres already host a connected community of clouds, SaaS, suppliers, customers, and service providers, allowing enterprises to bypass the public internet and instead privately connect to all the platform and service providers they need.
That’s exactly what the train operator decided to do. With Interxion’s help, the train operator closed the loop between their deployed infrastructure and the public cloud by moving the application right next to the public cloud. Interxion provides the AWS point of presence, allowing the train operator to connect directly into the AWS cloud. This direct connection improved app performance and reliability, with significantly reduced roundtrip latency. Of course, that also translates into a better customer experience, since customers can buy tickets instantaneously now that the train operator isn’t relying on the performance of the internet.
Enterprises can gain similar benefits by colocating with Interxion. Just like the train operator, enterprises can use colocated data centres to connect directly to the cloud and enjoy the benefits of low-latency connectivity and increased performance. These private connections are more stable and reliable than any alternatives, and it’s also a safer, more secure way of handling sensitive traffic.
To learn more about how Interxion helps cloud-focused enterprises rethink their networking approach, view the webinar recording here.