CELONA INTRODUCES NEW ARCHITECTURE FOR THE EDGELESS ENTERPRISE
New approach brings vital network services closer to users and applications to help companies achieve the highest levels of performance wherever new digital business initiatives demand.
CUPERTINO, Calif. – May 18, 2021 – Celona, one of the leading innovators of private 5G solutions, today debuted its Edgeless Enterprise architecture that enables uniform orchestration of vital network connectivity, edge computing, and security services. As organizations embrace this unique approach across their campus and branch locations, they get one step closer to moving at the speed of the new generation of enterprise applications.
Based on the transformative principles of 5G technology, Celona’s Edgeless Enterprise is an architectural approach that converges network services, enterprise applications, cybersecurity tools, and WAN optimization on cloud-native edge computing platforms that can be deployed anywhere. This innovative new approach enables myriad benefits, including:
- Gaining and maintaining a competitive edge by rolling out new automation and digital transformation services faster than ever before,
- Removing friction by streamlining network and security service provisioning,
- Reducing operational cost inefficiencies by leveraging AIOps with a cloud-native network operating system, and
- Decreasing security exposure by unifying the policy framework independent of network access and compute location options.
"In today's fast-changing business environment, network services need to be in lockstep with enterprise applications,” said Rajeev Shah, co-Founder and CEO of Celona. “Celona’s Edgeless Enterprise architecture is the first comprehensive approach that uses the true value of emerging 5G technology to speed the convergence of network services and applications wherever they need to reside.”
As users and things connect over a variety of different networks, the application layer is increasingly dispersed over a broad continuum of potential compute locations. Today's conventional enterprise network and security architectures were not designed for such a dynamic structure. Choices including private and public clouds, edge computing architectures, and multi-tenant edge clouds create complex environments for IT to manage. This complexity has often resulted in a patchwork of solutions that are as different as the various combinations of network access and compute locations themselves. This overly complex infrastructure foundation is unable to keep pace with the rapid change driven by digital transformation efforts within the enterprise.
ENTER THE EDGELESS ENTERPRISE
Designed to deliver unprecedented operational agility and efficiency within a scalable framework, the Edgeless Enterprise architecture relies on a cloud-native network operating system. It provides an all-in-one network service overlay that offers policy-based routing, QoS, and security segmentation functions. It also takes advantage of granular 5G network slicing principles to guarantee key service levels and a consistent application delivery experience.
Celona’s unique approach supports the convergence of radio access network (RAN), application, and network service traffic, automatically shifting the delivery route of services based on performance, policy requirements, and network paths' real-time health.
“Now organizations can begin moving away from the conventional network service framework towards a more agile, Microsoft Azure managed edge computing environment that brings essential network service functions closer to the real-time applications,” said Tad Brockway, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Azure for Operators. “With our collaboration with Celona, private mobile network services are effectively deployed next to business applications running on the same Azure edge platform for greater levels of operational efficiency and the ability to simultaneously automate the deployment of essential application and network resources with consistent cloud management.”
With Celona’s Edgeless Enterprise architecture, network services are effectively deployed as microservices next to business applications running on the same platform for greater levels of operational efficiency and the ability to simultaneously automate the allocation of essential application and network resources as demands change.
As the critical applications in the enterprise are deployed across a variety of on-premises, private, and public cloud options depending on their compute requirements, the traditional definition of the “Edge” no longer applies. With Celona’s Edgeless Enterprise architecture, the physical location or locations of the enterprise edge is now wherever it makes the most sense from a traffic optimization perspective. Determining the ideal deployment location of the network services depends on where latency/jitter-sensitive applications reside, how the application traffic should be routed for optimal performance and how security services should be enforced.
The use of SDN (Software Defined Networking) principles within the Celona platform allows for a separation of the 5G network control plane from the data plane. While the control plane manages higher-level functions such as mobility, authentication, and network resource management, the data plane performs traffic encryption, app-specific service level guarantees, enterprise network integration, and policy-based routing for each individual application slice.
Data plane tasks required to create QoS, routing, and security policy can be manually managed by IT staff or automated through AI to identify application traffic and apply network/security policy based on derived business intent. With Celona's patent-pending MicroSlicing™ technology, application traffic can be automatically identified, secured, and routed per slice and enterprise policy.
Interested parties can find out more by reviewing Celona’s whitepaper on the topic and joining Celona's upcoming industry webinar “Triple Header: Private 5G, Edge Compute and IoT” on May 26, 2021, at 9 am Pacific.
Celona Media Contact: Jay Nichols, Nichols Communications, jay@nicholscomm.com
Celona Company Contact: David Callisch, Celona, david.callisch@celona.io