Organisations need scalable infrastructure to take advantage of SaaS-based solutions

Since its launch in public domain on April 30, 1993, the World Wide Web or web has grown to penetrate every organisation on the planet. The system of hyper-linked web pages that make up the web has become the primary method by which most people use the Internet and frankly would have a hard time living without.

However, for organisations in particular, the Internet itself is leveraged to access the cloud-based solutions that are driving digital transformation across sectors. Indeed, 59% of the tech buyers polled by IDG’s 2020 Cloud Computing Survey plan to be “mostly” or “all” in the cloud in 18 months, up from 38% who say they are mostly or all in the cloud today.

To facilitate the SaaS transition and reap the full benefits, organisations need a network that can handle the growing demands of the cloud.

Core business applications were rapidly transitioning to SaaS-based solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, Zoom, Slack and other vertical-specific applications even before the pandemic. The shutdowns of the past year have accelerated this transition and driven home the benefits that SaaS-based solutions have on enabling infrastructure to scale for fast and reliable remote accessibility.

When it comes to these mission-critical applications, performance matters. Slow network connections and latency have an immediate and ongoing impact on productivity. To facilitate the SaaS transition and reap the full benefits, organisations need a network that can handle the growing demands of the cloud.

In today’s world of distributed environments, a site-centric approach that backhauls DNS/DHCP requests can hamper reliability and dilute the end user experience. Organisations with this type of infrastructure need comprehensive core network services that can support the unique needs of the distributed enterprise.

Slow network connections and latency have an immediate and ongoing impact on productivity.

To facilitate this transition, Infoblox developed BloxOne DDI, a cloud-managed DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management solution that provides SaaS optimization and distributed survivability without compromising on total economic impact. BloxOne enables the transition to cloud in following ways:

• Centralised administration and enterprise integration: BloxOne DDI centralises cloud-based provisioning, administration and control, simplifying the management of multiple sites. Providing consolidated views and template-based provisioning to ensure consistency across all locations.
• Optimisation for SaaS and cloud-based applications: Datacentre DNS typically resolves and directs traffic through the closest Point-of-Presence, PoP, rather than the one closest to the requesting user’s location or site. This results in higher latency and slower application response times. BloxOne DDI provides local DDI services that ensure applications perform more efficiently, vastly improving the end-user experience.
• Local survivability and resiliency: In backhaul architectures, a disaster affecting the link to the data center will disrupt all applications and services for dependent sites and locations, including DNS/DHCP. With BloxOne DDI Direct Internet Access, DIA, remote sites are no longer dependent on their data center for key services, meaning that local access and services remain unaffected.

When Tim Berners-Lee utilised the Internet to launch the web in the public domain 27 years ago, he could not have foreseen the broadscale adoption and use of either, or the software-based reality of the world today.

Organisations seeking to take advantage of the increased convenience and productivity that SaaS-based solutions offer need an infrastructure that is as flexible and scalable as the web itself. With SaaS-delivered DDI, these organisations can take a simple, but fundamental approach towards their transition to the cloud that will help deliver and assure the distributed services users’ demand.

The shutdowns of the past year have driven home the benefits that SaaS-based solutions have on enabling infrastructure to scale for fast and reliable remote accessibility, writes Rod Dixon of Infoblox.