The Death of Network Hardware Appliances

Cloud migration has proven to be an effective strategy for reducing infrastructure costs, improving the availability of data and applications, and increasing operational agility. However, this migration rarely happens in one fell swoop. Many large organizations find themselves with a complex mixture of multi-cloud and on-premise infrastructure:

This type of hybrid infrastructure is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does introduce complications. Specifically, it creates situations where various networking functions — such DDoS mitigation, load balancing, firewall, and VPN — remain on-premise.

Legacy network hardware appliances aren’t up to the task of securing and accelerating critical infrastructure in a cloud-focused world. They’ve always been a hassle — an expensive, often unruly, mess of equipment strung together with spider webs of cables. Once you add the cloud to the picture, security gaps, performance penalties, and additional support challenges quickly emerge.