One Cloud vs Multicloud

Digital transformation takes many forms, but none has been more globally adopted than multicloud. According to the recent Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report, over 90% of enterprises are currently using multiple clouds. These companies are using various cloud platforms for different applications or across a single application based on their respective capabilities and strengths, and to gain greater agility and scalability when consuming cloud services.[i]

However, even enterprises adopting “cloud first” strategies are not moving all of their data and applications to the cloud. The Flexera report notes that businesses still face some challenges moving legacy on-premise applications to the cloud, with the top three being application dependencies, technical feasibility and a customer’s total cost of ownership (TCO) for on-premises versus cloud costs. This is especially true for multinational organizations that need to cross geographies to deploy their hybrid multicloud solutions.

The good news is today’s global IT organizations can leverage innovative software-defined interconnection solutions to access mission-critical digital services, such as Oracle® Autonomous Database and Oracle Exadata Database Cloud Service on Oracle Cloud without deploying additional hardware. They can leverage other cloud database and application services while maintaining private data and applications on-premise for security or compliance reasons. By harnessing the power of virtual networking, businesses can speed time to cloud connectivity, making it easy to integrate physical on-premises infrastructures with multicloud agility and scalability on-demand.

The best of both worlds: Equinix and Oracle integrate physical and virtual IT

Equinix offers a range of physical and virtual interconnection solutions that provide the proximate and private connectivity necessary to build integrated physical and virtual IT infrastructures. As a Platinum-level member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, Equinix provides access to Oracle Cloud via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect with Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric™ (ECX Fabric™) in Equinix data centers located in more than 45 metros across five continents. Equinix also recently announced the expansion of ECX Fabric and Network Edge across EMEA.

ECX Fabric is a software-defined interconnection solution that connects multiple clouds over high-speed, low-latency, virtualized connections. Together, Equinix and Oracle offer direct, highly secure connectivity to Oracle Cloud – bypassing the public internet – in more geographies than any other provider. Using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect and ECX Fabric, our global customers are able to securely exchange application and Oracle database workloads between on-premise infrastructure and Cloud Service Providers faster than the public internet or virtual private networks (VPNs).

For example, Oracle Databases  running on Oracle Exadata Database Machine either can sit next to cloud providers in a cloud adjacent architecture or be accessed as an Oracle Cloud service. This provides businesses with the best of both worlds – a choice of infrastructures for their database with the elasticity of cloud for their applications.  Oracle Autonomous Database, can be integrated into a hybrid multicloud infrastructure via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect and ECX Fabric either using Equinix Performance Hub™ to leverage a physical network device or Network Edge to harness a virtual network device within an Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center.

Turning up virtual networking for multicloud acceleration

Using Network Edge services from Equinix, businesses can gain direct access to an array of network functions virtualization (NFV) providers and their services worldwide on Platform Equinix. Network Edge with ECX Fabric also enables businesses to interconnect to, or between multiple, cloud providers at the edge in minutes with no additional hardware requirements. Network Edge services provides fast provisioning for NFV capabilities from leading vendors such as Cisco, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks/CloudGenix, VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud and Versa Networks.

Once you’ve deployed an edge instance of an NFV device, you can access Oracle Cloud on ECX Fabric via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect, as well as other cloud platforms via ECX Fabric software-defined interconnection.

This solution enables you to leverage hybrid multicloud infrastructures to deploy multi-tiered applications across different cloud providers with the lowest possible latency for the highest performance. For example, let’s consider an e-commerce provider’s database migration use case shown in the diagram below. The company leveraged Network Edge services to deploy a Cisco virtual router in London for cloud-to-cloud routing between its AWS deployment in Dublin, without purchasing any new networking hardware. The company then easily migrated its application workloads from AWS Dublin to AWS London, placing them adjacent to the Oracle Autonomous Database to benefit from the lowest possible latency and performance. The company’s production applications running on AWS now access the Oracle Autonomous Database on Oracle Cloud over a fast, low-latency virtual network connection.

Production Database Migration Using Network Edge Cloud-to-Cloud Routing

Deploying hybrid multicloud disaster recovery on the fly

In another customer scenario, an online travel booking service wanted to quickly deploy a disaster recovery (DR) site in Amsterdam to replicate its production operations in Frankfurt. The company was running a multicloud infrastructure in Frankfurt for its production applications, leveraging an Equinix Performance Hub with cross connects to Google Cloud Platform Frankfurt for its applications and to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Frankfurt for its Oracle Database. The company wanted to run a proof-of-concept for backing up its database in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Amsterdam site, but it did not want to deploy another physical router to connect between the two Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Center Regions. Using Network Edge services, the company can easily deploy a Cisco virtual router in Amsterdam in just minutes and connect to the Oracle Cloud via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect and ECX Fabric to exchange data with the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Center Region in Frankfurt.

Disaster Recovery Proof-of-Concept Using Network Edge Virtual Cloud-to-Cloud Routing

These two customer scenarios demonstrate the range of physical and virtual interconnection choices that Equinix and Oracle customers have when architecting hybrid multicloud infrastructures on Platform Equinix. They also show how fast and easy it is to deploy Oracle Cloud instances in different locations with Network Edge and ECX Fabric and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect. These solutions deliver low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity between applications and high-performance Oracle Databases to businesses around the world.

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You can also see how easy it is to connect to Oracle Cloud on Platform Equinix:

[i] Flexera, “2020 State of the Cloud Report,” 2020.