Optimizing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure through Interconnection

Editor's Notes

1. The public internet is an amazing thing, which has changed all our lives over the last 20-25 years. It was designed to be ubiquitous and resilient. But it is optimized for the providers operating the service. This includes a lot things we never think of: traffic exchanged between providers and how much they commit contractually to each other; what capacity is available for the necessary, underlying transport services, whether to route packets as directly as possible to the destination network or to route as cheaply as possible. But the public internet was not designed for all the ways we use the cloud. Routing all customers packets together has inherent security questions. While it is great for a single-user getting to an SaaS application, the typical corporate IP service is not implemented to move large amounts of data to public cloud. Aside from available throughput, it’s impossible to achieve high-speed and consistent latency since the internet is based on transmission across multiple networks, where the loads vary based on shared capacity. Lastly, based on all these reasons, using an IP service may add up to a lot of avoidable costs. Traffic exchange and contract commitments Capacity availability for underlying transport Fewest “network hops” to destination varies by ISP
2. - before HOW, let’s talk GROWING IMPORTANCE - recognized by leading IT analysts like Gartner - Gartner’s 2017 surveys - 1/3rd of enterprise say cloud networking is Top 3 challenge - READ 2nd bullet point - investment in SOA + Middleware + application messaging -  servers communicating with services, not what internet was designed for - Gartner 2018 prediction: rg’s connecting to cloud providers using other than internet to grow SIX TIMEs
3. Now that we understand cloud interconnection, and know that it’s important … what do you use it for? What are some examples where cloud interconnection plays a critical role in making a move to the cloud successful? I have examples from three Equinix customers. A publisher, HarperCollins, used interconnection to ensure data migration went smoothly, and ensured application performance was acceptable for their end-users because their chosen cloud providers server farm was over 300 miles away in separate country. Cloud interconnection addressed both performance and security concerns! Foursquare, a social media provider, relied on cloud interconnection to make their analytics project successful. A public CSP was the perfect solution for their operations supporting 55 Million average monthly users whose most popular locations range from Atlanta Hartsfield Airport to Istanbul Turkey. But they decided their big data & BI analytics was operated more cost effectively on private infrastructure. Using cloud interconnection to move massive datasets from the public cloud to private infrastructure, Foursquare solved performance issues which kept them from completing jobs on a timely basis, while dramatically reduced their costs. Hathaway Dinwiddie is a global construction management firm specializing in large projects. The company used cloud interconnection to ensure the success of the BC/DR strategy while optimizing performance of key applications which include 3D modeling on VDI hosts. I have an interesting set of starts to share on a BC/DR example later in my presentation.
4. I explained a moment ago that Cloud Interconnection is when the enterprise connects directly to the cloud provider’s network or uses a dedicated connection from a network partner. I will go into more detail on exactly HOW this is done, but I first want to emphasize its GROWING IMPORTANCE. And specifically, that leading IT Analysts recognize its growing importance. Gartner’s surveys show them that more than 1/3rd of enterprises put cloud networking as a top 3 challenge. Their studies showed them a big part of this was that (and I am going to read here) “vertical-specific, mission-critical applications running in the cloud provider’s data centers interact and interoperate with other applications that reside in the customer's data centers or a different provider's cloud data centers.” Forester’s surveys show them that nearly 90% of enterprises are using two or more public cloud vendors. Further, over 60% are using cloud interconnection to solve challenges with cloud use. Look at the sample here: vast majority using two or more clouds, and the majority of those are using cloud interconnection WITH expectation that will be nearly 80% in 2018.
5. Now I have to stress, it is not abstract concept that analysts talk about or something a few leading edge companies are adopting. It is a standard part of enterprise cloud architecture and at Equinix we see it at work globally. In fact, it is growing incredibly quickly and today there are more than 10,000 private connections supported at Equinix around the world. We do this with end-customers who have operations in our data centers and connecting directly to their provider of choices; we enable those same customers to reach multiple cloud providers through a single physical connection on Equinix Cloud Exchange; and we enable them to work with their network partners to connect in highly scalable fashion. In fact, nearly 40% of the dedicated connections are through network service providers.
6. - 10,000+ private connections is impressive, why else would Oracle partner with Equinix? - world’s leader in interconnection and data centers, - over $4 billiion in revenue. - more customers in more locations than any of our competitors. - 190 data centers, in 48 metro centers in 24 different countries, - #1 or #2 provider in half those markets! - over 600 sales, pre-sales engineering and architecture professionals. - nearly a third of our customer base are enterprise customers, which is our fastest growing segment.
7. Why is the enterprise segment our fastest growing? Beyond Cloud Interconnection, but we work with enterprises to transform their network performance and cost structure through an Interconnection Oriented Architecture strategy. Under traditional enterprise connectivity, application operations and data storage tend to be centralized and inflexible. The network routing and provisioning are done through traditional methods. There are limited options for interconnection to all sort of business partners. With an IOA Strategy, an enterprise establishes digital edge deployments and optimizes its network topology. This ensures global reach and interconnection to Clouds, so that the enterprise can distribute its applications, analytics and database improvements to improve user performance with closer connections. So after working with Equinix, the enterprise network architecture is dramatically transformed with dramatic results. Traditional Enterprise Connectivity Monolithic application operations & data storage Traditional network routing & provisioning Limited options for Interconnection Transform with Platform Equinix™ and IOA strategy Establish digital edge deployments Optimize network topology Ensure global reach and interconnect to Clouds Distribute apps, analytics and database improvements Improve user performance with closer connections
8. We have worked with a number of customers across a variety of industries to benchmark real world results. A engineering & construction firm working to improve the experience for and productivity of its globally distributed end-users. The customer was able to increase its bandwidth per employee by 150% while reducing their costs 25%... 2 ½ times at 75% of the cost. Not only did they lower their costs, they achieved a 38% reduction in application latency to help their global collaboration workflow. A Fortune 250 Insurance and Investment company worked with us to improve its network cost structure. Their legacy architecture had the worst of both worlds, with uncontrollable costs and inflexible provisioning. After we helped them optimize their network topology optimization, they achieved a 45% reduction in bandwidth operation cost per employee AND a 40% reduction in latency for their customer facing costs. A media company specializing in weather forecasts was challenged running its highly complex computer models in the cloud due to inefficient multicloud access that had security concerns. By implementing a multicloud strategy with Equinix, they not only reduced their cloud connectivity costs 30%, but the improved access enabled them to implement a hybrid cloud model with saved them $8 million in annual operating costs. We also helped a multinational conglomerate with an interconnection strategy to enable access to its data for real-time analytics that were not possible in a monolithic architecture. By distributing their analytics, they reduced latency to the applications by 25% and the operating cost per app by 50%. So there are a lot of ways we work with our customers to improve performance and costs, in a lot of different ways that can be very specific to their people, locations, clouds and data. But with that groundwork laid, I want to turn and focus on cloud interconnection.
9. Storyboard: Thank you for taking the time to meet with us/me today. We are very excited to share the Global Interconnection Index with you. Really, what we are talking about… 1. Read title to audience 2. Read subtitle to audience Spend 60 seconds on this slide
10. In today’s global, digital economy, success requires a close alignment between business strategy and technical infrastructure, and the cornerstone is Interconnection. An Interconnection-first approach takes advantage of a globally-dispersed computing, networking and storage architecture—a digital edge—that is scalable, resilient, low-latency, cost-effective and secure. The Global Interconnection Index is a new global baseline to track, measure and forecast the growth in the Interconnection Bandwidth required for direct traffic exchanges, which enable private Interconnections between companies supporting digital business. Specifically, the Index provides detailed trends, insights and implications of Interconnection Bandwidth adoption by geography, use case and industry. Business leaders can leverage the Index to understand the use cases and speed at which their industry peers are building Interconnection architectures, and to inform their own strategy to remain competitive in the digital transformation race.
11. Storyboard: 1. “We also saw how Interconnection is accelerating in a cross-section of industry segments” 2. Read top three industry segments: Banking & Insurance, Telecommunications, Cloud & IT Services with the associated insights to the right Spend 90 seconds on this slide
12. Cloud Exchange is optimized for connectivity to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The classic scenario, is that private infrastructure in an Equinix data center, connects to the ECX fabric at minimal cost, then provisions circuits to OCI FastConnect to support individual workloads. Example: hybrid cloud leveraging OCI x86 servers for webserving while maintain application logic and database on private infrastructure. The customer maintains a persistent circuit to OCI for integration of the hybrid application. Periodically, the customer backs up the database to an Oracle PaaS service, say once a week. In this case, the customer provisions the circuit at the time they need it for the workload, then deinstalls it once the backup is complete. Separately, the customer may run a monthly set of analytics against the dataset using an OCI compute service. Similarly, the customer provisions the circuit at the time they need to upload the dataset for the OCI compute analysis to against and then deinstalls once the analytics output is received). In this example, the customer pays for one circuit the entire month, then pays for the second circuit only for the 4 days its used that month, and lasty pays for the third circuit on the one day it is used that month. This is a flexible, scalable service enabling customers to leverage OCI without paying for unnused connectivity. But you do not have to have infrastructure collocated at Equinix to use ECX Fabric to reach OCI FastConnect. A customer can continue operating in its on-premise data center and use a network service provider partners to reach ECX Fabric, and from that point use ECX in the same manner. FastConnect is available in six metro areas around the world, each in proximity to an Oracle Cloud regional datacenter.
13. I want to re-emphasize the benefits of OCI FastConnect because of the difference it makes for the Oracle Cloud. It makes it better by providing consistent network performance and lower latency than an internet/VPN connection It makes it cheaper because Oracle discounts the data transfer costs over those associated with an internet/VPN connection. It make it faster because connections can be deployed with automated, near real-time provisioning. And it makes it easier, because multiple virtual connections can be provided through a single physical link. Many Oracle customers have told us that they need multicloud connectivity so FastConnect over ECX should be discussed with customers. FastConnect location availability is changing monthly. Please check with the Oracle Global Alliance team for updates.
14. Let me share with you some specific benchmarking to demonstrate how big the impact of FastConnect is. We did benchmarking of a data backup & recovery service via FastConnect versus public internet, with a very typical enterprise test case. OCI FastConnect enabled us to increase network through 10-15 times that possible with the public internet. And with that throughput, backup & restore times were reduced 80-90%. That’s an incredible performance impact for backups. And it’s an incredible business impact, when you need to perform data recovery.
15. Equinix can help you realize benefits like this throughout North America. You can do this by colocating an application with us, deploying an Interconnection Oriented Architecture strategy, or by leveraging a network service provider partner. I am showing a few logos from some of the largest partners here, but we literally have dozens and dozens in every metro area and well over 100 in our Washington DC campus. Our Global Solutions Architects are glad to discuss your specific requirements, current and potential partners and help determine the best way to interconnect to OCI.
16. And you can do that not only in North America, but around the world. OCI FastConnect is deployed in Washington DC and Frankfurt Germany; OCI FastConnect is deployed in Chicago, Washington DC, Amsterdam, London and Sydney. On October 23rd, we issued a press release announcing the OCI FastConnect deployment in Frankfurt. In addition, we announced Remote Connection capability on ECX Fabric. Equinix customers using ECX Fabric outside of Washington DC and Frankfurt, can provision virtual circuits to OCI FastConnect in 8 additional metros in North America and 7 additional metros in Europe. So interconnection to OCI FastConnect is available via ECX Fabric in many more markets than just Washington DC and Frankfurt.
17. The public internet is an amazing thing, which has changed all our lives over the last 20-25 years. It was designed to be ubiquitous and resilient. But it is optimized for the providers operating the service. This includes a lot things we never think of: traffic exchanged between providers and how much they commit contractually to each other; what capacity is available for the necessary, underlying transport services, whether to route packets as directly as possible to the destination network or to route as cheaply as possible. But the public internet was not designed for all the ways we use the cloud. Routing all customers packets together has inherent security questions. While it is great for a single-user getting to an SaaS application, the typical corporate IP service is not implemented to move large amounts of data to public cloud. Aside from available throughput, it’s impossible to achieve high-speed and consistent latency since the internet is based on transmission across multiple networks, where the loads vary based on shared capacity. Lastly, based on all these reasons, using an IP service may add up to a lot of avoidable costs. Traffic exchange and contract commitments Capacity availability for underlying transport Fewest “network hops” to destination varies by ISP
18. Thank you all for your time and attention this morning. I hope the topic of interconnection and its business impact was helpful to you. To learn more, we would love for you to stop by our kiosk right outside anytime today. Alternatively, we’d be very happy for you to confer with one of our Solutions Architects or email us at Info.Oracle@equinix.com. If you prefer a little more research first, we have two great online resources for you. First, we maintain an IOA Knowledge Base built on the lessons and shared knowledge of our enterprise customers who have implemented an Interconnection Oriented Architecture strategy. You can register and review that free of charge at www.ioakb.com.