With the release of its Magic Cloud Networking solution, Cloudflare now offers enterprises an “easy, secured, and expandable” method of connecting to and safeguarding their public cloud environments. To accelerate its entry into this new market, Cloudflare purchased the technology of Nefeli Networks, a multicloud networking (MCN) startup that offers a single network management layer for cloud infrastructure installations, therefore lowering the complexity of IT and DevOps teams.
Thanks to the integration of Nefeli’s technology with Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud, cloud network orchestration, and the scalability of a global network can now be combined on a single platform. This would put Cloudflare in a unique position to help organizations avoid public cloud lock-in while also aiding in locating, connecting, and defending any private or public cloud environment with ease.
Since most businesses these days rely in one way or another on large public cloud providers, setting up and maintaining cloud networking platforms by hand would be necessary to connect each virtual private cloud (VPC). Businesses may use multicloud networking to use multiple cloud environments and simply implement and manage security and connectivity rules across them. Nefeli’s solution offers a single pane of glass to automate and simplify this process, making it simpler for teams to supervise and apply changes to networking components.
“We believe the full potential of the cloud will only truly be unlocked when customers can easily mix and match the best features of each public cloud provider,” said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder at Cloudflare. “Adding Nefeli’s team and capabilities to Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud fast tracks our entrance into multicloud networking – enabling our customers to reduce the cost of managing multiple cloud providers as well as gain greater control, visibility, agility, and resiliency to get the most out of their cloud environments.”
Magic Cloud Networking, Secure Access Service Edge
Nefeli and Cloudflare began partnering during the Workers Launchpad program, which gave the Nefeli team the opportunity to investigate how the technologies might be scaled to better meet the needs of clients. To expedite Magic Cloud Networking’s development and deployment, Cloudflare purchased Nefeli’s staff and technology. Financial terms of this acquisition were not disclosed by Cloudflare.
“At Nefeli, we worked to ensure businesses could get the most out of the cloud, without being constrained by artificial boundaries within or between any particular cloud platform,” said Eugenia Corrales, CEO at Nefeli. “By seamlessly integrating Nefeli’s multicloud networking capabilities into Cloudflare’s robust platform, businesses will be now able to easily connect and manage their cloud infrastructure with security and performance built in at scale.”
“Since the early days of the Internet, complexity has been one of the biggest roadblocks to innovation,” added Dr. Scott Shenker, Co-founder and Chairman of Nefeli. “That’s why I’m thrilled to see this next chapter for Nefeli’s talented team – bringing simplicity and scalability together to revolutionize multicloud networking.”
To provide clients a uniform administration experience across their whole corporate network, including cloud and on-premises installations, Cloudflare is incorporating this technology into Cloudflare One, its all-inclusive SASE platform. Cloudflare’s comprehensive Zero Trust product portfolio, expansive global network backbone, and application & network security solutions are all combined into one unified platform that now includes Magic Cloud Networking, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) capabilities.
With more than 310 cities spread over more than 120 countries and connections to more than 13,000 networks worldwide, Cloudflare’s global network is one of the biggest and most integrated in the SASE industry, and Magic Cloud Networking would enable clients to take advantage of it. Magic Cloud Networking would make it possible for users to easily find, visualize, connect, and protect their cloud networking infrastructure.
