What is our primary use case?
Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) provides us with frictionless multi-cloud and hybrid cloud connectivity, eliminating the need to engineer discrete and manual IPsec tunnels and BGP routing tables between our on-premises data center and AWS. It serves as a central hub between the cloud to instantly build a global distributed network where all clouds and physical data centers are connected in a single unified backbone, which is the major feature and use case for using Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX).
Additionally, it provides us with excellent security, automated security, and firewall as a service, which is the biggest driver for our adoption of Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX). We inject security into the network and cloud traffic flows, rather than provisioning and scaling virtual firewalls in every cloud region. It helps us automatically spin up firewall routes, routing the necessary traffic through them for inspection, and it also aids in end-to-end network segmentation and instant micro-segmentation, enabling us to easily isolate traffic to ensure that any newly acquired network can only reach specific shared applications or that production data is completely separated from the development environment across all providers.
Deploying Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) in our environment was easy, and we did not encounter any challenges or problems.
What is most valuable?
The features of Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) that stand out to me include the Design Canvas, which helps us visualize the interface and turn complex network tasks into a drag-and-drop exercise, improving timelines and entirely removing the need to write code, subsequently reducing costs, manual labor, risks, and work. I also value the micro-segmentation ability, which allows us to easily isolate traffic, ensuring that third-party contractor networks can only access specific testing servers and nothing else.
Real-time monitoring is another favorite of mine, as it helps us troubleshoot with a dashboard that shows exactly where network bottlenecks or security threats are occurring globally. Lastly, the automated disaster recovery feature helps us achieve built-in enterprise resiliency by automating traffic rerouting when a specific cloud region goes offline, which aids users from specific regions as load balancers perform the rerouting.
Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) has positively impacted my organization with significant returns on investment driven by a massive reduction in provisioning time, hardware enumeration, and labor optimization. The accelerated time to market has increased our ability to launch new products or integrate acquisitions by 80%, and provisioning speed has improved by 96%, reducing the traditional month-long planning and routing down to less than a day. The time staff physically spent configuring new cloud networks has decreased by 85%. We have seen project scale increase by 300% without delays, and by moving to a centralized cloud-native routing and security fabric, we eliminated the redundant physical and virtual hardware across different cloud providers, decreasing the total number of network devices by 44% and achieving a 73% reduction in firewalls.
What needs improvement?
I feel that the user interface of Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) can be more user-friendly. I would like to see a user refresh and an improved site feel in the user interface.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) for the last two and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) is definitely a scalable solution that does not lag, crash, or present any problems as we scale up or down.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) has been very good; they have solved our queries within minutes. I would rate customer support highly based on my favorable experiences.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not previously use a different solution before adopting Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX).
How was the initial setup?
The configuration process was straightforward; we did not run into any challenges and were able to configure the services into our platform very easily, taking no more than four hours due to its quality as a service.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) were really transparent, especially since we obtained the solution via AWS Marketplace, making billing and the consumption model focused on our enterprise cloud networking financials instead of massive upfront capital expenditures.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX), we conducted thorough research and evaluated multiple products, including Aviatrix, Prosimo, and Megaport, ultimately deciding on Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX).
What other advice do I have?
Everything is working as expected with Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX), and I do not see anything that needs to change. I rate this solution a 5 out of 5.
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
