Henry Wagner

Megaport Enhancing Connectivity in Adelaide

• Business

Adelaide, Australia is already known for great food, proximity to world-famous wineries, and a laidback lifestyle. But recently there has been an increased focus on business, with South Australia currently the fastest-growing economy of any Aussie state.

A Recap of the Megaport World Tour 2024

• Business

Throughout the last few months, the Megaport team has had the privilege of hosting the Megaport World Tour 2024.

Megaport Enhancing Connectivity in Canberra

• Cloud

As the demand for cloud services continues to grow, ensuring security, compliance, and reliability remains paramount, especially for government entities and affiliated sectors. Megaport is meeting these critical needs with its recently expanded network in Canberra, providing robust and secure connectivity options for such users.

AWS PrivateLink, Explained

• Networking , AWS , Partners

When it comes to AWS connectivity, there is no shortage of options available to customers. Some of these are fairly common, like Virtual Gateway (VGW) , Transit Gateway (TGW) , VPC (virtual private cloud) Peering , and Direct Connect (DX) .

High Availability With Palo Alto Networks and Megaport

• Partners , Networking

Architecting a network without operational resiliency would be like building a skyscraper without proper scaffolding. It might seem fine at first, but how will it survive over time or if there’s a severe weather event?

Your 2024 Tech Predictions From AWS re:Invent 2023

• Partners , AWS

With more than 52,000 attendees and 250 sessions, the energy in Las Vegas for AWS re:Invent 2023 was electric. The Megaport booth was busier than ever as we showcased our latest and greatest – standouts for the crowd were our automation, APIs, and showing you how to connect from any location on the Megaport network to AWS in a minute (yes, literally 60 seconds).

Introducing Megaport Internet

• News , Networking

In the ever-evolving digital realm, internet connectivity is the lifeblood of so many business operations. But when it comes to enterprise connectivity, traditional providers can be slow to deploy, providing unreliable connections that are difficult to manage.

Comparing Your Multicloud Connectivity Options

• Cloud

Multicloud has become the norm in digital infrastructure, but with it comes an uncharted set of challenges and considerations for IT teams. Oracle found that 98% of enterprises using public cloud have adopted a multicloud infrastructure provider strategy, which emphasizes that today, almost every enterprise cloud journey is a multicloud one.

What Are Cloud Centers of Excellence (CCoE), and Should You Have One?

• Cloud

For many organizations, unstructured and ungoverned cloud adoption is hindering growth and innovation. According to Gartner® , this is often “as a result of not only ‘shadow IT ’ adoption, but also business units moving faster to adopt cloud than central IT is ready to support.”¹

How Megaport is Investing In Our Planet

• ,

Founded in 1970, Earth Day has been going on for as long as many of us can remember. Since then, each year on April 22, more than a billion people celebrate the day and participate in a variety of activities to promote conservation and sustainability. This year’s theme is “Invest In Our Planet”: Here’s how we are doing just that.

Megaport Virtual Edge Upgrades Enable Palo Alto Networks Firewalls and More

• Updates , SD-WAN

Two years following its launch, Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE) has evolved into a market-leading Network Function Virtualization (NFV) service – meaning you can host and deploy virtual instances of network technologies like SD-WAN gateways, virtual routers, and Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) in minutes without physical equipment.

Is Cloud Storage Safe?

• Cloud

Cybersecurity breaches are becoming more frequent and advanced than ever before, and can result in the significant loss of both enterprises’ and their customers’ confidential data and money. Whether via the cloud or in a private data center, no storage method is guaranteed to be impenetrable.

How to Build a Cybersecurity Culture in Your Business

How do you maintain a healthy immune system? Not by living in continual fear of illness, or forever consulting doctors (although that may be comforting to some), but by pursuing wellness – fitness, nutrition, and physical and mental balance. Likewise, in business, the goal is not simply to be reactive—to keep responding to problems as they appear—but to proactively develop and execute strategies that prevent these problems from occurring in the first place. This is particularly important for IT and cybersecurity teams as, by the time a problem appears, it can often be too late. Is your business approaching IT with a cybercrime mindset, where problems are to be feared? Or with a security-first mindset, where you focus on integrating best practices for improving the safety of your data? In this blog, we examine how IT teams can cultivate security best practices throughout the wider business and facilitate a culture shift from reactive to proactive.

What’s New With Megaport’s Services

• Networking , Updates , Partners

From improving security to adding new Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE) functionality, Megaport has been hard at work enhancing our services and making them easier to use. Here are some recent changes that might affect you.

IaaS, NaaS, PaaS, and SaaS: How Are They Different?

• Cloud

Adoption of cloud has grown rapidly in the past several years. According to Gartner®, Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 20.7% to total $591.8 billion in 2023, up from $490.3 billion in 2022. What started out as a simpler choice between “on-premises” and “cloud” has expanded into countless offerings that serve various use cases.

How We’re Using AI and ML to Improve Cloud Management

• Tech

My retired father called me this week to ask if I’ve heard about ChatGPT. He was amazed at the capabilities of the application and asked me where this was headed. It was at this exact moment I knew artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) were entering a new phase. It wasn’t long ago that AI and ML were topics for science fiction, but in the first quarter of 2023, years of hard work and incremental breakthroughs have produced some of the most sophisticated software anyone has ever seen. Every major tech player is throwing their hat in the ring, from Facebook’s LLaMA to Google’s Bard looking to take on Open AI’s ChatGPT head-on.

Five DevOps Resources You Should Use in 2023

• Tech

Today’s businesses rely on a diverse range of applications, services, and digital infrastructure. To keep up in a competitive market while remaining agile and adaptable, industry leaders need to invest in practices and tools that can quickly and efficiently develop, test, and deploy new software and services.

MetTel and Megaport Enable High Performance Applications in the Cloud

• Cloud , Partners

Founded in 1996, MetTel started with a mission to broaden the variety of choice to optimized, end-to-end connectivity available to enterprises through partnering with the world’s leading telecommunications carriers and application providers.

How Quantum Computing Can Better Protect Your Data

• Cloud , Tech

News of data breaches and hacking attempts seems to happen daily. As hackers and the tools they use become better at breaking passwords and decrypting data, some have anticipated the increased threats that quantum computing solutions can provide and the opportunities of quantum encryption to address them. With companies embracing hybrid and fully remote working models, resulting in vast amounts of data being shared daily, companies are also interested in quantum’s potential to protect data in the cloud. Here is how we’re thinking about this emerging technology at Megaport.

AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud: The Big Three Compared

• Cloud

For any modern business, it’s no longer a question of whether you should investigate moving your high availability IT services to the cloud; rather, it’s a matter of which clouds you should be using, which service offerings, and how to strategically deploy them to accomplish your business goals. From scalable storage of data to the compute power needed to analyze and transform data, the cloud has become a core component in the way enterprises run their business with competitive advantage in mind.

A Guide to SD-WAN

• Networking , SD-WAN

Recent research by Forrester* found that for 1 in 3 IT decision-makers, software defined WAN (SD-WAN) is their top organizational priority in 2022 – but why are businesses excited by the technology?

3DS OUTSCALE uses Megaport to Unlock Cloud Potential

• Cloud , Partners

3DS OUTSCALE, a strategic partner and subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, was established to provide a local alternative to the major US-based cloud service providers.

How to Fix Poor Azure Latency

• Cloud , Networking

Companies don’t always get the most out of their cloud networks. There are times when need outpaces capacity and networks suffer latency issues. If you’ve found this blog, you likely already know how problematic poor latency can be for a business , and how its inefficiencies quickly translate into lost revenue. According to a recent report from Gartner, downtime costs companies, on average, $5,600 USD per minute – and unreliable latency is a key contributor. So, when network needs are outpacing network capacity, how can you keep up and avoid latency issues?

How to Fix Poor AWS Latency

• Cloud , Networking

In the modern business world, AWS is everywhere. An estimated 93 percent of businesses rely on AWS to some degree, while small- to mid-sized businesses claim to run 41 percent of significant workloads on the leading cloud platform.

3 Ways to Get a More Cost-Effective Network

• Networking

If left unchecked, public cloud costs can accumulate quickly and throw business budgets off course. A recent Gartner survey¹ found that 77 percent of enterprises have been “surprised” by incidents in which costs suddenly spiked; and in one third of respondents, surges went undetected for days, incurring costs of $100K and driving up cloud budgets by 10 percent or more.

Which SDCI Provider Is Right for You?

• SD-WAN

Software Defined Cloud Interconnection (SDCI) is becoming so popular that according to Gartner, “by the end of 2024, 30% of enterprises will use SDCI services to connect to public CSPs, which is an increase from fewer than 10% in 2020.”/*

VMware SD-WAN Now Available on Megaport Virtual Edge

• Partners , SD-WAN

Today we’re thrilled to announce the integration of VMware SD-WAN on MVE , our fifth global market-leading SD-WAN technology partner in our quest to transform the network edge. Our customers will be able to host virtual instances of their VMware SD-WAN edge routers on MVE, and deploy Megaport Virtual Edges directly from VMware SD-WAN Orchestrator to improve network connectivity at the edge in 24 metros worldwide.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP Aims to Make Cloud Migrations Easier

• Cloud

As one of the first cloud computing services, enterprise storage continues to be one of the most popular reasons to utilize the public cloud. Fifteen years ago, AWS S3 started the storage-as-a-service movement and has since grown into a multibillion-dollar business. It’s estimated that enterprise storage accounts to 15 to 20% of AWS’s annual revenue , nearing $10 billion USD a year .

How DXC Technology Uses Megaport to Connect DXC’s Australian Data Centers to the Cloud

• Cloud

In 2021’s global cloud-first landscape, being able to connect from almost anywhere has become critical to business survival. As cloud-native functions become more and more a part of core business, companies are turning to IT services or full-stack integrators to help them migrate and manage their cloud tech stack. But if you’re in a country like Australia, with geographically dispersed and limited network infrastructure, how can integrators ensure reliable cloud connectivity for these applications?

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Now Available on Megaport Virtual Edge

• Partners , SD-WAN

Today we’re happy to announce the integration of Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform on Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE). Aruba Networks is the latest global market-leading SD-WAN technology partner in our quest to transform and modernise edge networking. Our customers will be able to instantiate virtual Aruba EdgeConnect instances on MVE, and extend Aruba’s SD-WAN fabric to the very edge of Megaport’s global, private Software Defined Network (SDN), improving network performance in 22 metros worldwide.

Cloud Hubs or SDCI: Which Is the Best Private Connectivity Method?

• Cloud

In a recent blog, we looked at public versus private connectivity methods and the benefits of using private connectivity to get your enterprise to the cloud. Now, we’ll dive deeper into the two emergent private connectivity methods: cloud hubs and software-defined cloud interconnect (SDCI). What are the differences between these two connectivity methods? Which use cases do they best serve? And, ultimately, which one is better for your network?

A Guide to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with Oracle Cloud

• Partners

Processing and analyzing data have become far easier for businesses since Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) became more widely available thanks to the cloud. No longer necessarily classed as “emerging technologies”, AI and ML have become core solutions in enabling organizations to thrive in this digital era.

The Hidden Cost of Running Cloud-Hosted SD-WAN for IaaS

• SD-WAN

Many enterprises are executing a strategy of cloud migration first, followed by application modernization – including SD-WAN. Moving towards a cloud-native architecture using containerization, microservices, or serverless architectures like SD-WAN can lower costs over time, increase scalability, reduce development cycles, and speed up time to market.

Build Multicloud Networks for Business Continuity Using Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) Part 3

• Networking , Partners

Originally published on the Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture blog.

Rethinking IX’s Role in Optimal Network Performance

After over three decades of the internet’s existence, we should all know the benefits of internet peering by heart. Peering, a voluntary interconnection between separate networks to exchange traffic, allows you to spend less money on your IP transit, lower latency for your customers, and increase the throughput and peak bandwidth on your network at a fraction of the cost, while improving overall network resiliency. And yet, despite its place in internet history , peering is still under-documented as a vital part of a fully optimised network. Peering is one of the ways the major internet players including Akamai, Cloudflare, Google, and Microsoft—all Megaport partners or customers—deliver their services.

Build Multicloud Networks for Business Continuity Using Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) Part 2

• Networking , Partners

Originally published on the Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture blog.

How You Can Simplify Your Provisioning With NaaS

• Cloud

Connecting to Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) is a necessity in 2021. Companies are seeking to increase automation and innovation to improve increasingly globalized yet remote business operations. But many companies are just starting to come around to using Network as a Service (NaaS) to connect to the major CSPs.

3 Key Networking Questions to Answer for Your Cloud Customers

• Networking

With the rise of hybrid cloud and multicloud adoption and the increasing prevalence of edge data centres in rural areas to serve distributed applications from distributed locations, the enterprise networking that underlies cloud-based deployments such as object storage, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), and hyperconverged infrastructure has never been more complex. There’s resiliency and redundancy to consider, service-level agreements (SLAs), and of course, data protection and security.

Build Multicloud Networks for Business Continuity Using Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA)

• Networking , Partners

Originally published in Oracle’s Maximum Availability Architecture Blogs . No matter what size your business and no matter the industry, planning for unforeseen business interruptions is a must. Customer-impacting outages can result in significant revenue loss, regulatory penalties, and a tarnished brand image.

Automate Your Multicloud with the Megaport Terraform Provider

• Cloud

Many organizations on the cloud infrastructure journey quickly discover the need for tools to automate resources they create and manage. These tools make it easy to record the state of systems, maintain audit trails, and rapidly create consistent environments for testing or deployment purposes.

How SD-WAN Can Elevate Your Enterprise Networking

• SD-WAN

Before COVID-19, the Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) market was just beginning to mature. Now, with the home office just as prevalent as the work office, enterprise networking needs have changed. Connectivity needs to be fast, secure, and reliable, no matter where in the world employees connect from.

Is Your Cloud Data Secure? Three Questions You Can Ask Yourself

• Cloud

Earlier this month, a massive Microsoft Exchange email service hack shook the tech world. It affected thousands of organizations globally and induced the assembly of a huge US Government task force. CEO of cybersecurity firm TrustedSec David Kennedy called it “literally the largest hack I’ve seen in my fifteen years.”

Launching Megaport Virtual Edge with Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect

• Partners , SD-WAN

In August of last year, we announced the development of Megaport Virtual Edge (MVE) , our on-demand, vendor-neutral NFV hosting service, in collaboration with Cisco to enable MVE’s interoperability with Cisco SD-WAN ’s secure, cloud-scale architecture. Today, Cisco announced that MVE is now available on our global Software Defined Network (SDN), easily accessible via our portal , providing immediate support for branch-to-cloud and branch-to-branch connectivity to customers of Cisco SD-WAN and Megaport.

5 Reasons to Modernize and Software-Define Your MPLS Network

• SD-WAN

Enterprise WAN connectivity has quickly evolved beyond the use of traditional MPLS providers. With the rise of software-defined solutions like SDN and SD-WAN thanks to their cost benefits, flexibility, speed of deployment, and scalability, enterprises can now design a hybrid software-defined MPLS network that frees organizations from long-term contracts while improving network performance and reliability.

We Celebrate Megaport’s 5-Year (and Beyond) Employee Anniversaries

• Business

Through thick and through thin, these long-time Megaporters have been integral to our tremendous growth. Read what they have to say about their time at Megaport.

Case Study: A Leading Fuel Company’s Digital Transformation

• Networking

We often hear companies talk about their relentless focus on customer experience, but far fewer organizations turn that talk into action.

AWS re:Invent 2020 Recap – Announcements and Insights

• News , Partners

If there’s anything 2020 has taught us, it’s that it’s important to adapt to change. With remote working and changes to travel, as well as our interactions with each other at major events now virtual, AWS held nothing back by developing a multi-week jam-packed re:Invent 2020 conference held entirely online.

Understanding Private Connection SLAs for AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud

• Cloud

High availability solutions are a top priority when deploying network connectivity to resources critical to business success. With cloud deployments expected to continue to grow rapidly, understanding service-level agreements (SLAs) provided by the CSPs can help guide deployment decisions.

Understanding Private Connectivity Costs for AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud

• Cloud

Deciphering the costs for cloud services can be a daunting task, and connectivity is one component that is frequently not given the attention it deserves. Megaport customers have simple and scalable costs for private, on-demand connectivity to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In addition to these costs, you will have connectivity-associated costs charged directly by the cloud providers. Those costs will be based on the specific pricing models and options for the solution that you’re implementing.

Comparing Private Connectivity of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud

• Cloud

With the fast growing adoption of multicloud strategies, understanding the private connectivity models to these hyperscalers becomes increasingly important. Private connectivity can, in many cases, increase bandwidth throughput, reduce overall network costs, and provide a more predictable and stable network experience when compared to internet connections. So, whether it is time to spin up private connectivity to a new cloud service provider (CSP), or get rid of your ol’ internet VPN, this article can lend a helping hand in understanding the different connectivity models, vernacular, and components of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) private connectivity offerings.

Avoid Cloud Bill Shock with Azure ExpressRoute Local and Megaport

• Networking

Nobody likes bill shock, whether you are a parent getting the news that your child rented Frozen 17 times, or a CIO who promised her CEO that the cloud would reduce technology OPEX.

Become the Customer of your Cloud Vendors’ Dreams

• Business

You don’t have to look far to find blogs, ebooks, white papers and videos galore about what customers want from their cloud providers . But what about the other way around?

3 Ways to Improve Network Redundancy in the Cloud

• Business , Networking

Speed, agility, flexibility, scalability, cost efficiency. There are a lot of reasons to love cloud services .

3 Ways Dedicated Connectivity is Transforming Healthcare

• Business , Networking

Healthcare is a field built on innovation. From the discovery of new cures and the development of medicines to revolutionary new processes that transform how patient care is delivered, it’s an area in which meaningful steps forward translate into happier, healthier lives for people.

3 Ways Connectivity is Enabling a New Era of Finance Innovation

• Cloud , Networking

We’ve all seen the headlines. A new breed of agile Fintech innovator has turned the Financial Services industry on its head – creating powerful new digital services, tailored to the demands of today’s consumers. They’ve changed the industry, and now there’s no turning back.

Accessing Google Cloud APIs via Google Partner Interconnect and Megaport

• Networking , Tech

With the emergence of new and innovative cloud computing technologies, companies have the ability to drive digital transformation initiatives with completely different economics, pace, and scale.

Bringing the Cloud to the Edge in North America

• Networking , News

North America’s fastest growing cities will rely on the cloud to power businesses. Cisco predicts that by 2021, North America will generate the most cloud traffic out of the world’s regions with 7.7 Zettabytes produced. Thinking about the next-generation technologies that have become embedded in the business strategies of today – like Machine Learning, AI, IoT – it’s no wonder cloud computing is top of mind. In addition, hybrid cloud and multicloud are on the rise with businesses tapping into one or more cloud providers to access best-of-breed services that drive their everyday mission-critical workloads and fuel future strategy.

Achieving Network Redundancy with an Active/Active AWS Direct Connect Connection

• Tech

Your enterprise business probably operates all day, every day, so continuity and constant uptime are crucial for keeping everything running smoothly. Risking your business on a single link design could mean losing data, customers, and even revenue if your connection goes down.

Azure Berlin, Now Available with Megaport

• News

To say that we’re excited about this is an understatement. Germany has been such an interesting market for us, and we entered it in a relatively dramatic fashion. It was no easy feat building to the Azure German Cloud, as it required us to build and isolate the network to the other Azure cloud regions. It’s the first of its kind within the cloud industry and, in a classic demand-led expansion, Microsoft enabled this in response to their customers requests.

Q and A for Q-in-Q part 2

• Tech

Following our last post where we discussed the concept of stacked VLAN tags (Q-in-Q) , in this second part we will focus specifically on Microsoft Azure and the ExpressRoute product offering that brings direct connectivity into the Azure public cloud environment.

Q and A for Q-in-Q part 1

• Tech

What is VLAN tagging? There are two types of ports on network switches. Most vendors use terms such as “Trunk Port” and “Access Port” to differentiate them. Access ports define a port where a single VLAN ID is carried whereas Trunk ports carry traffic destined for multiple VLANs. Trunk Ports require a policy to determine which traffic is to be sent within which VLAN identifier. For these purposes, a technical standard defining VLAN tagging 802.1q was developed. These VLAN tags contains information such as VLAN ID and other information that is specified by the 802.1q standard.

We’re super excited to officially announce the Megaport Reseller Program!

• News

The Megaport Reseller Partner Program provides partners with extended coverage between data centers and cloud services and delivers a flexible, scalable experience for your end customers. As a Megaport Reseller Partner, you can establish multiple ports and services on behalf of your end customers and manage multiple virtual connections back to any service provider on the fabric.

API Highlight: Ordering

• News , Tech

In this post we’ll look at the process for systematically ordering services using the Megaport API. Currently there are four service types which can be ordered, three are widely available and the fourth is limited to partners.

API Highlight: Introduction

• News , Tech

Architecture The software stack was designed to be modular, allowing us to easily add and remove layers while maintaining a consistent customer experience. One of the key points here for the technical team was to add a layer of abstraction between the network equipment and the management software. Initially this means we’re not locked in to a specific vendor but longer term it means that even moving to a new technology like OpenFlow can be achieved by adding a new module at the Agents layer while the rest of the stack remains the same. As can be seen in the stack, the Megaportal and our phone apps are all dependent on the RESTful API to talk to our backend systems. The intention here is that we use the same interface and mechanisms internally that we expose to customers.

A brief history of Fibre Optics

• Networking

While fibre technology has become ubiquitous in today’s modern telecommunications networks, did you know that fibre optic technology has been around for a very long time and is quite simple in concept. Glass dates back to around 3000BC and the Romans were drawing glass into fibre as early as 27BC. So while fibre has become an everyday technology ranging from medical to telecommunications to entertainment applications, you can see from its history that fibre has come a very long way in a very short time.