Is MCNS Next Wave in the Cloud Market?

What is MCN or MCNS?

MCN stands for Multicloud Network and Gartner refers to this as Multicloud Networking Software (MCNS). It helps in design, deployment and operation of a network in multiple public cloud environments. For example, MCNS enable consistent networking policy, network security, governance via a single point of management. It provides capability to build a logical, software-defined, secure network to cloud applications across multiple clouds.

MCN market is small, but growing, from a revenue and customer perspective. Futuriom expects this to be the largest wave of investment in cloud networking to date. The market should eventually climb to tens of billions of dollars. https://bit.ly/3ggYoTV A few prominent vendors in MCNS market are Arrcus, Alkira, Arista, Aviatrix, Cisco, F5, Prosimo & Cohesive Networks etc.

Why do we need MCN or MCNS?

1. Autonomy - Public cloud providers don’t share data among different competing services of the same category like compute, storage, networking, or databases etc. In fact, cloud vendors lock customers into their infrastructure deliberately by making it complex and expensive to migrate. MCN is essential to avoiding vendor lock-in and to maintain autonomy over one’s infrastructure.
2. Networking technology - Most traditional networking technologies were built for client/server applications, in which an organization controlled hosting of the applications and network connectivity. But applications on cloud can be hosted anywhere and network data crosses many boundaries like cloud hosting providers, communications providers, and enterprise networks. Networking has been a hindrance in enabling rapid adoption of multicloud.
3. Superior security - Enterprises need a new type of networking software to control, secure, and manage the data on the networks crossing different boundaries, and an architecture that can connect disparate IT resources while at the same time maintaining control, visibility, and security over the network connections.
4. Low latency - Performance of apps deployed on cloud can be hindered by latency, which is the time taken for data to travel between the user and the app. To ensure optimal performance, businesses are turning to MCN solutions that offer low latency and high throughput.
5. High ROI - MCN will help organizations to take advantage of the unique capabilities of each cloud provider while still maintaining a consistent network infrastructure.

Key stakeholders in the MCN movement https://bit.ly/3Av8mHV

1. Public cloud infrastructure - PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS is ever expanding and public cloud players have been looking to extend their networking capabilities to extend to resources that aren’t as cloud friendly, such as the enterprise edge and IoT environments.
2. Datacenter and colocation facilities - If cloud apps and data are in the same datacenter, it’s easier to connect them inside the datacenter than it is to build discrete circuits to them. Therefore organizations are interested in leveraging datacenter and colocation providers for networking as well. 
3. Public and private wireless services - Futuriom research shows smart manufacturing, smart retail, computer vision, and edge analytics will drive demand for these high-bandwidth and low-latency edge services. The data gathered at the edge will be connected to cloud services and applications hosted in datacenters. This will drive demand for MCN solutions that can more rapidly and securely connect edge networking and wireless networks into cloud networks.

MCNS innovation is needed to introduce automated, software-defined ways to connect and control connectivity among ever growing number of cloud providers. As per a research from MarketsandMarkets? , MCN market will grow from USD 2.7 billion in 2022 to USD 7.6 billion by 2027, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.5% during the forecast period. https://bit.ly/3OnHmjn