Cisco Security and Alkira

Alkira was founded in 2018 by Amir and Atif Khan, the visionary computer networking team that created the multi-billion-dollar SD-WAN market with the founding of Viptela. After Viptela was acquired by Cisco in 2017, it was time to look for another significant customer problem to solve. Storage and compute had evolved to be cloud-friendly and cloud-like, but the network had not, and so the idea of the network cloud was born. Alkira has reinvented networking for the cloud era by delivering the network cloud, the first global unified network infrastructure with on-demand hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity, integrated network and security services, end-to-end visibility, controls, and governance, all delivered as-a-service. “Alkira” is from the Australian Aboriginal for “blue sky,” and according to some sources, “a happy place in the sun.” We named our company with an awareness of a fresh start, coupled with real “blue sky” levels of innovation and vision. Our vision is nothing short of the complete reinvention of networking. A vision of a multi-cloud capable network that behaves like the cloud and is consumed as-a-service like the cloud. A network that can take you to and across clouds in minutes instead of months. A network where services, like firewalls, live and scale in the cloud. A network you draw instead of build. A network with end-to-end visibility and governance. A network delivered as a service.

Product Integrations

Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual has been validated to run on Alkira's platform from version 7.1 Cisco Secure Firewalls are integrated into the Alkira’s Network Services Marketplace allowing organizations to enforce rich set of uniform firewall security capabilities for the application traffic between on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud and Internet environments. The joint customers can continue to manage and operate the firewall security policy through the Cisco Secure Threat Defense Manager Center while Alkira takes care of the entire lifecycle management of the firewalls by: ○ Automating the provisioning in Alkira’s globally distributed points-of-presence (Alkira Cloud Exchange Points) ○ Symmetrically inserting the firewalls into any application traffic of interest in accordance with Alkira intent-based policy ○ Auto-scaling up and down the firewalling capacity based on the real-time demand.