Colo-Connect Provides High Bandwidth, Secure Private App Access for Multicloud Enterprises

It seems like the sky is indeed the limit when it comes to the appetite for cloud across enterprises of all sizes (sorry, pun intended). And if the latest forecasts are any indication, this trend shows no sign of slowing down. It is also clear that multicloud is the preferred approach, offering organizations the agility and resiliency they need to transform and thrive in today’s digital world.

To improve the flexibility and performance of their multicloud environments, some large enterprises are also taking advantage of colocation centers and building “performance hubs.” Geographically distributed performance hubs are optimized to provide high bandwidth, low latency interconnects—or peering nodes—to a partner data center (International Business Exchange or IBX) and leading public cloud providers.

Performance hubs improve application performance for multicloud environments by allowing a company to directly connect through the IBX to cloud providers and other networks for reduced latency, increased resiliency, and high multigigabit throughput. However, delivering high-performing secure connectivity to multicloud apps through performance hubs introduces some rather unique challenges.

To support their hybrid workforces, multicloud organizations are rapidly deploying cloud-delivered security service edge (SSE) solutions that update private app access security around Zero Trust principles. However, most SSE solutions cannot scale to the performance demands of these performance hubs.

As a result, organizations must manually configure, deploy, and manage multiple connections to achieve multigigabit capacity. This manual bandwidth aggregation ultimately introduces additional complexity, increases operational overhead, and limits scale.

Organizations need a new solution designed with the performance hub in mind that delivers multigigabit secure private app access and alleviates the complexity of manually managing multiple connections.

Prisma Access Colo-Connect for Private App Access

Prisma® Access protects the hybrid workforce with the superior security of ZTNA 2.0 while providing exceptional user experiences from a simple, unified security product. Purpose-built in the cloud to secure at cloud scale, Prisma Access protects all application traffic with best-in-class capabilities while securing both access and data to dramatically reduce the risk of a data breach.

With the latest updates to Prisma Access, we are excited to introduce Colo-Connect, a new feature designed to overcome the challenges of securely connecting remote users and locations to private apps in hybrid multicloud networks.

Colo-Connect resets the bar for performance, operations, and resiliency in delivering secure access to private applications. The new Colo-Connect feature delivers market-leading high-performance throughput of up to 20 gigabits (Gbps) per hub, enabling high-bandwidth access to all private apps.

Prisma Access Colo-Connect high-level architecture

Designed to alleviate the complexity of managing and aggregating multiple connections to achieve high throughput, Colo-Connect leverages cloud-native interconnects with simplified onboarding and single-pane-of-glass management.

With Colo-Connect, customers can now get high bandwidth cross-connects between their network infrastructure/hub and Prisma Access to achieve Layer 2 or Layer 3 connectivity over a private transport. It also supports dynamic Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing to seamlessly exchange routing information to establish an optimal network path to the private apps.

Colo-Connect provides high-bandwidth private connectivity from data centers, cloud environments, and partner networks. What’s more, it is designed to be compatible with Software Defined Networks (SDNs), giving customers the opportunity to leverage Colo-Connect with existing deployments without requiring costly and time-consuming upgrades or reconfigurations.

Colo-Connect supports up to 10 bandwidth segments per interconnect and up to 20 Gbps throughput per region, providing the scale, performance, and flexibility required to secure access to all private apps across the most demanding hybrid multicloud environments.

In addition, Colo-Connect ensures high availability by supporting active/active and active/backup connectivity redundancy per region with a service level agreement (SLA) for availability when deployed according to published best practices.

With Prisma Access, customers get choice and flexibility for selecting the right solution for their private app access use cases, including service connections, ZTNA Connector, and now Colo-Connect. Moreover, organizations can combine all the connection methods for the utmost flexibility to tailor a solution to meet their needs.

Learn More

Check out the new Colo-Connect for yourself to learn how it can help simplify delivering the highest performing secure access to all your private apps through your performance hub.