AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure accounted for an estimated 58% of total cloud spend in Q1 2021 according to ParkMyCloud. Gartner has also predicted worldwide public cloud spend to grow 18% in 2021, with 70% of organizations using cloud to increase cloud spending in the wake of COVID-19.
Having established itself as an early leader in the market for cloud infrastructure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is still ahead of the pack. Amazon reported that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has generated a revenue of $15.3 billion for Q1 2021 – which exceeded analyst predictions of $13.1 billion. This is compared to $10.33 billion for Q1 2020. AWS revenue grew 32% in the quarter, accelerating from 28% growth in the fourth quarter, according to ParkMyCloud.
Businesses today make use of applications and services that live on-premises, in public clouds and even in edge data centres. As businesses bring on new technologies and solutions such as artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT at scale, the explosive growth of the digital business has brought new challenges, as data takes on its own gravity, becoming heavier, denser and more expensive to move.
The new AWS Direct Connect 100Gbps is designed to give users quick access to larger data sets while maintaining excellent availability, reliability and latency. As a result, users will be able to smoothly shift bandwidth-intensive workloads seamlessly – and break through the barriers posed by data gravity.
100Gbps Dedicated Connections at Selected Locations
As an AWS Direct Connect Delivery Partner, Epsilon is pleased to announce that AWS Direct Connect now provides private, high-bandwidth connectivity between AWS and our customers’ data centres, branch offices or colocation facility on the Epsilon platform.
Native 100Gbps connections provide higher bandwidth, without the operational overhead of managing multiple 10Gbps connections in a Link Aggregation Group. The increased capacity delivered by 100Gbps network connections is particularly beneficial to applications that transfer large-scale datasets. The 100Gbps dedicated connections are now available at these locations.
This is the first time AWS Direct Connect has offered 100Gbps dedicated connections to its customers. As a Direct Connect Delivery Partner, Epsilon helps customers to access AWS cloud at multiple 10G to 100G level through our global footprint and partner ecosystem.
A Fast & Secure Interconnections to AWS
Businesses across industries such as financial services , cybersecurity, broadcast media distribution, advanced driver assistance systems used for autonomous vehicles are dealing with huge volumes of data. These are driven by AI/ML, high power compute, financial modelling, hardware in loop and other high intense workloads that require low latency and secure transfer to AWS cloud.
This is where AWS Direct Connect 100Gbps plays an important role, along with worldwide interconnection to AWS Cloud via Epsilon’s private network, provide the necessary throughput and performance required by these customers.
With digital transformation fuelling the need for on-demand access to cloud-based services, deploying hybrid cloud infrastructure by directly and securely connecting to cloud service providers like AWS is becoming increasingly crucial for our global customers.
Epsilon is a long-time Direct Connect Partner supporting both dedicated connections and hosted connections using Epsilon’s Cloud Connect solution. With AWS Direct Connect, businesses can privately interconnect their customer-owned and managed infrastructure to AWS via Epsilon, reducing costs, increasing performance and delivering consistent reliability.
MACsec Security Is Now Added To AWS Direct Connect Connections
AWS Direct Connect now supports MACsec security (IEEE 802.1AE), giving you a new option for securing your data from when it leaves your network until it arrives at AWS.
With this new feature, Direct Connect delivers native, near line-rate, and point-to-point encryption for 10Gbps and 100Gbps links. Available at selected locations for dedicated connections, MACsec is a great option if you need a secured connection to AWS at the highest speed available.
What Is MACsec?
Media Access Control Security (MACsec) is an IEEE 802.1AE standard for encrypting packets travelling between two MACsec-capable Ethernet switches/routers.
In comparison to upper-layer protocols such as IPSec and TLS for instance, MACsec was originally designed as a hop-by-hop encryption technology. Frames are encrypted when they are sent on the wire and are decrypted by the next-hop device processing the frames.
Why Use MACsec With AWS Direct Connect?
Until now, securing data in transit between your network and AWS at multi-gigabit speeds required the aggregation of multiple IPsec VPN tunnels to work around the throughput limits of using a single VPN connection. The complexity of such a solution increases its operational risk and makes it less appealing to secure high-speed connectivity in excess of 10Gbps.
With the release of MACsec support, AWS Direct Connect now delivers native, near line-rate, point-to-point encryption for 10Gbps and 100Gbps Dedicated Connections, ensuring that data communications between AWS and your data centre, office, or colocation facility remain protected.
MACsec operates at layer 2 of the TCP/IP stack. This protects Ethernet connections while the two other protocols protect the upper layers of the stack. This has the following benefits:
Benefit 1: Layer 2 Confidentiality & Integrity
MACsec Layer 2 encryption and integrity protect ethernet links from threats, such as man in the middle snooping and passive wiretapping. MACsec allows you to secure an Ethernet link—including all control plane protocol packets (such as ARP, DHCP, LLDP, and Layer 3 routing protocols like BGP).
Benefit 2: High-Speed Encryption
MACsec can encrypt data faster, which results in greater speed. Because MACsec encryption is done through hardware (ASIC/PHY) it provides bi-directional line-rate, or near line-rate, encryption. In comparison, IPsec typically relies on a dedicated crypto engine or chip. These deliver a fraction of the overall throughput capabilities of the router or switch, as their performance is largely influenced by the packets size.
With the constantly growing amount of data transiting between on-premises data centres and the cloud, demand for Direct Connect bandwidth is outpacing the encryption rates that a traditional IPsec solution can support.
AWS customers in regulated industries, such as financial services or healthcare, and/or customers with high-bandwidth workloads that have strict security requirements, such as media production and autonomous vehicle development, tell us they are running into these limits more and more often.
