Best Network as a Service (NaaS) Platforms

Aviatrix builds cloud networking and security, and its current positioning centres on validated containment architectures for artificial intelligence platforms, offered as designs a customer deploys rather than assembles. Shipping an architecture rather than only components is a considered response to how these projects fail.

Containment is the security concept underneath. Rather than assuming a compromise can be prevented, containment limits what an attacker reaches once inside, which for a cloud environment means controlling which workloads can talk to which rather than defending a perimeter that does not exist.

Applying that to AI platforms is topical for a real reason. An AI workload typically holds access to a great deal of data by design, so a compromised model serving environment is a considerably worse outcome than a compromised web server, and the blast radius question becomes central.

Cloud networking is where Aviatrix started and it remains the foundation. Each cloud provider implements networking differently, and a team running workloads in more than one either learns three models or adopts a layer that presents one, which is the same argument that sustains this entire category and shows no sign of weakening. No pricing is published.

Aryaka delivers unified secure access service edge as a service, framing the offering as a journey to modernise, optimise and transform a corporate network. The as a service part is what distinguishes it from vendors selling the same architecture as equipment and software to operate.

Secure access service edge combines networking and security into one delivered layer, on the reasoning that they became the same problem once applications moved to the cloud and staff stopped sitting in offices. Routing traffic to a data centre to be inspected made sense when both the users and the applications were there.

Delivering it as a managed service rather than a product is the meaningful commercial choice. Most organisations lack a team that can operate a global network and a security stack competently around the clock, and buying the outcome rather than the components is a rational answer to that shortage.

The trade is control and visibility. A managed service means somebody else holds the configuration and the diagnostics, so response times and change processes belong in the contract rather than being assumed. Aryaka links to plans on its products page but publishes no rates, so the service level terms deserve as much scrutiny during procurement as the technical capability does.

Console Connect, from PCCW Global, is a software defined interconnection platform for private connectivity between clouds, data centres and networks. It cites analyst support for software defined cloud interconnection as the direction for private cloud connectivity generally.

The commercial detail worth noting is that pricing sits behind account creation rather than a sales conversation. Creating an account gives access to a pricing calculator, which is a middle position between publishing rates openly and requiring a call, and it lets an engineer scope a design without involving procurement.

Being carrier owned is the structural difference from platform only competitors. PCCW Global operates network infrastructure itself, so the platform is selling access to its own reach rather than orchestrating connections across other people's, which matters for coverage in Asia particularly.

The category exists because cloud adoption made every enterprise a network operator whether it intended to be or not. Workloads sit in several clouds and several locations, they need to reach each other privately, and assembling that from individual carrier contracts is the slow, repetitive work these platforms exist to remove.

Megaport provides private network connections on demand between data centres, cloud providers and service providers, with published starting rates for each connection type. Private connectivity that can be provisioned in minutes rather than procured over months is the whole proposition.

The traditional alternative explains why it exists. A private circuit between a data centre and a cloud provider was a contract negotiation, a physical installation and a lead time measured in months, and once it existed it was fixed capacity somebody was paying for whether it was used or not.

The reason to want private connectivity at all is that the public internet is unpredictable in ways some workloads cannot tolerate. A database replicating between sites or a large data transfer needs consistent latency and throughput, and a dedicated path provides what a best effort connection cannot guarantee.

Pricing is published as starting rates by connection type: data centre to service provider from six hundred and fifteen US dollars a month, cloud to cloud routing from seven hundred and eighty dollars, virtual routing and firewall services from eight hundred and eighty five dollars, and interconnection into new markets from four hundred and fifty dollars a month.