Cloudflare Enters Multicloud Networking Market: Unlocks Simple, Secure Multicloud for Businesses

Cloudflare announced the launch of Magic Cloud Networking, a simple, secure and scalable way for businesses to connect and secure their public cloud environments. To accelerate its entrance into the new market, Cloudflare acquired the technology of Nefeli Networks – a multicloud networking startup focused on reducing the complexity of IT and DevOps teams by providing a unified network management layer for cloud infrastructure deployments. By integrating Nefeli’s technology with Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud, Cloudflare now combines cloud network orchestration with the scale of a global network in a unified platform – uniquely positioning Cloudflare to help businesses to discover, connect, and protect any private or public cloud environment seamlessly, while also further helping avoid public cloud lock-in.

Today, the majority of businesses rely on large public cloud providers in some way, and these organizations need to manually configure and manage cloud networking platforms to connect each virtual private cloud. Multicloud networking offers the potential for businesses to use multiple cloud environments and easily deploy and manage connectivity and security policy across them. Nefeli’s technology automates and simplifies this process by creating a single pane of glass that allows teams to more easily deploy and manage changes to networking components.

“We believe the full potential of the cloud will only truly be unlocked when customers can easily mix and match the best features of each public cloud provider,” said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder at Cloudflare. “Adding Nefeli’s team and capabilities to Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud fast tracks our entrance into multicloud networking – enabling our customers to reduce the cost of managing multiple cloud providers as well as gain greater control, visibility, agility, and resiliency to get the most out of their cloud environments.”

Nefeli's partnership with Cloudflare began during the Workers Launchpad program, allowing the Nefeli team to explore ways the technologies could scale to best serve customers. Cloudflare acquired Nefeli’s team and technology to accelerate the development and launch of Magic Cloud Networking. Cloudflare is integrating this technology into Cloudflare One, its comprehensive SASE platform, to provide customers with a unified management experience across their entire enterprise network, including cloud and on-premises deployments. By offering Magic Cloud Networking as part of a unified platform alongside Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) capabilities, Cloudflare is the only vendor today with a comprehensive Zero Trust product portfolio, robust network connectivity powered by our global footprint and backbone, and industry-leading application and network security – connecting and protecting not only customers’ internal, private systems but also their external, public-facing systems.

Magic Cloud Networking will allow customers to leverage Cloudflare's global network, the largest and most interconnected network in the SASE market, spanning over 310 cities in over 120 countries and interconnecting with over 13,000 networks globally. With the addition of Magic Cloud Networking, Cloudflare will enable customers to seamlessly discover, visualize, connect, and secure their cloud networking infrastructure – uniquely positioning Cloudflare as the one-stop-shop for customers looking to transform their network architecture.

“At Nefeli, we worked to ensure businesses could get the most out of the cloud, without being constrained by artificial boundaries within or between any particular cloud platform," said Eugenia Corrales, CEO of Nefeli. “By seamlessly integrating Nefeli’s multicloud networking capabilities into Cloudflare’s robust platform, businesses will be now able to easily connect and manage their cloud infrastructure with security and performance built in at scale."

“Since the early days of the Internet, complexity has been one of the biggest roadblocks to innovation,” said Dr. Scott Shenker, Co-founder and Chairman of Nefeli. “That’s why I’m thrilled to see this next chapter for Nefeli’s talented team – bringing simplicity and scalability together to revolutionize multicloud networking.”

Source: Cloudflare media announcement