Build a robust network around your business logic

Can you have your flat network and safeguard it too? With traditional enterprise networks, that’s easier said than done. Walking the fine line between openness and security, your IT staffers play a mad game of network Sudoku, as they configure each switch and server to meet all the network policies as well as the business rules. Limited automation and coordination between business logic and network policies can lead to error-prone configurations—a problem that is significantly exacerbated when a user or resource moves. And because you have poor visibility into traffic flow, configuration errors, malfunctioning applications and malicious security breaches can take hours or days to detect.

The ConteXtream Grid enables you to manage a different network—a software-defined network. A virtual network that is configured and managed in terms of the sessions it needs to connect, not in terms of the underlying boxes. A holistic network configuration that is single, global and automated through the same interface used to control your compute and storage resources.

Session-aware networking mirrors your business policies
Instead of defining communication restrictions, the ConteXtream Grid lets your business logic determine desired connectivity paths and permissions. When you spin up a VM (or physical entity) and assign attributes to it such as address, you may define for it the other VMs with which it may communicate, the load balancing group to which it belongs, the rate at which it is allowed to send and receive traffic and the path traffic must traverse between the new VMs and other sources or destinations.

Since all these definitions are enforced at the Grid, they follow the resource wherever you place it in the network. You have truly virtualized your network and given your organization the ability to quickly and flexibly adapt it to changing business requirements.