Cloud networking is a type of IT infrastructure in which some or all of an organization’s network capabilities and resources are hosted in a public or private cloud platform, managed in-house or by a service provider, and available on demand.

Companies can either use on-premises cloud networking resources to build a private cloud network or use cloud-based networking resources in the public cloud, or a hybrid cloud combination of both. These network resources can include virtual routers, firewalls, and bandwidth and network management software, with other tools and functions available as required. 

Businesses today turn to the cloud to drive agility, deliver differentiation, accelerate time-to-market, and increase scale. The cloud model has become the standard approach to build and deliver applications for the modern enterprise. 

Cloud networking has also played a critical role in the way organizations address their growing infrastructure needs, regional expansions, and redundancy plans. Many organizations are adopting a multi-data center strategy and leveraging multiple clouds from multiple cloud service providers (CSPs).

Most organizations have become a patchwork of on-premises technologies, public cloud services, legacy applications and systems, and emerging technologies — a complex situation that contributes to a weak security posture and results in inadequate governance, visibility, and manageability across fragmented networks.

A Virtual Cloud Network is VMware’s vision of the future of networking.  It is an architectural approach (not a product) built in software at global scale from edge-to-edge, that’s able to deliver consistent, pervasive connectivity and security for apps and data wherever they reside, independent of underlying physical infrastructure. Whether your workloads are on premises or in the cloud, the same network and security stack can be used to provide connectivity, security, and visibility. It is also the kind of next-generation networking service consumption technology that IT is increasingly adopting to provide the digital fabric that helps unify a hyper-distributed world.