30 Most Inspiring Leaders To Watch 2023
Amir Khan, CEO: Trailblazing Visionary Leading the Cloud Networking Revolution at Alkira, Inc.
The Silicon Review
Cloud adoption is rapidly increasing, with organizations shifting critical applications from on-premises data centers to public cloud and SaaS environments. However, the networking aspect has not kept pace with this transformation and needs to align better with cloud services. The network is facing growing pressure to deliver an agile, high-performance, and cost-effective solution for cloud-related business needs. In response to this trend, computing and storage have evolved into as-a-service offerings, allowing cloud architects and engineers to focus on selecting desired service attributes, like compute instances and storage volumes, without getting bogged down in implementation details. This simplification has turned cloud computing into a powerful business enabler for computing and storage needs, and workloads are now spread across various cloud regions and providers. Therefore, improved cloud networking agility is crucial for success.
Alkira, Inc. is one such company at the forefront of redefining cloud networking through its Alkira Cloud Services Exchange™. This innovative platform offers the first unified multi-cloud network that seamlessly integrates services, visibility, and governance, all provided as a service. Founded in 2018 by a team with a track record in creating the multi-billion-dollar SD-WAN market, Alkira's multi-cloud network enables rapid and effortless connectivity across clouds, reducing deployment times from months to minutes. It allows services like firewalls to operate and scale in the cloud, transforming network creation from a build process into a drawing process, delivered as a service. Alkira's network cloud represents the first global unified network infrastructure, offering on-demand hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity, integrated network and security services, end-to-end visibility, controls, and governance, all delivered as a service.
Furthermore, the collaboration between Cisco and Alkira provides organizations with a seamless means to extend their security services into the cloud using Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (formerly FTD). This integration offers unparalleled granularity, control, and simplicity compared to native cloud deployments. Cisco firewalls are seamlessly incorporated into the Alkira Network Services Marketplace, a key component of the Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (Alkira CSX) platform, which is the industry's pioneering cloud network infrastructure as-a-service (CNaaS) solution.
Revolutionary Cloud-Based Solutions and Services Offered
Global On-Demand Multi-Cloud Network: Alkira is the industry's only solution with single-click provisioning of the global multi-cloud network and network services. Cut provisioning time from months to minutes. Alkira Cloud Services Exchange™ (Alkira CSX) is the industry's first as-a-service unified multi-cloud network with integrated network services marketplace, visibility, and governance. It removes obstacles to the successful cloud and multi-cloud adoption. Leveraging a globally distributed virtual infrastructure of Alkira Cloud Exchange Points™ (virtual multi-cloud points of presence with full routing stack and network services capabilities), organizations can establish a global on-demand cloud and multi-cloud network connectivity. Remote access VPNs leverage the “trust, but verify” model, which cannot protect against modern-day attacks. Users get authenticated but gain unrestricted access to the entire network. Attackers can move laterally compromising systems. Datacenter VPN termination increases cloud applications latency.
On-Demand Network Services Marketplace: The firm leverages a globally distributed virtual infrastructure of Alkira Cloud Exchange Points™ (virtual multi-cloud points of presence with full routing stack and network services capabilities). Organizations can extend their security policy enforcement capabilities into the cloud with Palo Alto VM-Series Firewalls. Palo Alto VM-Series Firewalls can secure both communications from remote sites into the public clouds and the SaaS/Internet and the communication between multiple public cloud instances in the same public cloud or across multiple public clouds. With Alkira CSX, your multi-cloud network and Palo Alto VM-Series Firewall security are offered as-a-service, on-demand, when you need it.
Cloud Visibility and Governance: It is Industry's only solution with single-click provisioning of the entire global multi-cloud network and network services. Connect users and sites to public clouds and connect public clouds, while cutting provisioning time from months to minutes. Alkira Cloud Services Exchange Portal is a single web interface for designing, provisioning, and operating your entire multi-cloud network. The firm is leveraging industry-leading graphical visualization. Alkira solution offers insights into numerous critical visibility elements for applications, networks, and network services, allowing organizations to deploy not only global multi-cloud network and network services in minutes, but also achieve operational excellence.
Cloud DMZ: Building on-premises DMZ environments typically requires installing and configuring hardware equipment in data centers or colocations. These legacy architectures are inflexible and hard to scale with business demand. Do-it-yourself cloud DMZ environments are bound by restrictive cloud limits and a lack of enterprise-grade controls. Firewall service insertion is complex and routing support is rudimentary. Enterprises need a simple, elastic, and cost-effective way to establish feature-rich DMZ environments for on-premise, cloud, and multi-cloud applications. Most enterprises are running applications in public clouds, but depend on an archaic DMZ in a colocation or data center for access. Alkira builds a better DMZ within public clouds closer to your workloads. The company provides dynamic public IP address allocation; DNS resolution and network address translation.
The Leader Upfront
Amir Khan is the Founder, President, and also serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Alkira, Inc. He is a computer networking visionary who founded and led Viptela’s market-leading, cloud-first, Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) business before its acquisition by Cisco. As prescient as he was in identifying the $8B opportunity for SD-WAN, Amir recognized that the network hampered the cloud journey and founded Alkira in 2018 with CTO Atif Khan to reinvent networking for the cloud era. Amir’s vision is to deliver the Cloud Network as-a-Service (CNaaS). Alkira has delivered the industry’s first Network Cloud, a global unified cloud network infrastructure delivered as-a-service with 1) connectivity for hybrid and multi-cloud networks 2) integrated network and security services, and 3) end-to-end operational visibility and governance. Alkira CSX, is an on-demand, as-a-service, point and click, unified CNaaS that enables cloud architects to design, build, and deploy a global multi-cloud network in minutes. Alkira enables enterprises to implement 50% less firewall capacity, and reduce TCO by up to 40 percent. Before Viptela, Amir held leadership roles at Cisco, Juniper, and Nortel. He holds four patents.
Mr. Amir earned an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mississippi.