Multicloud adoption has accelerated fast. Cloud platforms now sit at the heart of modern IT strategies. But while cloud compute and storage have matured, networking has not kept pace. For many organisations, multicloud networking has become complex, costly and hard to govern.

Our partner Alkira is tackling this challenge head on. Alkira delivers networking as a service, purpose-built for the cloud era. It removes the need for complex DIY architectures and gives organisations a simpler, more scalable way to connect users, sites, clouds and applications.

In this guest blog, Alkira explores why multicloud networking remains so difficult today and how a fundamentally different approach can turn the network from a blocker into a business enabler.

If you are struggling with visibility, cost control or slow delivery across cloud environments, this is essential reading.

Why Multicloud Networking Is Still So Hard – And How Alkira Fixes It

For years, organisations have been sprinting to the cloud. Workloads have shifted, apps have modernised, and teams have embraced AWS, Azure, GCP and SaaS at breakneck speed. But while compute and storage evolved into elegant “as-a-service” models, the network has lagged behind. It’s still a patchwork of tunnels, limits, manual configs and operational headaches.

Cloud networking should have been an accelerator. Instead, for many organisations, even single-cloud, multi-region environments introduce unexpected complexity that slows delivery, drives up cost, and exposes governance blind spots. Add additional clouds later, and those challenges simply multiply.

This is the moment where the network needs reinvention and that’s exactly what Alkira delivers.

The Reality: Cloud Networking Isn’t “Just More Cloud”

Enterprises typically hit the same set of problems once they expand beyond one cloud and region – and they hit them fast.

Cloud Networking Complexity Grows Out of Control

Every cloud provider has its own constructs, tooling, limits and routing quirks. VPCs, VNets, VPC Peering, Transit Gateways, Cloud Routers, firewalls. All are broadly similar yet subtly different.

Add more clouds, more regions, and suddenly architecture teams are juggling:

• Overlapping IP ranges
• Inconsistent routing behaviour
• Bespoke security controls
• Siloed cloud teams
• Hand-built interconnects no one wants to touch

Even experienced network architects end up firefighting instead of enabling the business.

Visibility and Governance Collapse Across Clouds

Once networking spreads across multiple Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), teams lose a single source of truth.

Routing becomes opaque. Troubleshooting takes longer. Security policies drift. Traffic paths branch out in ways no one intended. And unless you invest huge effort in custom automation and tooling, you can’t answer basic operational questions such as:

• Which apps talk to which networks?
• Where is traffic leaving for SaaS?
• Is segmentation consistent?
• Are we enforcing the right policies everywhere?

This fragmentation becomes a risk – both operationally and financially.

Costs Balloon Quickly

Do-it-yourself multicloud networking is expensive:

• Cloud-native networking services add up fast
• Duplicate tooling across clouds wastes budget
• Manual operations chew through engineering hours
• Backhauling SaaS traffic increases latency and cost
• Adding firewalls per region per cloud can spiral in cost and complexity

And most painfully: provisioning often takes months, not minutes – eliminating the agility that cloud was meant to deliver.

The Breakthrough: Alkira Reinvents the Network for Cloud

Alkira takes a completely different approach. Rather than forcing enterprises to stitch together networking inside every cloud and live with the complexity, Alkira provides a global network delivered as a service.

No hardware. No software to deploy. No redesign of your existing cloud architectures. Alkira allows you to draw your entire network on an intuitive digital design canvas, and deploy it within a single click.

Here’s how Alkira eliminates the core multicloud challenges.

Multicloud Networking Without the Pain

Alkira’s global backbone is built on a distributed network of Cloud Exchange Points (CXPs) – high-performance, cloud-adjacent points of presence that deliver the full network stack as a service. These CXPs automatically handle routing, cloud resource discovery, segmentation, security service insertion and end-to-end connectivity across all your environments.

You simply connect each cloud, site, user group or SD-WAN fabric to the nearest CXP, and Alkira takes care of the heavy lifting:

• One-click discovery of AWS VPCs, Azure VNets, OCI and GCP VPCs
• Automated any-to-any cloud connectivity
• High-speed, low-latency transport between clouds and regions
• Intent-based traffic steering and segmentation

The result: what used to take weeks of engineering work becomes a simple point-and-click design, deployed in minutes.

Unified Visibility and Control Across All Clouds

With Alkira, you finally get a single operational view of networking, security and policy across your entire global footprint.

This means:

• End-to-end segmentation across users, sites, clouds and services
• Consistent firewall and security enforcement everywhere
• Real-time visibility that eliminates blind spots
• Seamless governance aligned with security and compliance teams

Instead of trying to operationalise dozens of disparate cloud-native tools, you gain a unified control plane that scales with the business.

Lower Cost and Accelerated Time-to-Value

Alkira customers typically see:

• 40% lower networking costs
• 80% faster provisioning
• Reduced dependence on cloud-specific networking services
• No hardware procurement cycles
• No complex DIY build – everything is delivered as-a-service

Capacity scales elastically, so you can handle seasonal demand, data migrations or new workloads without re-architecting.

Secure, Distributed Access for SaaS and the Internet

Alkira provides optimal regional Internet and SaaS exit points. Complete with built-in stateful firewalling and optional NGFW service insertion.

This eliminates the need to backhaul SaaS traffic through a central site, improving user experience while reducing congestion and cost.

Easily Connect Anything to Anything

One of Alkira’s biggest strengths is its flexibility. You can connect:

• SD-WAN fabrics (from any vendor)
• On-prem data centres and colos
• Remote users (via elastic Zero Trust access)
• Any cloud, any region

All into a single, unified cloud backbone as a service.

This is especially powerful for M&A, divestitures or rapid expansions where networks need to be integrated quickly without disruption.

Why Now: The Network Can’t Stay Stuck in the Past

Multicloud adoption continues to accelerate. AI workloads, distributed apps, and global expansion are raising the stakes further. Organisations can’t afford slow-moving, high-cost networks that struggle to keep pace.

Alkira gives enterprises the freedom that cloud originally promised: agility, control, visibility and cost efficiency – without the complexity tax.

It’s the network, reinvented for cloud.

Final Thoughts

For organisations navigating multicloud complexity, Alkira is a game-changer. It transforms networking from a bottleneck into a business enabler, delivering a flexible, scalable, secure, and fast network that keeps pace with whatever comes next.

If your cloud network feels like it’s holding you back, it’s time to see what a genuinely modern approach looks like.

Thank you to the team at Alkira for sharing these insights.

Alkira is a key Ampito partner, helping our customers simplify multicloud connectivity while improving performance, security and control. Together, we support organisations that want to move faster in the cloud without adding complexity or risk.

If multicloud networking is slowing your teams down, get in touch for a no-obligation conversation about how Ampito and Alkira can help you design a network that is ready for what comes next.