Volterra launches distributed cloud platform for deploying, connecting and securing applications

Volterra​, an innovator in distributed cloud services, today announced the launch of a comprehensive SaaS-based platform that enables organisations to centrally deploy and manage applications distributed across multiple clouds and edge locations. This launch follows two years of stealth operations, when Volterra secured $50 million in funding. Investors include top-tier venture capital firms Khosla Ventures, Mayfield and M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund) as well as a growing set of strategic investors/partners including Itochu Technology Ventures and Samsung NEXT. Volterra’s launch comes in a period of rapid expansion for the company, during which it has grown to employ more than 100 engineers and serve over 30 customers.

Seasoned technology executive and entrepreneur ​Ankur Singla​ founded Volterra to address the rapidly growing trend of data and applications residing outside corporate data centres. “I’ve worked with the world’s largest service providers and enterprises over the last several years as they evolved their infrastructures to become software-defined,” said Singla, “but now they are being forced to distribute their infrastructures, and the applications running over them, across multiple cloud providers and edge locations.”

Gartner expects that “by 2022 more than 50% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud.”¹​

This transition will drive increasingly distributed deployments of applications and data, along with a highly varied set of infrastructures. Nowhere will this be more visible than the evolution away from centralised data centres. Again, by the year 2022, Gartner expects that “the majority of enterprise data to be produced and processed outside of data centers, and it is conceivable that will grow to 75%, 80% or 90% by 2025.”¹

To address the major challenges that will result from widely distributed applications and diverse infrastructure, Volterra has innovated a consistent, cloud-native environment that can be deployed across multiple public clouds and edge sites as a distributed cloud platform. Within this SaaS-based offering, Volterra integrates a broad range of services that have normally been siloed across many point products and network or cloud providers, including:

1) Fleet-wide management of distributed applications and data across heterogeneous infrastructures

2) Globally distributed control plane with Kubernetes APIs for application orchestration and multi-layer security for workloads and data

3) Comprehensive compute, storage, networking and security for distributed edge locations

4) Secure, high-performance global connectivity across edge sites, private clouds and multi-cloud

Transitioning to a consistent operating model across cloud and edge environments has become a top priority for infrastructure and DevOps teams. A new Propeller Insights research report, which surveyed 400 senior IT decision makers, notes that 71% of respondents cited a “consistent cloud operational experience between the edge and public/private clouds” as very important, and a total of 98% cited important or very important. When asked about their top requirements for edge infrastructure and application management, the majority of research respondents cited “easily (and cost-effectively) connect to public and private clouds” and “be cloud-native, managed/operated like a cloud” as their key priorities.

The Volterra platform explained:

The Volterra platform comprises three SaaS-based components: VoltStack, VoltMesh and Volterra Console, which together provide a distributed cloud platform for deploying and operating applications and data across multi-cloud and edge environments.

1) VoltStack deploys and manages distributed applications across multiple clouds or edge sites using industry standard Kubernetes APIs.

2) VoltMesh delivers high performance networking and zero-trust security between multiple clouds and edge sites.

3) Volterra Console​ is a management console for deploying and operating distributed applications at a global scale with centralised control and observability.

The Volterra distributed cloud platform can be used across three sets of solutions to enable a wide range of use cases:

1) Edge​ cloud — edge app management, secure edge gateway

2) Multi-cloud​ — multi-cluster secure mesh, secure Kubernetes gateway, multi-cloud app management, app and network services consolidation

3) Network cloud​ — application security and acceleration, network edge applications, secure cloud network with DMZ

Industry feedback:

“We are excited to work with Volterra to architect an unprecedented edge computing environment across our 5G network,” said Keiichi Makizono, SVP & CIO, SoftBank Corp. “Volterra has demonstrated that it solves critical operational challenges within existing telco cloud service offerings, increasing operator efficiency and revenue streams while delivering a cloud-native experience that will drive developer adoption.”

“As an online marketplace the availability of our website is critical, as every minute of downtime results in a significant loss of revenue and a deterioration of our brand,” said Romain Broussard, IT Director at French online retailer, Cdiscount.com. “We have worked very closely with Volterra to maximise our resiliency and security, as well as our user experience, and have been able to build a complete application delivery network and several security tools with their VoltMesh service.”

“Applications are becoming more distributed and deployed closer to native data sources, which is driving DevOps and IT teams to employ a cloud operational model at the edge and consistently across their infrastructure footprint,” said Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Volterra is taking an innovative and cloud-centric approach to deploying, operating and securing distributed applications.”

“As a people-first investor, it has been a delight to work with serial entrepreneur Ankur and his team on their bold idea of a platform for the distributed cloud era,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Director, Mayfield.  “They clearly see the challenge that enterprises are facing as they distribute applications across clouds and the edge, and have assembled a team of more than a hundred experts to build the answer.  With over thirty customers already in production, we are confident that Volterra will make a major impact on the distributed cloud market.”

¹ Gartner, ​How Edge Computing Redefines Infrastructure​, Thomas Bittman, Bob Gill, Aapo Markkanen, 23 August 2018.