Azure private MEC—A thriving partner ecosystem

By Dustin Ward

In June of 2021, Microsoft introduced Azure private multi-access edge compute (MEC), a solution that enables operators and system integrators (SI’s) to deliver high performance, low latency connectivity, together with IoT applications at the edge, helping to deliver the next wave of digital transformation. This is made possible because Azure private MEC combines network functions,…

Enhance Azure Firewall policy management with Tufin SecureTrack integration

By Dustin Ward

Organizations today are faced with growing network challenges with hundreds of network assets deployed in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Daily tasks such as enabling access or troubleshooting network connectivity issues have become increasingly more complex and spread across different teams within the organization. In addition, organizations are asked to do more while keeping costs under…

High availability solutions on Microsoft Azure by SLES for SAP Applications

By Dustin Ward

This post was co-authored with Sherry Yu, Director of SAP Success Architect, SUSE. In today’s business world, service availability and reliability are key to a successful digital transformation. Extensive downtime not only costs a business revenue and productivity, but may also cause reputational damage. SUSE and Microsoft have been working closely to provide a trusted…

Dive deep into NAT gateway’s SNAT port behavior

By Dustin Ward

In our last blog, we examined a scenario on how network address translation (NAT) gateway mitigates connection failures happening at the same destination endpoint with its randomized source network address translation (SNAT) port selection and reuse timers. In addition to handling these scenarios, NAT gateway’s unique SNAT port allocation is beneficial to dynamic, scaling workloads…

Security for next generation telecommunication networks

By Dustin Ward

Almost two years ago, the National Defense Science Board invited me to participate in the Summer Study 2020 Panel, “Protecting the Global Information Infrastructure.” They requested that I brief them on the evolution of the global communications infrastructure connecting all nations. The U.S., like other nations, both cooperates and competes in the commercial telecom market,…