Aviatrix Blog 
Cloud networking is changing rapidly. Developments like GenAI are exciting, but constantly weighing risks and benefits, adapting strategies, and vision-casting can be exhausting for decision-makers. When it comes to networking, leaders need more than just information about the hundreds of things they could do; they need insight into what they should do.
In a recent virtual fireside chat, international cloud influencer David Linthicum and Aviatrix CEO Doug Merritt explored some of the trends that are revolutionizing cloud networking: the networking history that brought us to this moment, the necessity of data integration in a complex landscape, the rise of GenAI, and how CIOs and CTOs can adapt.
Keys to Success: A Great Team
To begin, David and Doug recap Doug’s experience as the leader who piloted Splunk from 2015-2021 from a $220M on-premises, perpetual license software company to a $3.12B cloud-based SaaS organization. Doug gives his perspective on how he did it: “a great team, and an insane amount of work.”
Doug speaks candidly about some of the challenges Splunk faced, including the turbulence of managing an investor base through “incredible upheaval,” the questions people ask, and the changes in engineering and sales methodology between creating and selling on-prem software and a SaaS product. He explains the love for challenges and belief in a “noble cause” that motivated him to continue at Splunk and then come out of retirement for another demanding leadership role at Aviatrix.
Aviatrix’s Solution to Complexity
Doug defines the Aviatrix Cloud Networking Platform as “a networking abstraction layer that makes the movement of workloads and the running of workloads in the cloud and between clouds much simpler.” Doug, who came out of retirement to join Aviatrix, was inspired by the startup’s history as a female-founded company and its very different approach to networking.
There is an early misconception that all enterprises would move to a “monocloud” and the heterogeneity and complexity of multicloud that arose in the industry instead. David and Doug talk about how that complexity is creating significant challenges for CIOs and how Aviatrix can help in several areas:
- Cost efficiency – Aviatrix can extract hard dollar cost savings from your network.
- Visibility and control – Aviatrix can help you see granular data and provide fine-grained control to help you optimize your network.
- Consistency – In a multicloud world where each CSP is built differently, Aviatrix provides an abstraction layer that simplifies and streamlines management.
Doug also highlights the main differences between Aviatrix and any third-party, including the dataplane that enables Aviatrix to leverage the infrastructure of a cloud platform and route packets and how Aviatrix masks and neutralizes differences between clouds to help a multicloud network run efficiently.
GenAI is a Game-Changer
GenAI introduces exciting possibilities, but it also adds complexity to the industry. Doug predicts the rise of many more clouds/cloud platforms in the future beyond the five big ones we see today. His “therapy” for CIOs who are overwhelmed by the amount of options, risks, questions, opportunities, and concerns introduced by GenAI is to:
- Get close to your CFO and FinOps teams to optimize costs, considering that GenAI is not cheap (shameless plug – Aviatrix can give you visibility on network spend to help save costs).
- Be use-case-focused and business-centric. What specific problems do you need GenAI to solve? Aviatrix has developed six solution patterns for its platform, such as edge-to-cloud connectivity.
- Avoid vendor lock-in and prioritize portability. For GenAI and networking in general, maintain flexibility as much as you can to avoid being trapped, especially at the networking layer as the foundation of everything.
Doug argues that we need GenAI to help make humans smarter and networks super adaptive and agile, even self-healing and self-reconfiguring, as cloud security becomes more critical.
“I don’t think any of us are going to defend ourselves by ourselves,” Doug said. “We’re going to need to band together and help each other because the adversaries are so well-funded, a lot of them by the nation-states that we talk about all the time, so it’s a formidable group. But then your systems are going to have to be super-adaptive and agile, and I don’t know how that happens without heavy investments in GenAI.”
Key Achievements at Aviatrix
Doug is fascinated by the problem that Aviatrix solves for companies: the “noble cause” of helping networking teams get the assistance that most people don’t realize they need. He reminds listeners of Aviatrix’s goal of “making networking cool again,” elevating the unsung heroes who keep networks going, and commitment to helping close the industry skills gap by offering the Aviatrix Certified Engineer (ACE) multicloud training certification.
One of Doug’s favorite things about the company is the people, including new leadership, a great board, and self-taught, hard-working people who have adapted to changes and new ideas with an eager learning and growth mindset.
Looking Forward
David asks Doug what he is most excited about and most concerned about in the networking industry. Doug describes his transition from panic over ChatGPT to excitement about AI’s potential to transform and improve every industry. He shares some concerns about what the next 7-15 years might look like for AI and how it will affect labor markets and the need for humans.
Looking back to the last massive dislocation, the Industrial Revolution, which was “pretty chaotic for 50-150 years,” Doug expresses some reservations but also hopes that Aviatrix for its part can help make that transition as positive and officially impactful as possible. From his 30+ years of experience as an AI engineer, David reflects that humans are “innovative creatures” whereas AI has to reuse existing ideas.
At the close of the conversation, Doug thanks David for helping to educate people on these important topics and provided some advice to companies who are trying to make sense of fast and radical changes of cloud networking:
“Networking is foundational,” Doug says. He urged companies to look at Aviatrix or a solution like it. “Be aware that network is mission-critical. The default of just taking whatever’s in front of you often is not the best choice. Take your time in vendor selection. The value we are adding to customers is really, really deep.”
To hear more of David and Doug’s insights on cloud networking, multicloud, or GenAI, watch or listen to the full conversation here. Read David Linthicum’s article on the Evolution of Cloud Networking here.