Cloud Native Networking is Driving the NEW Network Architecture

By Ethan Simmons, Managing Partner, PTP

The first full day of AWS re:Invent is in the books, and as you walk the show floor, it’s impossible to miss the sheer number of booths sponsored by cloud security and networking companies. I spent time chatting with several of them and overheard attendees asking a familiar question: Why do we need third-party services for networking and security? Isn’t what the cloud providers offer enough?

For teams just starting their journey into the cloud, native tools can often suffice. But as applications grow in complexity, become mission-critical, span multiple clouds, and impact the user experience, a stronger foundation is needed. The complexity introduced by multi-cloud environments is unlike anything IT departments have seen before. Native tools alone aren’t cutting it.

At PTP, we work with organizations across various stages of cloud adoption—many of them in life sciences, where data sharing and compliance requirements demand secure, reliable infrastructure. Most of our clients use at least two major cloud providers and often need to connect cloud environments to third-party services to transfer research or clinical data.

Early cloud projects in these organizations were usually launched by the “DevOps guys,” building tools and services in AWS. Their grassroots efforts often proved that the cloud could deliver faster, better, and more cost-effective outcomes. But networking and security were rarely part of those early design discussions. As projects moved closer to production, IT teams were brought in to figure out how to connect everything securely—and that’s where trouble started.

Unfamiliar with cloud-first models, many IT teams defaulted to legacy tools: firewalls, routers, load balancers—the building blocks of the data center. The result was often a tangled hybrid of cloud-native and traditional components, leading to a Frankenstein network that’s difficult to manage and impossible to scale.

The rise of cloud native networking has become essential, particularly for research and biotech environments that demand agility, security, and performance. Whether you’re developing life-saving drugs or optimizing real-time analytics, the infrastructure beneath those workloads matters.

Our team’s strength has always been in architecting networks with security as a core design principle. Years ago, we made the deliberate move from traditional data center models to the cloud-native architectures clients now require—especially those looking for secure lab IT support, IT services for life sciences, or scientific computing IT support. We’ve been early adopters of cloud networking and security tools that simplify operations and deliver much-needed visibility into today’s dynamic environments.

We’ll be sponsoring several events focused on cloud networking in the coming months and hope to see you there. If you’re navigating the shift to a cloud-first strategy or need to untangle a legacy environment, let’s talk.