As organizations navigate the evolving landscape of AI technology, the traditional focus on centralizing applications and compute in the cloud is no longer sufficient. The emergence of AI models and data at the edge, across various devices and environments, demands a new approach. In this era, a balance between cloud onramps and edge offramps is essential to ensure consistent outcomes and efficient operations.
By Sukruth Srikantha, VP of Solutions Architecture at Alkira
For a decade, the north star was simple for many enterprises: onramp applications and compute to cloud. Centralize services, scale elastically, and connect everything to a few big regions. In the AI era, that’s only half the story. Models, agents, and context now live everywhere on devices, in stores and factories, at colocation providers, and across multiple clouds. To deliver consistent outcomes, you need to support a second pattern emerging alongside the cloud onramp:
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The AI era doesn’t replace the cloud – it adds the edge. The right strategy is not to choose, but to bind onramp and offramp into a single, deterministic, zero-trust fabric. It requires a fundamental rethinking of network strategy that emphasizes locality, predictability, and a future-proof architecture tailored to the demands of the AI era. When you have a network that supports a hyper-distributed environment, making compute and data clusters feel local everywhere, and your teams can act fast with confidence and develop enterprise AI without friction.
About the author
Sukruth Srikantha is VP of Solutions Architecture at Alkira. Alkira is the leader in AI-Native Network Infrastructure-as-a-Service. We unify any environments, sites, and users via an enterprise network built entirely in the cloud. The network is managed using the same controls, policies, and security systems network administrators know, is available as a service, is augmented by AI, and can instantly scale as needed. There is no new hardware to deploy, software to download, or architecture to learn. Alkira’s solution is trusted by Fortune 100 enterprises, leading system integrators, and global managed service providers.
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Article Topics
AI networking | AI/ML | Alkira | edge AI | edge computing | edge networking | zero trust networking
