Aviatrix wants to elevate the work of cloud networking heroes who labor to keep networks secure, effective, and performant. We’re proud to highlight people who have taught themselves the necessary skills, designed and managed successful networks, and have the expertise to share.
Our next hero spotlight is on Norm Collins, Cloud and Infrastructure Architect. See our previous hero spotlights here.
Background: Bridging the Gap Between the Edge and the Cloud
Norm’s start in tech started right after university with his first job. He began working at a startup, building and managing a 75-site Wide Area Network (WAN) across Canada using ISDN and Frame Relay. From there, he moved into Network Edge Engineering for a Canadian telecommunications company, developing and implementing services for customers.
“I have always bridged the gap between the data center technologies and the core/backbone networks for organizations,” Norm said. “Taking this experience to the cloud has been very valuable, especially bringing the networking understanding and ensuring seamless integration with multicloud architecture.”
Norm is currently a Cloud and Security Consultant focusing on cloud technologies, including Kubernetes Architecture/Design, Serverless Architecture/Design, Event Driven Architecture/Design, and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM).
“I have been working in the networking space for 28 years that also spans into the physical data center and into CSP (Cloud Service Provider) networks,” he said.
The biggest challenges Norm has faced in his role are security-related: he works to ensure that security of solutions and applications deployed in the cloud follow corporate security standards. “Being involved in all designs and applications being deployed to cloud adds that extra layer of confidence and validation to ensure that the applications being deployed are secure and following the requirements of the application,” he explained.
Norm described how security has become increasingly central to all cloud architecture and deployment discussions. “Security conversations are always part of any cloud planning or application deployment within the specific cloud provider,” he said. “The cloud has increased the need for security planning because service exposure can be done much easier programmatically, which would bypass any firewalls deployed within the cloud environment.”
The Evolution of Networking and the Next Ten Years
When asked how he has seen networking evolve throughout his career, Norm identified performance as a key area of change. “Network bandwidth has increased significantly throughout my career,” he said. “They’ve gone from 128kbps connections back in the late 1990s to today’s 10GB+ dedicated network links for typical internal corporate network connections and cloud provider connections. It has been a very interesting transition over the years.”
In the next 10 years, he predicts that networking will evolve to the point where all corporate and critical business workloads will run in one or more cloud service providers, or as SaaS applications with integration into the Cloud Provider networks with minimal connection bandwidth from office networks. “This is the niche spot where Aviatrix will provide organizations of any size with the direct connectivity between cloud providers,” he explained.
Cloud Network Security: The Protection of Resources
Norm defines “cloud network security” as “the protection of resources that are exposed within a customer’s cloud provider tenant.”
The distributed nature of the cloud means that cloud network security is much more detailed and layered than in on-premises environments. “Within ’the cloud’, resources, components, and services can be exposed to the Internet much more easily, especially if the number of cloud users are not closely monitored and provided with specific levels of access dependent on their job role,” he explained.
Outside of Work
Outside of work, Norm is interested in another area of technology: robotics: “Outside of business hours, I like to fly my drones and build and develop robotics projects to expand my knowledge,” he said.
Curious about other cloud networking heroes like Norm?
We’ll keep highlighting networking professionals on this blog.
Learn more about the Cloud Networking Heroes program and apply on The Cloud Network Community.
