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The Growing Complexity of Distributed Applications

By Gaurav Nandu posted Mon March 10, 2025 01:59 PM

  


Enterprises are no longer confined to a single cloud provider. Instead, they strategically distribute workloads across multiple cloud environments—AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and private cloud environments—to maximize cost efficiency, technical capabilities, and geographic reach.  

However, as organizations embrace this flexibility, they encounter a new challenge: seamless application connectivity across distributed environments. Modern applications are no longer monolithic; they are built as microservices that run across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. While this brings agility and scalability, it also introduces networking complexities that most enterprises struggle to manage efficiently.  

Let’s explore the biggest challenges of multi-cloud networking and why enterprises need a smarter, application-centric approach to connectivity.   
  

With the shift to distributed apps comes the challenge of maintaining a secure, high-performance, and seamless communication framework between these distributed microservices. 
  

Key Challenges of Multi-Cloud Application Connectivity  

  1. Networking Complexity for Developers  

  • Developers must manually configure, raise tickets asking network operations to configure how microservices communicate, or use static YAML configurations.  

  • These configurations are not their core expertise and become cumbersome as applications scale and change.  

  1. Siloed Development and Operations Teams  

  • Traditional enterprises still operate in silos, where application teams and infrastructure teams work separately.  

  • This misalignment causes delays in application deployment and updates.  

  1. Legacy Perimeter Networking is Not Kubernetes-Aware  

  • Firewalls and routers were designed for static networks, not dynamic Kubernetes clusters.  

  • Any change in an application's IP address due to cloud-bursting or migration requires manual updates, leading to downtime and security risks.  

  1. Security Vulnerabilities in Distributed Environments  

  • Application-to-application communication security is often an afterthought.  

  • If one compromised application gains access, it can propagate security threats across the entire system.  

  1. Application Migration and Portability Challenges  

  • Moving applications across clouds isn’t the problem—it’s maintaining seamless connectivity while doing so.  

  • Traditional networking requires significant reconfiguration when applications migrate between clouds, slowing down innovation.  

  
  

The Need for an Application-Centric Connectivity Approach  

Given these challenges, enterprises must abandon traditional network-centric models and adopt an application-aware connectivity approach. This means:  

  • Automating microservice connectivity without requiring developer intervention.  

  • Abstracting network configurations so applications remain portable across clouds.  

  • Zero trust networking at the application level to accommodate any network underlays 

This is where IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh enters the picture—offering an intelligent, automated way to connect, secure, and manage distributed applications in multi-cloud environments.  

Stay tuned for our next blog, where we’ll explore how IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh simplifies multi-cloud connectivity.  

 


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