To meet the massive network traffic and coverage requirements of businesses and government agencies, Google announced at the Google NEXT'25 conference the launch of Cloud WAN, a fully managed, reliable, and secure enterprise backbone network. This allows businesses and government agencies to leverage Google's globally deployed backbone network to build a stable service platform.
Google said that it has been continuously deploying network resources around the world for the past 25 years, which currently covers 202 PoP access points, more than 200 million miles (about 321.87 kilometers) of fiber optic network, and submarine cables spread across the world. It claims to be able to ensure the normal operation of network services with up to 99.99% reliability, thereby supporting the huge data transmission traffic behind Google's Gmail, YouTube, Google Search and other services that everyone uses every day.
The Cloud WAN fully managed service proposed this time allows businesses and government agencies to build more stable network services. Compared with traditional site-to-site connection models connected through switches or the currently mainstream SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network), it can significantly reduce management complexity and mitigate information security risks.
On the other hand, the rise of artificial intelligence technology applications has also driven the demand for greater network transmission bandwidth. In addition, businesses and governments need to store data in different locations. Google expects that through Cloud WAN fully managed services, it will be able to use its own global network architecture to provide more reliable connection resources and ensure the stable operation of corporate and government network services.
From an architectural perspective, Cloud WAN primarily serves as a secondary connection network, connecting network services located in different regions and using different cloud platforms, or as an intermediary network connecting different cloud platforms. Enterprises or entire governments can still use their existing network connection structure.
For example, there were reports this year that submarine cables in Taiwan were damaged, which affected the transmission rate of external network connections and even caused economic and other commercial impacts, and may even form an "information island" situation. If the Cloud WAN hosting service provided by Google can be used as a backup network architecture, the network service can still be maintained in normal operation when the main network architecture is shut down.
According to Google statistics, its Cloud WAN improves data access performance by 40% compared to conventional network connection architectures, while reducing the total cost of ownership by approximately 40% compared to self-hosted WAN connection solutions.
