AppViewX Simplifies Network Routing Using AWS Cloud WAN

Cloud applications have become indispensable for meeting diverse business needs. However, effectively supporting and managing these applications often proves to be a time-consuming challenge. AppViewX offers a comprehensive solution by providing a suite of products dedicated to certificate lifecycle management, non-human identity security, and application infrastructure security automation, designed to simplify the complexities faced by businesses and their application-driven tech teams.

Since 2021, AppViewX has been shifting its products from an on-premises delivery model to a software as a service (SaaS) solution built on Amazon Web Services (AWS). By implementing multi-tenant architecture on AWS, AppViewX has achieved significantly faster time-to-value and improved scalability. However, because some AppViewX customers with specific requirements continue to opt for on-premises deployment, AppViewX also maintains a data center and disaster recovery site for internal workloads. Until recently, the company used AWS Transit Gateway to connect Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), AWS accounts, and on-premises networks to a single gateway.

However, as AppViewX continued to grow, its operations team members had to build dedicated AWS VPN tunnels to establish hybrid connectivity for each new customer and region. They were spending much of their time creating and maintaining routing tables, and the system became complex and cumbersome. When Vignesh Murugasamy joined AppViewX as a senior network engineer in 2022, he quickly recognized the need for change.

“One of the major challenges was cleaning up routing, which had always been static. We had poor visibility into what had been built before, and monitoring was problematic, which hampered our ability to isolate issues,” Murugasamy says. Onboarding was also a challenge. He explains, “The manual approach to routing made it difficult for new employees or those without experience managing route tables to adapt to our network architecture. They had to depend on other people, which took too long when we had a critical requirement.” 

Upon attending an AWS re:Invent conference, AppViewX’s management learned about AWS Cloud WAN, a managed wide-area networking (WAN) service used to build, manage, and monitor unified global networks. Murugasamy was tasked with implementing the service for internal workloads and saw immediate results. “Traffic segmentation and route management are much simpler and more efficient with AWS Cloud WAN. We no longer need to manage network routing tables and connections individually,” he explains.

Previously, AppViewX was using about 35 VPN tunnels and more than 15 AWS Transit Gateway connections spread across several internal AWS accounts and at least six AWS Regions. Most of these connections were peered manually using static routes to control traffic. Now, the company has 44 VPCs and just 8 VPNs connected to AWS Cloud WAN, and dynamic routing is fully automated across regions.