Back in the late 80s Cisco, IBM, universities and others started working out the complexities of how to to support availability to utilize multiple network paths and vendors with the Border Gateway Protocol.

Cloud providers themselves, like enterprise data center managers, don't rely on just one carrier for network availability. Who would select a provider with just one network carrier in today's market or even a dozen years ago? In spite of 'carrier' grade equipment and investments in numerous redundancies these providers have in place, experience has shown you need more than one vendor to rely on. The norm is to utilize at least 3 different vendors for network connectivity. The network is just one of many critical ingredients that must be available for Cloud providers to maintain their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

So why should cloud customers act any differently? Like network carriers, a multi-vendor plan affords better management of services as well as costs. We expect customers of cloud providers will require multiple providers to support the promise of availability of their services regardless of how much a single provider invests in redundancies. Again just like customers of network services.

Today, RiverMeadow can expedite a multivendor cloud deployment and management strategy across cloud and virtualization stacks giving customers much greater choice in the numerous cloud offerings available.