---
title: "Beyond the Datacenter: Why Distributed Enterprises Need a More Resilient Network Architecture"
description: Discover why distributed enterprises need resilient network architecture beyond the datacenter to improve connectivity, security, and business continuity.
image: https://prismip.ca/hubfs/e91df174-1aa6-46b9-a816-f9c698654577.png
---

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# Beyond the Datacenter: Why Distributed Enterprises Need a More Resilient Network Architecture

![Justine Francisco](https://7528315.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7528315/hubfs/raw_assets/public/mV0_d-cms-elevate-theme_hubspot/elevate/images/avatar-placeholder.jpg?width=48&height=48&name=avatar-placeholder.jpg)

 Justine Francisco

November 3, 2026

For enterprises operating across hundreds or thousands of locations, network reliability is directly tied to business performance. Every store, branch, distribution center, and regional office depends on consistent connectivity to access critical applications and maintain daily operations. Yet many organizations continue to rely on traditional, datacenter-centric network architectures that introduce unnecessary dependencies and potential points of failure.

As businesses accelerate their cloud adoption strategies, these legacy approaches can become increasingly difficult to maintain. Centralizing network traffic through private datacenters may have once provided a manageable way to control enterprise connectivity, but it can also create bottlenecks, increase operational complexity, and expose organizations to widespread service disruptions.

## The Business Risk of Datacenter Dependency

A network outage is rarely just a technical inconvenience. For distributed enterprises, connectivity disruptions can affect transactions, customer experiences, employee productivity, and revenue. This became a significant consideration for Michaels, one of North America's largest arts and crafts retailers. With approximately 1,400 stores across the United States and Canada, the company needed a network architecture capable of supporting its extensive retail operations while maintaining high availability.

Previous outages associated with proprietary datacenter equipment had disrupted operations and resulted in lost sales. The experience highlighted a fundamental weakness in its existing architecture: too much of its network traffic depended on centralized datacenter infrastructure.

As Sreenu Sampati, Director of Security Engineering at Michaels, explained, the organization needed to eliminate redundant backhaul to private datacenters and establish more direct connectivity to its cloud environment.

The objective was clear: reduce infrastructure dependency while improving the reliability and scalability of the network.

## Moving Toward Direct Cloud Connectivity

As Michaels continued migrating workloads to Google Cloud, its existing network architecture needed to evolve alongside its cloud strategy. Rather than continuing to route store traffic through private datacenters, Michaels adopted Alkira's Network Infrastructure-as-a-Service (NIaaS) model to establish secure connectivity between its retail locations and Google Cloud.

Through Alkira's cloud-delivered network fabric and Cloud Exchange Points (CXPs), organizations can connect distributed locations, public cloud environments, and private infrastructure through a unified operational layer. This approach helps reduce reliance on traditional physical network infrastructure while centralizing connectivity, routing, and security policies.

For Michaels, this meant creating a more direct path between its stores and cloud-hosted applications, reducing unnecessary backhaul and simplifying how network connectivity was managed across its retail footprint.

## Resilience at National Scale

Modernizing a network across a large enterprise requires more than improving connectivity at individual locations. The architecture must support consistent performance, centralized management, and the ability to scale without introducing additional operational burdens.

Michaels initially validated the Alkira approach across a smaller group of stores before expanding the deployment across its entire retail network. The results demonstrated how a cloud-delivered networking model could support enterprise-scale transformation. Michaels deployed Alkira across approximately 1,400 stores in the United States and Canada in just three weeks.

According to Wei Dong, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Michaels, the deployment demonstrated the reliability and performance needed to support the company's retail operations. For a business where every minute of network downtime can translate into significant financial consequences, improving network availability was a business priority, not simply an infrastructure upgrade.

## A More Resilient Foundation for Cloud-First Enterprises

The Michaels deployment illustrates an important shift in enterprise networking: organizations no longer need to rely exclusively on traditional datacenter-centric architectures to connect distributed operations.

By abstracting the underlying infrastructure and delivering connectivity through a cloud-based service, Alkira enables enterprises to establish more flexible network architectures while maintaining centralized policy, segmentation, and security controls.

For IT leaders evaluating their next stage of network modernization, the key considerations extend beyond bandwidth and hardware refresh cycles. They include:

- Reducing infrastructure dependencies: Minimize unnecessary traffic backhaul and reliance on centralized datacenter equipment.
- Improving business continuity: Build network architectures that support availability across distributed locations.
- Simplifying cloud connectivity: Establish secure, consistent access to cloud applications without introducing unnecessary network complexity.
- Supporting enterprise-wide scalability: Expand connectivity across locations and regions without repeating lengthy infrastructure deployment processes.

The future of enterprise networking requires architectures that can adapt as quickly as the businesses they support. Michaels demonstrates how moving beyond datacenter-dependent networking can help organizations build a more resilient foundation for cloud-driven operations.

Discover how Prism IP helps enterprises modernize their network infrastructure and build connectivity strategies designed for evolving business demands.

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## Keep reading

### [![](https://prismip.ca/hs-fs/hubfs/yung%20last.png?width=1670&height=942&name=yung%20last.png) Making M&A Networking More Agile](https://prismip.ca/prismmanagedipincblog/making-ma-networking-more-agile)

### [![](https://prismip.ca/hs-fs/hubfs/simplify%20security-1.png?width=1670&height=942&name=simplify%20security-1.png) Simplifying Security in a Multicloud Environment](https://prismip.ca/prismmanagedipincblog/simplifying-security-in-a-multicloud-environment)

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