Alkira

Alkira is a cloud networking company founded in 2018 by Amir and Atif Khan, the founders of Viptela, and is now part of Lumen Technologies. The company provides Network Infrastructure-as-a-Service designed to simplify enterprise connectivity across public clouds, private data centers, sites, users, partners and AI workloads. Alkira uses a cloud-native control plane that allows network teams to design, provision, secure and operate distributed networks without deploying traditional networking hardware. Its platform supports single-cloud, multicloud and hybrid cloud networking, integrated security and network services, business partner connectivity, global backbone connectivity and Zero Trust Network Access. Alkira is designed to reduce the time and complexity associated with building and operating networks across multiple cloud providers and enterprise locations. The platform provides centralized visibility and policy control while integrating network and security services through a service-oriented model. Since becoming part of Lumen, Alkira has combined its cloud-native networking capabilities with Lumen's global network infrastructure and enterprise connectivity. The company serves large organizations with distributed applications, cloud workloads and increasingly complex AI environments. Its approach is particularly relevant to enterprises seeking programmable, secure networking that can be consumed as a service rather than assembled from multiple hardware and cloud constructs.