System and method of a centralized gateway that coordinates between multiple external controllers without explicit awareness

A method and apparatus of a device that restricts data communicated between a plurality of computing management devices and a plurality of computing devices is described. In one embodiment, a gateway receives network connectivity information of a network for a plurality of computing management devices and a plurality of computing devices, where the plurality of computing devices is coupled to the plurality of computing management devices via a plurality of network elements. In addition, the gateway determines a plurality of sub-networks using at least the network connectivity information, wherein for each of the plurality of sub-networks, at least one of the plurality of computing management devices and a subset of the plurality of computing devices is associated with that sub-network. Furthermore, for each of the plurality of sub-networks and for each pair of computing devices in the associated subset of plurality of computing devices, the gateway determines a policy for data being communicated between this pair of computing devices and the gateway configures at least one of the plurality of network elements coupled to this pair of computing devices to allow data communicated between this pair of computing devices using at least the first policy.