The revolution in IT today is not about some 3-letter acronym or protocol or API: it’s how computing is built, delivered, and consumed. The fragmented, $3.8 Trillion vendor-centric approach of the client server era is giving way – perhaps with some kicking and screaming -- to a new infrastructure, software, and application model that is developer/user-centric…one that is elastic, mobile and, said plainly, a whole lot easier to deal with. Say what you want about cloud, but we are not reassembling the mainframe. Cloud operating systems like OpenStack constitute all the critical aspects of computing, and thus foster and integrate innovation from a range of players.
When I first started to hear about Network Virtualization maybe half a dozen years ago, I was a bit taken aback. After all, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) had been around for decades, and I had spent a good part of the 1990s and 2000s working on the protocols to allow service providers (SPs) to build scalable VPNs. So I wondered how network virtualization was different from a VPN, and why was there all the sudden interest?
As the OpenStack community releases “Essex,” momentum is clearly building for the overall software framework. Of note, the Quantum (networking) module in Essex takes the networking capabilities to a new level of scale, security, and reliability. Nicira customer Rackspace recently discussed its new enterprise OpenStack cloud that is rapidly moving toward production. Today we welcome another new customer, DreamHost, to the party.
Last week I was chatting with our CEO Steve Mullaney as he animatedly described the challenges he faces getting "traditional networking" people to understand what it is that Nicira does. He's not alone in this - I've heard similar things from CTO Martin Casado and Marketing VP Alan Cohen as well. In fact, it's probably no co-incidence that a large percentage of the engineering ranks at Nicira come from some field other than networking - distributed systems and operating systems people are especially well represented.
As reported by Computerworld and GigaOm last Friday, Sony’s entertainment division started to move some of its cloud services from (the now venerable) Amazon Web Services (AWS) to a Rackspace managed OpenStack environment. After some media flurry, Sony confirmed it will take advantage of a range of environments, including AWS and Rackspace. Sony joins a growing list of large enterprises that are taking advantage of the benefits of an OpenStack cloud.
During our launch, we asserted that network virtualization is the biggest transformation to the networking industry in a generation. We firmly believe that cloud computing changes technology and business, and network virtualization is the missing piece to achieving the promise of the cloud…the ability to truly deliver infrastructure and applications on-demand. This new paradigm is leveraging the physics of IT infrastructure in completely new ways to increase the velocity of business. Therein lies the transformation.
Anyone with even a passing interest in Nicira will have noticed that our approach to network virtualization depends heavily on open standards and open interfaces. In fact you'd struggle to find a company that is more associated with systems and protocols that use the word "Open". OpenFlow, Open vSwitch, OpenStack (where we contribute to the Quantum switch project) are three of the most visible "open" efforts that we have led or been heavily involved in, and we're founding members of the Open Networking Foundation as well.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
- Mending Wall, Robert Frost
Throughout history, there have been many famous walls and armed fortifications. Walls represent a form of structure that provide security and demarcate national or local boundaries.
