It’s About Computing

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.

 

The catalyst for the transformation is the global economy, which, increasingly, pivots on being the fastest mover in your industry.  Is Facebook the most important cloud/social/mobile company because it delivered the most features or best interface, or is the pending IPO about to make history because Facebook acquired 10 million, 100 million, and now 900 million active and loyal users before anyone else. Or because it virtualizes and accelerates relationships?   Speed wins.

 

Looking for a business driver for x-as-a-service, it is about speed.  The fast eat the slow.  In order to compete, companies must go faster.   Traditional IT has not been about moving fast for a very long time, but don't blame IT practitioners, as Ivan Pepelnjak notes, blame the ever increasing complexity being thrown at them by vendors and their vendor-centric model of computing.

 

This would not be important if IT wasn’t one of the most significant factors of production for the post-industrial economy: think land, labor, capital (financial, human, social) and information technology.  IT is a subcomponent of every industry: at an estimated 6% of the U.S. economy, it is a larger component of GDP than gasoline.  IT is inside every steak, potato and glass of red wine.  It's in your car, mutual fund and iPad delivered video programming.  And of course, it’s on your computer.  

 

Virtualization changes the paradigm for IT and the fundamental operational properties of computing. Virtual environments remove operational friction inherent to physical environments making them more efficient, more flexible, and faster.  We’ve only experienced the initial benefits of server and storage virtualization, because the complexity and operational friction created by the physical network that connects them results in a relentless drag on efficiency and speed. When an IT organization like eBay can increase service delivery speed from 7 days to less than a minute, by simply adding network virtualization to the mix, the fundamental properties of computing have changed.

 

Nicira is a network virtualization company.   We have a simple, compelling definition for network virtualization: it decouples the virtual from the physical network; it reproduces the services of the physical network in the virtual space; and it automates the operations of the network (and the cloud).  No dependence on specific hardware (use who you like).  No change to the network from a host perspective.  And attain the operational benefits of virtualization.  

 

If VMware had been reliant on a specific vendor’s computing platform rather than simply requiring an x86 processor, where would they be now?

 

In describing network virtualization, specificity matters.  While Nicira uses some SDN tools (okay, I said it) in support of network virtualization, we do not deliver network virtualization in pursuit of SDN.

 

Specificity matters.

 

The transformation in the data center network today is the shift of the first hop switch into software. Managed by the Nicira NVP controller, Open vSwitch (OVS) delivers a fully functional and centally controlled network platform.  It allows 3 things to occur:

 

 

We did not invent the first hypervisor virtual switch (or Linux bridge which preceded it), but we, and others, put the time, code and sweat into making OVS the most disruptive force in networking today.  

 

When qualifying new customers, we look for entities who have moved beyond hosted VMs, moved beyond thinking of servers and storage and network as individual components, the customers that see the cloud as a system, as pools of resources that can be consumed and repurposed on demand through a self service portal. Cloud, to our customers, is transforming their business not just their data center. Our customers take advantage of the transformation every day, create new use cases every week and increase their lead on the competition every month.

 

It’s about the speed of network virtualization.

 

By Alan Cohen