Last week virtualisation specialists VMware held their annual conference in San Francisco and while this writer was not part of the proceedings, I was privy to a significant launch.
Speaking at a media event a few days before, Rory Choudhuri, senior product marketing manager at the company, said that after it had built solutions to enable the “software-defined data centre” last year, 2013 was the year it took that vision further with the “third generation of IT”.
He said: “Users are bringing services from other providers as most are getting requirements from the IT department, so speed is a requirement. IT is challenged with inefficiency: downtime; inflexibility; and lock-in fear.”
Launched to enable “organisations to completely virtualise their network”, Choudhuri said that NSX “is to the network what we did to the computing layer”. He said: “NSX is taking integration from layers 3, 4 and 5 and drawing it to a higher level as network services are now in a hyper visor layer. This is a phenomenal concept; NSX will remain the consultative cell for the first year or so, but all services can now be virtualised in a virtual server.”
Described by the company as a network virtualisation technology which will play an integral part in the company’s mission to virtualise the entire data centre, VMware said that the NSX platform decouples the network from the underlying hardware and takes advantage of the existing network infrastructure without changes to enable new levels of service delivery speed, agility and cost reductions.
VMware, who marked its 15th birthday with the launch of the NSX platform with new launches, capabilities and partnerships, said that when it was developing NSX is recognised the investments that users had put into in application infrastructure including networking services, so the VMware NSX network virtualisation platform has been architected in a way that ensures the services it offers on NSX virtual networks deliver next generation functionality, and are also as co-existent, transparent, and effective as those deployed on physical networks.
Choudhuri concluded by saying that the launches were made “to offer customers the large benefits of virtualisation so we can go through the journey with them”. With CISOs now seeing virtualisation as a reality, the concept of virtualising an entire environment may be off-putting at the moment, but I doubt that it is one that will be a negative forever. What I expect is that VMware have set their stall out in this space to show their intentions and capabilities, and let their competitors look up to their vision.
Visit the blog site of VMware to find out more.
About the Author:
Dan Raywood | @Danraywood | His Site
Journalist who has covered information security for five years including data security, employee awareness, compliance and major threats. In previous roles Dan covered Human Resources issues, business continuity and personal finance. He is also available for byline and case study writing, and speaking appearances.
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