Martin Casado, chief architect of networking here at VMware, probably made the understatement of the year in his blog post ahead of Interop Las Vegas when he wrote, “It is a very exciting time to be in networking…” The fact of the matter is we’ve entered into a transformative period in networking unlike anything we’ve seen since the invention of Ethernet. A new group of companies young and old focused on network virtualization are challenging networking’s historical operational model, and leveraging the power of software to help networking move into the 21st Century. We’ve seen this before. Read on to learn more…

There are decades of history in computer science in which software has been consuming the functionality of proprietary hardware.  Systems evolve to the point where you have software running on top of general purpose hardware systems.  That’s not what networking looks like today, but it is what networking will look like tomorrow because of the major architectural shift that’s already happening in front of our eyes. At Interop, every major player involved in this architectural transformation was in the room agreeing to this shift. That included the largest virtualization player, the largest software provider and one of the leaders in merchant silicon.  Even the networking hardware manufacturers were talking about the shift, albeit with their own spin on the topic.

New times require new voices to add perspective to the discourse. That’s where this blog comes into play.

Welcome to The Network Virtualization blog. Here we will follow the networking industry’s transformation. Our goal is not merely to inform, but to engage with the industry about  the developments, trends and adoption of network virtualization. We will offer you forward-thinking vision – from inside and outside of VMware -coupled with tangible and actionable information about network virtualization deployments.

The New Era in Networking is here. Follow this blog to take part in the journey.

Roger Fortier