By Tom Gillis, SVP/GM of Networking and Security BU

When we first announced our intent to acquire Avi Networks, the excitement within our customer base, with industry watchers and within our own business was overwhelming. IDC analysts wrote, “In announcing its intent to acquire software ADC vendor Avi Networks, VMware both enters the ADC market and transforms its NSX datacenter and multicloud network-virtualization overlay (NVO) into a Layer 2-7 full-stack SDN fabric (1).”

Avi possesses exceptional alignment with VMware’s view of where the network is going, and how data centers must evolve to operate like public clouds to help organizations reach their full digital potential. It’s for these reasons that I am happy to announce VMware has closed the acquisition of Avi Networks and they are now officially part of the VMware family going forward.

I’ve heard Pat Gelsinger say many times that VMware wants to aggressively “automate everything.” With Avi, we’re one step closer to meeting this objective. The VMware and Avi Networks teams will work together to advance our Virtual Cloud Network vision, build out our full stack L2-7 services, and deliver the public cloud experience for on-prem environments. We will introduce the Avi platform to our customers and partners to help enterprises adopt software-defined application delivery across data centers and clouds and continue our work with technology partners for interoperability.

Applications are the heartbeat of the modern enterprise. Enterprises need to deliver and update applications faster and more consistently across multi-cloud environments. To be successful, IT needs to automate everything, most importantly networking and security services across private and public clouds, to enable self-service for developers and gain the agility the business needs. Beyond just automated provisioning, IT needs comprehensive visibility into the end-user experience and end-to-end application performance.

With Avi Networks now part of VMware, we can deliver the industry’s only complete software-defined networking stack from L2-L7 built for the modern multi-cloud era leveraging a common architectural foundation. VMware will be able to offer both built-in load balancing capabilities as part of VMware NSX, and an advanced, standalone ADC offering that includes global server load balancing, web application firewall (WAF) and advanced analytics and monitoring.

To the team at Avi that has brought the company to this point, developing an incredible product set and exceptional company culture, we congratulate you and welcome you to VMware.

Tom

 

Source: IDC, June 2019, “VMware’s Acquisition of Avi Networks takes NSX to Application Layer, Strengthens VMWare’s Network Portfolio for Modern Apps, Multicloud”