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VMware buys Nicira: Open-source threat or cloudy opportunity?
VMware (NYSE:VMW) is buying Nicira for $1.26 billion. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers wonder what the future holds for open-source software-defined networking and cloud-computing generally.
By Richi Jennings: Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: The City is London...
Hello, Joab Jackson. U Jelly?
VMware will fold Nicira's...Open vSwitch, into its own portfolio of virtual networking software. ... [It] creates an abstraction layer between servers and networking gear...decoupl[ing] the network topology...creating virtualized pools of networking capability.
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VMware will encourage Nicira employees to continue working on open-source. ... Nicira employees led the development of the OpenFlow...protocol and were also involved with the OpenStack Quantum networking software.
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The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.
Dina Bass and Sarah Frier add:
Software such as Nicira’s is designed...to manage network changes and monitor them. ... [It] could help VMware lessen the need for types of networking equipment sold by Cisco.
VMware CTO Steve Herrod explains himself:
Nicira [is] a 5-year-old company that has pioneered software-defined networking...for heterogeneous infrastructure environments and clouds.
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Tenants [of a] software-defined datacenter can have their own virtual datacenter with an isolated collection of all the...resources that they are used to...it is the architecture for the cloud. ... Nicira will help us advance our software-defined networking activities.
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Cloud computing has put a real strain on traditional approaches to networking. ... [It's] complex and time-consuming to provision and configure the networking services...in the cloud.
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Let me be clear...we are absolutely committed to maintaining Nicira’s openness [for] the OpenStack, CloudStack, and other cloud-related communities.
But Cade Metz has a slightly different spin on it:
Nicira...is also one of the primary forces behind the OpenStack project...to build an open source platform that mimics the...cloud service offered by Amazon...a direct competitor to a proprietary VMware platform known as vCloud Director.
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VMware has built an open-source platform called Cloud Foundry, which can run on top of practically any Amazon-like cloud setup. ... Herrod indicated that Nicira would play an important role in the future of Cloud Foundry.
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The biggest names in cloud computing...don’t use VMware’s vSphere hypervisor. ... They use the open source hypervisors Xen and KVM. ... OpenStack runs atop...Xen and KVM [not] vSphere. Surely, that’s something VMware wants to change.
Meanwhile, Larry Dignan analogizes with assonance:
VMware's Nicira purchase rhymes with EMC's 2004 purchase of VMware. ... Obviously, EMC's $625 million acquisition...paid off in a big way. ... Now VMware is acquiring Nicira...and hopes to garner the same rewards.
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Whether VMware wins the day with Nicira largely depends on whether virtualization lightning can strike twice. ... Time will tell...but there's some historical reasons within the EMC corporate family to believe it can work.
