• Part 1: First Wave: Server, Storage and Availability
• Part 2: Second Wave: Networking, Security and Management
• Part 3: The End Game: ITaaS and the Private/Public/Hybrid Cloud

In my post last week, I talked about how VMware/Virtualization adoption has led to a a radical transformation in the Data Center Architecture and all of the component technologies, such as server, storage, and availability offerings and the vendor landscape.  In the second installment of this series, I will focus on the second wave of transformation – for networking, security and the overall management of the infrastructure.

• Networking – Virtual servers always connected to virtual NICs, but the networking side of the house has been slower to evolve than server/storage. Cisco has had some success with its Nexus 5000 product line and launched its distributed virtual switch for VMware in 2008, but a lot of network provisioning tasks still need to be done by command line! Virtual machines are portable and can be moved across servers, data centers, even continents – the network had become the bottleneck. Something had to change.

• Software-Defined Networking (SDN) – And change it did, with the explosion of customer interest in SDN.   Nicera and the OpenStack project were among the early leaders, with vendors like Vyatta (acquired by Brocade) creating hardware specifically for SDN.  It has been nearly two years since VMware bought Nicera and reactions were mixed.  Since that time, VMware has evolved and productized the Nicera technology into VMware NSX  virtual networking product – and they have expanded their vision and product offering beyond server virtualization, with the goal of bringing the same benefits to the entire data center with (Software Defined Data Center (SDDC).   Their definition of SDDC = server virtualization + virtual networking + software-defined storage + comprehensive management framework.   Customers seem to be intrigued and SDDC is now covered by Forrester and Gartner – but how real are these offerings? Cisco has announced their own approach to creating customer value in SDN that they call Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI) – but is it a real option, or a stalling tactic to prevent the commoditization of networking gear?  The battle has begun, but do customers really care about corporate giants battling for control, or are they going to buy the product that helps them solve their problems?

• Security – Perhaps no industry is a ripe for change as security.  Over the last two decades, every time a new security attack  is discovered, there is a new product created to solve this problem (and a new set of vendors).  Corporate customers have dozens (even hundreds!) of separate security products in their environment. To call this a “security architecture” is very generous… And virtual security needs to be based “logical” boundaries rather than “physical”.  As customers re-architect their data centers based on virtualization into a private cloud that defines the approach for virtualization, storage, networking, converged infrastructure and management, this patchwork of single-purpose security devices does not meet customer needs (couldn’t they at least be virtual appliances?)

• Next Generation Security – Next Generation Firewalls from companies like Palo Alto Networks are a good start (finally a product with a single security engine to diagnose multiple security problems, rather than multiple engines like a UTM).  Vendors like Trend, McAfee and Symantec have announced security products integrated with VMware NSX for the SDDC and eventually this will become a new set of products (and vendors?) that enable security based on logical, rather than physical location and can be architected into an SDDC.  But there is a long way for these vendors to go and they won’t be able to sell to their core audience of security zealots either (see below).

• The Future of virtual networking and next generation security?  You can get a sense of the future from the types of ecosystem solutions announced last fall by VMware at VMworld by with technology partners like Symantec, McAfee, F5 and Palo Alto Networks .  Stay tuned to see what these new products look like as they hit the market…

•  Management – For many years, Enterprise System Management meant the Big 4 of IBM, HP, BMC and CA.  Setting policy, monitoring and controlling the patchwork infrastructure that had evolved over 25+ years was very complex, and, as the old saying goes, “where there is mystery, there is margin.”  I recall talking to a BMC channel executive around 2008 and they told me that the intro training/certification program for BMC channel partners was 2 weeks.  No wonder system management has historically been a direct sale…  Now that infrastructure has shifted from mostly physical to mostly virtual (IDC reported that there more virtual servers than physical servers in 2009 and as of last year, there are more servers being used to host virtual servers than there are operating as single application hosts = traditional “physical” server), there is a new wave of management. There was a lot of movement in this “cloud management and automation” space approx. 2010-2012, as a number these new wave vendors were acquired by major tech companies, as they jockeyed to gain oversight of the new corporate data center. This included companies like KACE and Gale Technologies (Dell), Cloupia (Cisco), Dynamic Ops (VMware), and Cassatt and Nimsoft (CA). The new world order has not yet fallen into place but it seems clear that companies like Cisco, VMware and HP see managing the virtualized/cloud stack as a path to a profitable future – and a point of conflict in their relationship….

Of course, the key question really is, “How do these trends impact the way tech firms need to go to market.”  For insight into my observations on this topic, check out my post on what it means to “Climb Out of the Box”: A New Approach for Driving Revenue from Your Partnerships.”

In next week’s post, I will cover the final topic of his series – how all these transformations set the stage for the end game – move to IT-as-a-Service, and the Public/Private/Hybrid Cloud.

I welcome any comments below — And make sure you “Follow” our blog (look for the “Follow” link on the upper left) and have your say.