The first explicit example of how logical networking could change everything just came along. VMware announced its own approach to that goal with Virtual Cloud Network, and it also demonstrates that SDN can be a player in logical networking as much as SD-WAN. In fact, the speed at which VMware has jumped into the space could mean that SDN-and-data-center players will take an early lead.
VMware’s approach is based on the theme that “Apps and data are living in a lot of different places on top of virtual infrastructure”, which means that virtualization of resources is a critical driver in changing the perspective of networking to something more “logical”. The old model, which I call “facility networking” because it networks sites, is being supplanted by a model of a “flexible, programmable, network fabric….” This is exactly the right way to frame the transformation for a data center vendor; focus on what you’re already doing.
Virtual Cloud Network is a software-hosted fabric that creates a service/application network through NSX-based overlay technology. It can follow a resource anywhere, including public cloud, multi-cloud, private data center, edge computing, feature/NFV hosting, vendor hosting, device hosting, you name it. The idea is to have a software-based agent element that can be incorporated in anything that offers data or feature hosting.
Just because VMware is focusing Virtual Cloud Network on what VMware does, which is host stuff and connect data center resources, doesn’t mean it’s not an advance. They are taking a very bold an important step by making application networks (which are “logical networks” in my terms) explicit. Everything gets connected by an application network, and because applications are the information hub of everything, that network defines the access to all information, which is what VMware means when they say they offer “intrinsic security”. Data center connectivity is enhanced with Virtual Cloud Network, including new public cloud partner support, explicit union of “cloud hosting” and “virtual function hosting”, and container and microservice support.
SD-WAN isn’t out of the picture here. The VeloCloud SD-WAN is a big part of the story, extending VMware’s application networks to branch locations. SDN has usually been confined to switching applications within the data center. VMware Workspace One provides what’s effectively a virtual/logical device instance management framework for worker access. However, these SD-WAN features fall short of managing the users as logical elements of the network; Virtual Cloud Network is still more about the data center.
I don’t think it’s going to stay that way, and I don’t think VMware believes it will either. This is going to be an expanding ecosystem that will eventually integrate most of what we’d consider policy-based network and application management, access control, service and API registration, and above all role, group, and logical user addressing.
One reason this is true is that Virtual Cloud Network is not very far from the Nokia/Nuage SDN solution in terms of capabilities. Another is that there are already SD-WAN vendors (128 Technology, for example) that go a very long way toward uniform logical networking, albeit starting more from the user side. In fact, what we have in the logical networking space today is a clear two-faced solution—some players are facing outward from the data center and focusing on data center incumbency for their sales strategy, and some are looking inward from the branch and the user, which is a more network-centric sales approach. The two faces almost inevitably converge under pressure to enhance value and create differentiation.
Another convergence-supporting force is the “WAN” side of SD-WAN. There are two major constituencies in the network space, one the buyer of service and the other the provider. Both of them are looking for virtual private networks of a different kind than they have today—the old MPLS VPN. The problem for users is that traditional VPNs have a very high cost, in part because the VPN service is delivered through an Ethernet connection and is expensive, and in part because the user is typically required to have a fairly high-touch router termination. The sellers, the network operators, are currently facing about two-thirds of their capex and opex on the Ethernet/IP layer, and they want to offer business services that are affordable for small/branch locations.
Some pieces of VMware’s Virtual Cloud Network (in particular VeloCloud) aims at that network-centric target, and at the same time ties in (at least in positioning terms) things like IoT as a promise for further, thinner, deployment of resources. That lets them position what’s essentially application networking as something getting closer and closer to the user, and thus to subduct logical user management, including mobility, into application networks. Clever move.
The VMware cleverness serves notice in two directions. First, other hosting players (notably HPE) will have to start thinking hard about their own unified, cloud-centric, logical-network approach. Otherwise, they’ll get left behind. Second, the network-centric players in both the SDN space and the SD-WAN space will have to quickly expand their own thinking much more in the application direction or risk being pushed out of the unified logical-networking market as it develops.
The biggest question in this two-dimensional competitive challenge is what M&A will come out of it. Simple partnerships are great to cement an early position in a market that might develop quickly, but they risk having a partner snapped up by a competitor, and at the least they share the wealth too much. Acquisitions would be the most favorable approach.
VMware has its own challenge, too. Within its own base, there’s no question that Virtual Cloud Networking will look not only credible but perhaps even compelling. Outside its base, not so much, and VMware hasn’t set the world on fire in its positioning. They tend to go for the classical boil-the-ocean scattershot of features and capabilities, which is hard to sell to senior management. They have a lot of good stuff, but they need to sing better (how many vendors have I said that about, I wonder?)
Then there’s NFV. On the plus side, VMware is the first vendor to position a common platform for the cloud, enterprise networking, and NFV. Since there is zero chance of NFV amounting to anything at all without this kind of combined positioning, that’s a good thing. However, NFV is probably in the pitch to cement a role for VMware in carrier cloud, where the company has been a non-starter. If that’s the goal, then it’s not going to serve them well, because strictly by-the-book ETSI-NFV-ISG-flavored NFV isn’t likely to do anything in terms of real deployment for years to come, if ever.
That creates the really big problem for this VMware announcement. Carriers are the long-term provider of choice for SD-WAN and logical networking. Cloud providers are in second place. The latter don’t care at all about NFV, and the former need something with some early revenue opportunities, which NFV won’t provide. The VMware Virtual Cloud Networking model could work perfectly fine with other drivers of carrier cloud that will mature faster and go further. That VMware didn’t grab onto them means that their competitors have a better story to tell—if they don’t make the same mistake themselves, of course.
The key point here is that there are going to be a lot of stories on logical networking, from a lot of different slants. I didn’t expect to see someone like VMware step into it this early, but since they have it’s likely that other vendors will also accelerate their own offerings. It could be an interesting summer.