VMware, a leading provider of virtualization and cloud infrastructure, has announced that Gartner, Inc. has placed VMware in the Visionaries Quadrant in its April 24, 2014 report, “Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking.” This report marks the first year that a pure-play software infrastructure provider has been included in this report. /
According to Gartner, “Today, the data center network market is being transformed with new architectures, technologies and vendors specifically targeting solutions to address the increasing requirement to improve and simplify network operations activities to align more closely with business goals and broader data center orchestration agility, the changing size and density within the data center and shifts in application traffic patterns.”
The report continues: “The decoupling of hardware and software represents the potential for a fundamental improvement in how networks are designed, procured, managed and evolved. The potential for long-term innovation that could emerge with an open SDN-based marketplace is clearly disruptive to today’s hardware-centric model.” Finally, the report noted, “Rather than completely re-architecting the physical network, software-centric overlay technologies are emerging as a frequent discussion point with network designers and data center architects.”
“We believe the fact that Gartner positioned VMware as the only pure-play software infrastructure provider in the Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking is evidence that the world of networking is changing forever,” said Steve Mullaney, senior vice president and general manager, Networking and Security Business Unit, VMware. “Customers now have two distinct data center architectures from which to choose, one defined by software and the other by hardware. VMware’s vision focuses on decoupling networking software from hardware to deliver the agile software-defined data center of the future. Our VMware NSX network virtualization platform promises to free customers from the rigidity, cost and complexity of traditional hardware networking approaches in the data center.”
VMware was included in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking in its first year of eligibility based on its ability to execute and completeness of vision. The VMware NSX network virtualization platform is software that virtualizes the network and delivers the entire networking and security model from L2-L7 in software. The platform decouples the network from the underlying hardware, yet takes advantage of the existing network infrastructure without changes to enable new levels of service delivery speed, agility and cost reductions.
VMware NSX delivers a completely new operational model for networking that breaks through current network barriers and enables data center operators to achieve orders of magnitude better agility and improved economics. VMware NSX is shipping today, and has been deployed or is in deployment with hundreds of customers worldwide, including COLT, China Telecom, eBay, NEXON America, WestJet, and the US Department of Agriculture.
