 And we're back, this is Stu Miniman with wikibond.org here with SiliconANGLE TVs live continuous coverage from VMworld 2013, gorgeous San Francisco, talking about the transformation to the software-defined data center. And as VMware said in their keynote, networking is the next critical part of transforming from the legacy environments over to the software-defined data center. So we're going to double click in on that topic. Joining me for this segment are Denise Schiffman, VP of Product Management and Strategy with Juniper and Hadam Nagheeb from VMware, also VP for the Networking and Security Division. Welcome back. Hadam, you're a CUBE alum and Denise. You know, welcome on board for the first time. Hi Stu, thanks. Thanks, so what we always try to do here is we try to extract the signal from the noise. And SDN has had a lot of buzz, but we want to unpack a little bit in this segment. You know, what's reality? What's shipping today? What's the ecosystem changing? And what does this impact mean to everybody out there? So Denise, if I can start with you first, you know, Juniper is known for trying to really innovate and bringing innovation to networking and software has been a part of your messaging for a while. So can you just bring us through kind of the last couple of years as to, you know, what Juniper is doing and bring us up to VMworld today? Absolutely. So Juniper has really been focused on innovating and networking, as you mentioned Stu, and really looking at making it easier for customers to deploy their infrastructure and scale that infrastructure with very good performance and very low complexity. And we're seeing that extended in the virtualized networking world by extending compute, the virtualized compute over the network and making it easier for customers to flexibly deploy their applications and scale their infrastructure over time. All right, so Hottam, VMware made kind of the shot herd around the networking world when they bought NYSERA last year for over a billion dollars. I mean, VCs are pouring tons of money into the space right now. And, you know, I had Martín Casado last year banging on the table. We're going to transform networking. We've got him on tomorrow again, always excited to have him on. So what I want to ask you is, you know, we're sitting here with one of your partners. You know, what does it mean for VMware to really go into networking and how does it impact your relationship with your ecosystem? So I think that's a very good question. For us in terms of how we're pursuing the software-defined data center and what we're talking to our customers about in the context of how we can move intelligence into software and optimize automation and orchestration for the software-defined data center, the network, as you've seen in the last couple of days with the keynotes, is a core component of where we think that enablement will happen. And we've introduced VMware NSX as part of the network virtualization platform that we deliver. And it's really for us predicated on being able to deliver, for any application, the capabilities of virtual networking. And a core component of that is an ecosystem that supports that. And so we've worked very closely with Juniper as part of that so that the customers who've made the investment in their infrastructure today can actually take advantage of some of the differentiated value that that infrastructure has as they put virtual networking upon their infrastructure. Great, I definitely want to get into NSX a little, but Denise, you know, Hadam said, that differentiated value that the ecosystem has, you know, what does this new announcement this week in NSX, how does Juniper get involved in this and what is your differentiation in this marketplace? So I think it's key to say that first and foremost, we have announced integration with the NSX platform. And what we provide is an L2 VXLAN gateway, which gives visibility and information from the non-virtualized part of the data center up to the NSX platform. So NSX can programmatically provision the entire data center infrastructure. And what we're seeing the announcements this week are really about providing that functionality at the access layer on the access switch. And what Juniper is doing really quite differently and uniquely is providing that capability at the aggregation and core layer of the network and at the edge layer of the network. So we're providing it on our switches and on our MX routers. But what this does for our customers is it allows them to deploy very flexibly their network virtualization. So they have lots of choice and flexibility on what they're doing. So Denise, one of the things I know I've seen from Juniper and most of the networking community is flattening the network and allowing that management. How does this tie into that? So it's actually very similar. It's an extension from flattening the network. The overlay also flattens the network. But the key here going forward is being able to correlate what's happening on the underlay, the infrastructure, the actual network infrastructure, and in the overlay. So both the sys admin and the network operator know what's going on, have visibility, can diagnose and troubleshoot that network going forward and VMware and Juniper are working together to make sure that that happens. So Hadam, can you talk to us a little bit about what is shipping today, the partner ecosystem piece? Is this rolling out in phases and what should customers be looking for over the next few months? So the products will be GA-ing in Q4. The integrations that we've talked to, all the engineering teams have been working diligently over the last several months and are mapping to both VMware release cycle and then their own internal release cycles. Some of them are shipping at the end of the year and some of them earlier on based upon chipset availability, et cetera. So we've got several customers in early access looking at the product and in using it. And as you saw at VMworld, some of them made the decisions to move forward with NSX. And this use case is actually very important to them. I think Denise articulated very well. I want virtual networking. I want the power of a VM for my network and then that operating model, but I've got physical workloads that I'd like to be able to integrate. And I want a simplified operating model where I can see the physical and virtual work together. And this is one of the things that the two teams have worked together very diligently to address for our customers. Great. So if I can follow up on the virtual networking side, of course, VMware's had virtual switching and the distributed switching and they also had an API. So Cisco had had a switch for a long time and we've seen a number of other V-switches from IBM and NEC and HP. Does this change that model? My understanding NSX really has an instantiation of open V-switch or OVS in it. So what does that mean to kind of the, what we've been seeing in virtual switching in the past today? I think what we've been seeing in virtual switching in the past is an extension of the compute paradigm to address networking. So the ability to attach two VMs together to be able to talk to each other, a relatively simplified view of networking if you take a compute out type of view. When we talk about network virtualization and we talk about the platform, what VMware is brought together with VMware NSX, it's a switching platform, it's a routing, it's load balancing, it's firewall, it's really a set of L2 through L7 services, some of them distributed in software to give customers the ability to really optimize their infrastructure around that. And it is independent from having to make any changes to the underlying hardware. So you can choose the infrastructure you have today or you can choose to move to whatever infrastructure you want that's optimal for whatever different use case you may need to be achieving there. So Denise, I'm wondering if you can up level this for us a little bit. Juniper's talking to a lot of customers. I remember from my days when I used to be doing a lot of briefings with the enterprise. Juniper was loved from their routing products and some of the solutions out there. What are the real challenges that you're seeing in the enterprise space and how does this whole solution fit into it? So the real challenge has been the complexity in building out and scaling your infrastructure. And it's a lot of what SDN and network virtualization has gone after solving. And part of this really has to do with the ability to move workloads and move apps within a data center or across data centers is sort of the mecca or the promise of what we're trying to give our customers and what they're asking for. And it really is the future. So no matter what they're doing, if they're upgrading their servers and they need to move those VMs or they want to have low balancing between data centers or for disaster recovery, there are a lot of reasons why IT needs more flexibility in how they deploy. And I think this is the first time that we have a platform in place to make that possible. And VMware and Juniper are actually working together, not only what we're announcing this week, but really how this is going to work in the future. How will we route across segments? How will we route across data centers and really bring the value our customers are asking for, which is that flexibility to create that environment. So Denise, I guess in this change, what does this mean to kind of the network team and the network administrators? I saw Juniper was at PuppetConf last week. Is everybody going to become a coder? Or what is the future for the network or kind of the general administrative team? And I think that's a really good question, right? Because the networking team doesn't go away. They're still core in the data center and what they do. And one of the things that Juniper has is a platform called JunoSpace Network Director. And that's really designed to help the network operator and the network manager manage the infrastructure. We actually announced this week a plug-in with vCenter between Network Director and VMware's vCenter so that we could make it easier for assist admin to see what's going on across the infrastructure. We also provide that capability to the network operator. So in Network Director, we correlate what's going on between the physical infrastructure and the virtual environment so that they know what's happening, can troubleshoot, know where the VMs are, know what the applications, where the congestion is, and they can help make decisions and solve problems. All right, so Denise, I have to ask the question. I've seen on Twitter one of the critiques here is there hasn't been as much security discussion in the networking space. So I know you've got a team that looks at the security space that I've been seeing on Twitter. So can you address, what does this mean for the security discussion? Well, security's core, right? And especially when I'm talking about, if you're at the edge of the network, it's absolutely critical at the application level, it's absolutely critical. And Juniper and VMware also are working very closely together on the security side of this, providing security around the application, around the flows in the data center, and of course at the edge of the data center. So you're absolutely right, it's completely critical, Stu. All right, so Hottum, I guess the question to you is, as VMware's adding functionality, how do you decide that balance between pulling things in to make it simple for customers and working closely with the partners? How does that balance work? Can you tell us about maybe, what's that engineering to engineering belly to belly going on between you and your partners? So it's actually quite extensive. It really comes down to when we look at the platform and what we're trying to deliver, we do think there are four core tenets to what a customer is looking for. It really comes to switching, routing, firewall, load balancing. And the industry has evolved tremendously in that space in terms of the context of what it delivers in those four areas. But when I take, for example, load balancing, I think it's very important that customers see that what VMware delivers in that space is really somewhat differentiated from what an F5 or a riverbed or a Citrix in terms of the depth of functionality, the multi-faceted services capabilities that they have. And so what we look to do is to say there are some core functions that you can get from a load balancing perspective that VMware has, and then there's an enormous amount of extensibility where the investments you've made in these partners can actually be integrated in. For the example that we did with Juniper, both on the L2 integration for Top of Rack, also with the context of the security conversations, it's very similar. We look at kind of the core functionality we can provide and what meets that customer's almost good enough needs and then where can we actually bring in the differentiated value where customers are looking for the enormous scale and capabilities they may get from an L3 and an L2 switch and how can we do the automated configuration through that integration. Great. So Denise, I guess back to the users themselves, where's this conversation starting? Who owns this? Is this purely a networking problem or do we really get to talk about business value to the company? Well, I think it's in both places, right? I mean, the conversation around SDN has been huge. It's having in all parts of the IT organization from the storage folks to the networking folks to the server and app folks inside the company. And I think the question on the table for everyone now is how do we get from here to there? I think everyone likes the idea of centralized management control, distribution and programmatic provisioning of workflows. But how do we get from where we are today to where they want to be? And I think that that's our job going forward is to help them migrate to the next generation of networking so that they can scale their networks and they can scale their data center infrastructure and run their business the way they want to. Okay. I wondered, Denise, if you can also address, if we look at this software-defined data center as a whole, we've seen growth of converged solutions and customers wanting the whole piece put together. Juniper's the best of breed. You work with a lot of partners, but how does Juniper get a seat at the table and get involved in those deals? What are you seeing in that dynamic? So this has been huge for Juniper. I think with Q-Fabric and other products we've really shown how you can converge storage and the main data center network and make it a more integrated, easy to use solution that does scale more easily. I think this takes it to the next step and partnering with VMware shows how well we both understand going from virtualized compute to the virtualized network all the way out to virtualized storage. All right. So Hadam, the question to you is, I looked at NYSERA pre-acquisition, phenomenal technology, everyone in networking was excited, but it was one that, if you looked at the top 20 companies in the world, they really needed it today and really large service providers. We saw Citi and eBay and GE on as the customers. Is network virtualization going down market? I'm sure there's interest everywhere, but what can we see as proof points or what can you tell us about adoption across the board? So what we're seeing today is actually definitely that down market move, but we're clearly in the early adopter phase. And what's driving a lot of the early adopters is the need to deliver services, applications as fast and with speed into their infrastructure. Cloud really drives a lot of that conversation. So customers building private clouds, customers developing developer clouds for themselves. So those top 20 customers have enormous needs around that space. They hit that obstacle that happens when I've got a lot of automated and orchestration capabilities maybe around my compute and storage, but I don't have that capability around the network. And network virtualization becomes a really elegant way to solve for that and accelerate their deployment of applications and services in their environment. Great, so Denise, we're getting low on time here. I want to give you the last word. Conversation you've been having at the show, we're leading up to it. Hadam said it's early days. What are you seeing? What do you tell people? What should they be reading? How should they be training their folks? And what milestones should they be looking for to know that we've made progress in this space? Well, I think the first step is really, learning about NSX's new platform, learning more about SDN, what it means in their environment, how they're going to change their data center environment and grow to an SDN world, how they're going to think about deploying their apps, moving their apps, how they're going to manage the overall change in the data center and personnel, as you mentioned earlier, how is this going to work between the CIS admins and the network admins? I think there's a lot still to work out, but I think that the objective is clear to make it easier to scale, make it much faster to deploy apps and deploy the network. I think that's the sort of famous line our customers bring up to us, is that I can bring up the app, I can bring up the VM and the server in just a few minutes. It can take me three weeks to get the network running behind it. So we want to make that much simpler and much faster. And I think it's the key that our customers learn how they're going to be able to get that done with Boat Geniper and VMware. Yeah, absolutely. There's this huge promise for agility, just what VMware brought to the server virtualization market that Kaush and I always give is networking we usually measure in years, if not decades, how long it takes to move things. We are seeing progress. It's still early days. So, you know, Denise and Hadam, appreciate you joining me on this segment. We will keep a close eye on what's going on here. This is Stu Miniman with wikibond.org. We'll be right back with our next guest at VMworld 2013, right after this brief break.