VMware onboards Avi Networks to better support multi-cloud

• Claims it can bring public cloud experience to the entire data centre
• Will advance VMware’s Virtual Cloud Network vision
• Will meet enterprise need to update apps faster and more consistently across multi-cloud environments

VMware is planning to purchase Avi Networks, a multi-cloud application delivery company that VMware considers makes a nice fit with its own virtualisation platform. It means, in VMware’s words, that it can “bring the “public cloud experience to the entire data centre - automated, highly scalable, and intrinsically more secure, with the ability to deploy applications with a single click.”

Essentially with Avi Networks onboarded VMware will be able to go with the grain of multi-cloud development.  

“This acquisition will further advance our Virtual Cloud Network vision, where a software-defined distributed network architecture spans all infrastructure and ties all the pieces together with the automation and programmability found in the public cloud. Combining Avi Networks with VMware NSX will further enable organizations to respond to new opportunities and threats, create new business models, and deliver services to all applications and data, wherever they are located,” says Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager, networking and security business unit at VMware.

VMware maintains that enterprises need to deliver and update applications faster and more consistently across multi-cloud environments. To be successful, IT needs to automate all networking and security services across private and public clouds to enable self-service for developers and gain the agility the business needs. Beyond just automated provisioning, IT needs comprehensive visibility into the end-user experience and end to end application performance.

Unfortunately, legacy hardware-defined ADCs, including those refactored to run as software on VMs, lack the required capabilities to scale, secure, monitor and perform in a highly distributed cloud environment. Appliance-based load balancers can slow down application rollouts, cause overprovisioning, and increase costs. Legacy ADCs lack analytics and insights, which makes troubleshooting application problems slow and complex.

Upon close with Avi Networks, VMware will offer both built-in load balancing capabilities as part of VMware NSX Data Center, and an advanced, standalone ADC. The Avi platform enables organizations to overcome the complexity and rigidness of legacy systems and ADC appliances with modern, software-defined application services. Avi Networks’ key differentiators include:

• Automation driven by closed-loop analytics, template-driven configuration, and integration with management products;

• Advanced analytics and insights for performance monitoring and troubleshooting;

• Ability to deploy across on-premises and multiple cloud environments;

• Elasticity and on-demand scalability; and

• Intrinsic security.

The Avi platform provides a Software Load Balancer, Intelligent Web Application Firewall (iWAF), Advanced Analytics and Monitoring and a Universal Service Mesh to help enable a fast, scalable, and more intrinsically secure application experience. Avi’s central control plane and distributed data plane deliver application services as a dynamic, multi-cloud fabric which intelligently automates decisions and provides unprecedented application analytics and on-demand elasticity.

Avi customers can dispatch services such as load balancing and web application firewall to any application using one centralized interface. Avi technology runs across private and public clouds, and supports applications running on VMs, containers and bare metal.